I have been thinking lately about what it takes to make decisions. Just recently I was presented with a situation where some major decisions will need to be made.

Ones that impact changes in business and careers focus and could mean going into a whole new direction. So you have to make the best decision with the information at hand for your organization. From that perspective I think there are eight things you must do to make better decisions.

1. Invest In Decision Making Skills.

This is something that holds true today as it did ten years ago or more. I see this as a foundational skill that people need to learn, practice and apply. There are many approaches or methodologies that can be applied in the decision making process whether you are a traditional organization, project based, a committee environment or driven by the board of directors. Often the fundamentals of decision making are missing. Look at the environment and create an appropriate decision making structure.

2. Create Time To Think Ahead.

Time, time and more time is something we don’t have. It has become a luxury that most people can’t afford. Yet making good decisions requires time to reflect and look at the road ahead. What if you are considering changing careers and decide to go in a whole new direction? This is a big decision. This applies to a business venture also. Change and transformation are difficult to do on a whim, often you are required to think and plan ahead. But don’t over think long term plans as things change around you quickly.

3. Know Who You Serve.

This is an important point to answer. I know a lot of business leaders and professionals who I am completely confident in their ability to get the job done, to move forward and make things happen. But, they lack an important insight and clarity of who they serve. Decision making is a whole lot easier if you know who you serve whether it is a specific target market, an organization or something else. I think it provides opportunities to make mindful decisions and improve innovation and creativity in solving problems due to clarity and focus. It does not matter if you upset the market because you know who you serve.

Related Article: Values and Guiding Principles – The Foundation to Business Decision Making

4. Question Everything, Especially The Business.

I often get asked how I would approach a specific problem. I am in a meeting and someone sets up a scenario and wants to know my approach. Any good business analyst, trainer or consultant will know the basics; define the problem, evaluation solutions, implement the approved solution, and measure the results. Part of the process is to question the business model. Recently I had this happen in a meeting with an executive director. I was presented with a question and responded but within that response I placed questions to better understand the business model of this organization.

Turns out they are looking for a change and the business model is suspect. It is always good to question, even when answering.

5. We Can All Think In A Straight Line.

Straight line or linear thinking is the a, b, c, of decision making. With so many organizations talking about innovation, creativity and being intentional I wonder what’s the point. There are many theories about what approach you should take. I still think the best approach to decision making and initiative integration is a mix between predictive and adaptive planning. These two approaches provide the best of both worlds, and when blended, often provide an organization an approach that works beyond the mere linear.

Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision. Peter F. Drucker Share on X

6. Create A Story Around Decisions.

Life is a story and you write it yourself. With every decision there is a story that comes from people discussions, thinking, making assumptions, determining impact and communicating the decision. Wouldn’t it be great if you could create a decision narrative that is beyond the old boring business report? People want to be part of the decision story that makes a difference thus bridging organization gaps. You should create decision making stories.

7. We Are All Moving At The Speed Of A Click.

Over decades my career has been part of the professional consulting and service economy which has accelerated at lightning speed in recent years. When I look at the professions’ value stream I think we need to make better decisions around the downstream business environment. Clients no longer just order or buy stuff they engage now in a very different way where it becomes difficult to determine the ROI on business activities. Margins wither as the need to provide valuable free content increases making business decisions a challenge to make. No matter the business you are in, the accelerated service economy is impacting your business.

8. Find A Tool, Reduce Your Risk And Get Costs Under Control.

The strategic business analyst looks at the past, present and future of a strategic plan and approach and use financial analysis of NPV, IRR and ROI within your business case. But it is important to go further and look at risk with uncertainty analysis. This is something that I learned over time from various economic adjustments (ie: dot com bubble burst, corporate and accounting scandals, subprime mortgages issue, and resource industry collapse) I think uncertainty needs to be determined better. Business intelligence and uncertainty reducing tools can be used to assist in this analysis. My point, the business analyst can play an important part in helping organizations make decisions through embracing uncertainty analysis approaches and tools to help deal effectively with unpredictable times.

