Facilitating a visioning session.

January 7, 2009 2:24 PM

Seeking help in facilitating a group discussion about the future of a nonprofit organization.

I've been tapped to facilitate a three-hour discussion among board and staff members of a nonprofit I work for, during an annual two-day retreat. The discussion is to focus on "big picture" issues -- where do we want to see the organization in three years, how does the public view the organization vs. how we want them to view us, what are our strengths/weaknesses, etc. Less about strategic planning and more about visioning. This is a grassroots organization (picture sitting on the floor and couches in a living room, not around a big table in an office building) with a big staff and board from a wide range of backgrounds.

Above all, I don't want this to suck. I've been to (and even led) enough of these to know that they can be total time-wasters, but have also been to some where the facilitator has posed brilliant questions and framed the discussion in such a way as to make the process fun and useful. I've got some notes from those, but would love to hear from the hive mind about other successful meetings you've attended, online resources you've found helpful when having to organize such a function, etc. Thanks!

posted by Framer to work & money (8 comments total)

What comes to mind is that there are two ways this could happen successfully. One way is that you know the people enough already and talk to them in advance and you know before it even starts what can happen and what will happen. Then it happens. The other way is that you don't have that kind of style or it wouldn't fit that situation, in which case you need to approach it differently, more open-ended. In either case, you probably need to come up with a schedule that has ample leeway in the latter part because things tend to run over.
posted by peter_meta_kbd at 2:45 PM on January 7

I find The Appreciative Inquiry Commons a goldmine of information, references, and case studies for visioning.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 3:10 PM on January 7 [1 favorite]

Believe it or not, three hours is a VERY SHORT period of time for this sort of discussion. Do you have the option of distributing questions and getting feedback before the meeting? You could cut through a lot of wasted time and identify key issues for the folks attending.
posted by hworth at 3:12 PM on January 7

know the people enough already and talk to them in advance and you know before it even starts what can happen and what will happen.

Yes. Every time I have seen this done successfully (and it was never in a single session!) it was preceded by either one-on-one personal interviews with key personnel or by a confidential survey in which we were asked to analyze, from our points of view, the usual SWOT questions (what are our Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats as an organization) but also things like

what makes your job easier?
What makes it harder?
If time were unlimited, what would you do?
If money were unlimited, what would you do?
What are the biggest obstacles to being more effective?
Sum up the organization's mission in five words.
Think of a time when you could see that the organization was fully living up to its mission. What was happening? describe it.
What other organizations in your town do you admire (they don't have to be in the same field). Why?
What other organizations in your field (can be anywhere) do you admire? Why?

If you get the responses back - or complete the interviews - in a timely way, you can analyze them before the session. You can look for common themes that will definitely emerge - recurring words or thoughts about the mission and vision - and also identify challenges (thinking too small, lack of a specific kind of resource, inefficiencies, communication challenges).

With only three hours, I might set challenges aside. There is a tendency to focus on challenges, and as soon as an idea is floated, people are more than happy to shoot it down. Instead, acknowledge the challenges and set aside. If there are any hard parameters (ie, the budget will not grow. We will not be moving the office.) then list those at the beginning of the session too. Hopefully that will allow you to get beyond the things that will drag the conversation down and focus on the future. If you keep tightly to the idea that this is visioning only, you will do better than if you spend time on the challenges. Instead, you could summarize the responses to your interviews and questionnaires in a report and give that out at the end of the session or after the retreat. Don't give it out in the session or everyone will start reading it even if you tell them not to. But that way you can assure them that the challenges were captured, and can be addressed at another time.

Another hazard is being unrealistic and listing everything and the kitchen sink. Use the rule of 3-5; there are very few usable lists, visions, missions, plans, or ideas with more than 5 components. The general human brain can handle remembering and applying 3 to 5 things at one time - if you end up with a vision in which there are more than 5 goals, it's pretty much guaranteed that some of them won't happen, simply because they will elude focus.

Also, avoid getting bogged down in wordsmithing. Aim for ideas, not language. If you find people starting to put together a vision statement and arguing about whether they deliver or supply the service, you are going down the rabbit hole. Keep the focus on the idea.

Decide what the outcome is. Is the outcome to have a vision statement? The foundation for a vision statement? A list of goals in each of __ program areas or for each department? Just a collection of input from everyone that will later be further massaged by leadership? An initial introspection opening the door to a long planning process? Once you know what you want to end the meeting with, it is much easier to back out the steps needed to get there.