Related Article: 3 Key Levels of Risk Planning and Analysis for the Business Enterprise

Final Thoughts

Big decisions are tough to make, especially when you have invested so much time and effort on your business or focus area. When you work in a space where you are building skills and helping businesses define their future, you start to realize that there are certain truths that exist. One truth, everybody wants to survive and be around a long time. The second truth, that there is always a purpose that needs to be achieved. Third truth, good decisions and core competencies take you a long way to creating a profitable future thus achieving the first two truths.

Remember to do your best, invest in the success of others, and make your journey count. Richard

During a QA session, after a keynote, I was asked by a participant at a PM/BA World Event hosted by Diversified Communications and the local IIBA Chapter what I felt were the some key areas to study as a professional building their career.

I paused for a moment and said facilitation, documentation, integration and presentation is a good place as any to start. As I reflected on my comment I wondered why those four items came top of mind during a keynote presentation question and answer period. I realized that for years I have been preaching the importance of these skills and capabilities in my three day Facilitation, Gathering and Documenting Requirements workshop where communications is the key to success.

Related Article: Four Requirements Types That
Make a Difference in Creating Solutions

But, what is communications. Well it is more than the words you use. Good and/or effective communications combines a skill set that includes verbal and non-verbal capabilities and as a professional, it is imperative that you become a communication master. Part of your development is to build your facilitation, documentation, integration and presentation abilities.

Facilitation: To be a facilitator you have to master people and group dynamics on a variety of levels. Often this means attending training, getting coaching and mentoring and practicing a variety of skill sets all aimed at developing your verbal and non-verbal communication skills. There are skill sets that include your ability to:

• profile people and adjust your behaviors to their needs not yours,
• actively listen where you focus fully on the speaker from their body language, tone of voice and non-verbal cues,
• be an improvisational expert and adjust when needed and as required (sometimes entertain),
• run meetings from the one on one interviews, small group discussions to the larger workshops,
• know where it is you are starting (problem) and where you need to go (the outcome) and set the course and tone to get there and lots more.

Related Article: Eight Tips for Facilitating Your
Next Planning Session or Requirements Meeting

Documentation: This is one of the areas I think is often misunderstood. By definition, documentation is material that provides official evidence and serves as a record. Generally this is not the fun stuff for a lot of people. Documentation is part of communications. From the written text to the depicted requirements using diagrams, it tells a story and brings the audience on a journey from problem to solution.

Documentation that relates to facilitation on a number of levels as it is that skill set that requires you to know how to develop surveys and questionnaires, to create interview questions like a journalists, and to capture that information as factual, authentic as possible to communicate to your respective stakeholders, your audience.

Whether you are writing a proposal, a charter, building a requirements plan, creating a summary of findings, doing a financial analysis or writing a full business case. Documentation is a communication’s vehicle as it about your ability to write and communicate with words on paper, a computer screen or some other medium.

Integration: Bringing it all together is what it is all about and this is called integration. I think this is the hardest part of any professiona’ls work as it is a lot of work. Often called the heavy lifting, you could spend twenty hours communicating with people to capture information and another sixty hours or more putting it all together.

The single biggest problem with communications is the illusion that it has taken place. George Bernard Shaw Share on X

Information integration similar to documentation requires you to know your audience and the key deliverables. You could be writing a summary of findings with no analysis for your peers or maybe the executive team. Maybe you are developing a presentation deck for the executive and you have to determine what information must be made available. You could also be required to create a requirements attribute table or a program roadmap where you need to determine the sequence and wording of requirements for the strategic, tactical or operational. There is also the possibility that you have to integrate the material as business, stakeholder, solution and transformational requirements. The list of possibilities is endless. So studying and building your information integration skills for communications is extremely important. It is not just about you.

Presentations: In today’s world I just can’t see how you can survive as a professional without developing your presentation skills. This skill is about your ability to effectively deliver engaging presentations to a variety of audiences. You need to learn how to structure presentations, design slides, set the tone of the presentation with your voice and body language. It all counts.

Resource Item: 7 Common Challenges Faced By You, The Facilitator

To develop this skill consider taking training on thinking on your feet, acting and improvisation, joining a club that teaches you and helps you practice presentation skills, learn the difference between being a speaker, trainer and facilitator. There are differences in the skill set that you apply given the audience.