Shake things up. Do a few different modes of presentation during the 3 hours so you don't just have a 3 hour sharing time. Ask people at different times to do things like:

-looking at this entire list of programs, jot down the 5 you believe are most effective OR considering that budget will be short, jot down 5 new ways we could generate revenue, no matter how crazy;
-split into pairs or 3s or department groups and make the lists of what you'd do if time or resources were unlimited
-take a significant statement or challenging statement - maybe one you make, like "why should this organization exist?" - or share an excerpt from an article or book that's pertinent, allow a little time to think, and go around the group and ask each person to respond, making it clear all responses are OK
-gather a bunch of important statements about what should be in the vision, like 10-20, and collaboratively rank them by giving everyone in the group 3 votes to spend in whatever way they want - they can pile all 3 on the single one they really care about, or choose three different ones that they think are all important. This is a great way to get real winner ideas to emerge without people feeling contentious or feeling that one vote is too powerful. You can winnow a list like that 2 or 3 times using the same strategy
-incorporate video, audio, or hands-on stuff if you can find things that apply

I hope you are getting paid a fair amount! This is really hard work and it commands high hourly fees for professional facilitators.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head without knowing more. hope some it's helpful. Good luck!
posted by Miko at 5:46 PM on January 7 [3 favorites]

What do they want to do with this information after they have it? Is this something that will inform eventually developing a new strategic plan? Uncovering disagreement or disjuncture among participants? Creating motivation for members through connection of their work to a larger picture? Diagnosis of disconnect with public? Other?

How big is this group when you say "big staff"? Is this more than 8? More than 18? More than 80?

When I do these types of sessions for corporations and not-for-profits, they take a lot of prep time. Especially with a three hour window, you have to do a lot of data gathering ahead of time so you aren't getting up to speed on the organization and issues during the three hours. If you are working with a group that is larger than 8 people, you'll want to use methods that have folks working in smaller groups and then pooling their work into the larger group. Depending upon what is driving the request, you might want to mix up the composition of the groups. There is so much here that depends upon what you sense the real purpose of the request is, what the power dynamics of the group are, etc.

How much do you already know about the organization, its mission and purpose, its challenges, etc.?

Do you already have a number of visioning models that you are familiar with and that you can work from depending upon what develops in the group?

I'm with Miko on this one. I hope you are getting paid a fair amount of money for this! Very rarely have I done pro-bono work on this issue because there is so much prep involved (especially with a 3 hour turnaround), and it isn't unusual to be paid $1200-2500 a day for this type of work (depending on the size of the group, the complexity of the task, etc.) It's part business consulting, part organizational psychology, part improv and part instructional design.

Part of your work here will be setting expectations as to what can be accomplished in three hours. If you have more information about what they want to do with the outcome of that 3 hours, start there. Or post it here and I'll try to offer some more specific ideas.
posted by jeanmari at 6:41 PM on January 7

I started brainstorming an answer, but more seriously, my answer is that you guys should consider hiring a professional for this. Through your board connections, you might even have someone who would volunteer.
posted by salvia at 7:55 AM on January 8

You'll need to be able to instantly take the temperature of the room and decide whether you are on the right track when you propose something (our recently facilitator was notsogood at this), especially given the short period of time you have. Do you work with a bunch of people who would feel good meditating and essentially singing kum-ba-ya for three hours? Or do you work with no-nonsense business folk who have serious questions about the vision of the organization that they NEED answered?

Our facilitator wanted us to meditate. We're a bunch of no-nonsense folks. We had to stop her and explain that we had two very pressing issues that needed to be discussed immediately: our geographic scope and our policy scope. If we weren't in agreement about those two things, then nothing else we did would be helpful. Perhaps you can identify a few different visions of the org. as options for the future and ask people to claim one they find compelling and do some small group work before discussing each of the options with the larger group and getting feedback on that.
posted by greekphilosophy at 12:57 PM on January 8

I work for a non-profit, and have been involved in a variety of these exercises. My first piece of advice would be to second salvia - hire a professional, or get a volunteer with experience from outside your organization. You need to participate in this, as someone who is invested in and passionate about the organization you work for (I'm making this assumption - I know very few people involved in non-profits who aren't passionate about the work they do).

So the problem with you leading the visioning exercise is that you will also want to participate because of your passion - which can lead to you leading the discussion, not facilitating it. There is a subtle difference there that I hope you can see. Because these discussions are so big and so important, everyone's voice needs to be heard - and that includes yours as an employee - so it is best to try to do this with someone else from the outside taking the lead.

However, if you absolutely have to lead this - time constraints/budget constraints, etc, then do the pre-work as suggested above. Include yourself when answering those questions, but during the discussion and time set aside during the board retreat, be the facilitator - make sure everyone is heard, make sure no ideas get run down, make sure everything is recorded. And also know that three hours is likely to be the start of the discussion, not the end.
posted by never used baby shoes at 10:55 AM on January 9