As a professional developing your confidence in front of an audience is important, learn not to lecture but to engage, develop your ability to profile your audience, find ways to keep things short and simple with repetitive markers, and anticipate questions.

Final Thought

One of my favorite programs to speak and train on is Gathering and Documenting Requirements because it applies a practical and realistic skill set in communications, facilitation, documentation, integration and presentation that the professional needs to develop for their career success. This skill set can and will be applied throughout your career and life, whether you are working with your peers and other stakeholders solving a problem, researching a vacation, buying a house or hanging out with your friends engaging in conversation around living everyday and succeeding in all that you do or want to do. Yes, I guess you can say these are four skills will make you a communication expect if developed well.

Do your best, invest in the success of others and make your journey count, Richard.

Wishing you the best this week as we approach the Holiday Season. It may be or not be your cup-of-tea but there should be some music somewhere that you can tune into that lets you live your life with a lot of success.

Here are 5 Walk Off The Earth YouTube Christmas Holiday Season Songs to Enjoy.

http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/fraggle-rock/images/17471654/title/fraggle-rock-screencap

Do you remember that childhood show called Fraggle Rock (a Jim Henson Production)?

It was a world made up of Fraggles and Doozers. Fraggles were creatures that stood 18 inches tall, lived in a network of caves and spent much of their time exploring their worlds, and generally enjoying life while maintaining a complex social culture. Doozers were small 4 inch tall humans whose lives were dedicated to work and industry. They even had their own song (YouTube: https://youtu.be/H7AthbqkW68). There architecture and construction projects were a consumable candy that were meant to be enjoyed by the Fraggles. Interestingly there is a book called the ‘Legend of the Doozer’ where it is explained that if Doozers stop doing they will turn into Fraggles. In the end it turns out to be story parents tell their kids to teach them the value of hard work.

Decades later I see Fraggle Rock as a commentary on our working and living world where they may be Fraggles, Doozers or a few other creatures. Here are six business and life Lessons I learned from Fraggle Rock.

It’s a global community: Yap, the show was developed to appeal to a global market using an international co-production approach. It was recorded in Canada and broadcast to 90 countries and in 13 languages. Today we can do international shared work at a click of a button with virtual teams at our fingertips. Just use Google Tools, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Fiverr, UpWorks and Dropbox in your business as a Doozer and you will know what I mean. Everything is a global event easily shared and consumed.

Related Article: 3 Common Challenges Business
Leaders and Their Team Experience

The human segment changed: The actor and character of Doc, the inventor, and Sprocket, his dog, were changed to connect with different cultures and audiences.  An interesting commentary on understanding the customers you serve and then making a change to address their needs. Interestingly, Mr. Hensen had it right back then, know who you serve and change up the characters.

We are dependent on each other: The show was created with ecology in mind. You see, the characters were all dependent on one another. A weird fact, they often didn’t know it. This is similar to business teams in an organization. There was another underlining theme, stop war, don’t be political and be advocates of people getting along. People conflict has the ability to kill internally and externally. It can destroy a person, a team and more. Yet as people we are dependent on one another for our over arching success. As a leader your job is to build dependent team ecology.

Know who you are speaking too: In an article I read some time ago it was suggested that the show was for ‘Mid-Kids’. This meant the show attracted people of all ages who watched Sesame Street yet read grown-ups magazines enjoying fiction, fantasy, music and storytelling. This is one of those areas about knowing your target market, the segments and sub-segments and providing what they need. But here’s the thing, the real market for the show was the Creative Types. For some reason these people totally immersed themselves and related on a level to the show that only they might understand. Again, the lesson learned, knowing who you serve and your true target market.

Book: S.E.T. for Success, a roadmap to transform
your business by Richard Lannon

It’s OK to explore and have fun: I think this is one of the most valuable lessons from the show and the characters. Where the Fraggles and the Doozers both had different roles and responsibilities it’s important to blend the two characters for the working world. Going out and exploring your world is a whole lot of fun. Working on something and doing to accomplish something is satisfying in a way that only a Doozer might understand. Still maybe we are all just a blend of being a Fraggle and a Doozer. Oh, yes, let’s not forget Doc, the inventor and his trusty sidekick, Sprocket.

It’s all about being who you are: Accepting oneself for being who you are can be a tough thing. Lots of people are challenged in this capacity, losing themselves in the expectations of others or trying to be something they are not. This happens in the workplace and in our personal lives all the time. For example, taking on a job that is not naturally part of who you are or not living the belief of someone else and being constantly reminded of what they see as your short coming. Being your natural self in a world that has so many judges has its challenges.

Related Article: Using Assessments And Profiling
To Understand Yourself And Others

I have always admired people who go into the world; accept who they are and who become who they are meant to be. I think this is one of those things that we all wish; to live our lives daily as our natural self. Staying within our wheelhouse and maybe bringing a little Fraggle Rock with us where ever we go. My point, find your natural self and stick with it. You will be much happier.

Final Thoughts: Thinking a little bit about this blog and Fraggle Rock, I started to think about my working and personal life. I officially started working when I was 15 years old. This year I turn 55. That’s 40 years, but my career only really started 30 years ago. I think there have been times in my life where I’ve been a Fraggle and other times a Doozer.

Life is like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending. Jim Henson. Share on X

Life is full of time working; wanting to enjoy, have fun and pursue personal interests. As always, you get brought back to reality with having to ‘do’ to pay the bills, support a family or to build something, anything that matters. For me, some projects I enjoyed and others, in retrospect, I didn’t. As for relationships, I think there are times I lived my life as me and other times I lived my life the way other people thought I should live or I thought they thought I should live (if that makes sense). As an life experienced person, standing in the middle of my road with my past behind me, I can say I am more inclined to live my life as me and not the way someone or somebody says I should, whether in play or in work. I like to think that this is just part of the life learning and loving the journey. Having the freedom, autonomy, independence and relationships to pursue the fun of a Fraggle and the building of a Doozer is a great gift.

Faggle Rock teaches us so much about the interrelationships and dependencies of our lives with other people. From the culture we work in, who we serve, the way we live our life, what we create, to the difference we make. I can’t help but think there is a little bit of a Fraggle and Doozer in everybody. Maybe it is time to let them both out. Enjoy.

Do your best, Invest in the Success of others, Make your journey count, Richard

We all make meeting facilitation mistakes. I know I have made a few. Sometimes you can recover and other times you cannot.

I know that when I make a mistake in a facilitation session, I feel really bad for days. It impacts me personally. There are several reasons why; first, I pride myself on helping organizations discuss issues and come up with solutions; second, I believe my job is to make my sponsor and the people around me look good; third, I prepare like crazy and like to have everything vetted and completed at least a week in advance.

Related Article:  Master These 7 Skills to Become an Excellent Interviewer

But sometimes things happen and you just don’t deliver. I hate it when this happens.

I have been thinking lately about the mistakes we make that derail a facilitation session. Here’s what I came up with.

Advanced Preparation

Sometimes I think I spend way too much time preparing for a session. Over the years I have learned that anything that takes you out of your schedule for a day (8 hours) usually takes 40 to 60 hours to prepare. That is why it is so important to have good preparation time and be prepared at least a week before the session starts. Usually, when doing advance preparation, I like to survey a cross-section of the attendees, interview several attendees, get clear on the agenda prior to preparing anything and then only prepare what really needs to be delivered.

Ensure You Have The Right Topics

This goes back to advance preparation. When I reflect back on my best sessions, it was a team effort. Usually at least 2 client representatives, and maybe another subject matter expert, who are fully engaged in the process to ensure we have the right business problem to solve and approach the topic and issues appropriately.

One thing I have learned from experience, if my gut doesn’t feel right about something, then we are going in the wrong direction. When that happens, speak up and have the tough conversation with your preparation team.

Thinking Any Discussion Is A Good Idea

Having a discussion for discussion sake does not make any sense. Facilitation is about getting people to participate in the information gathering process, and training is about imparting information to people. These are related but different.

Recently I ran into a situation where I was using the insight of someone else to prepare for a session and ended up in doing a bit of a training session, not a facilitation session. My point for this group was they needed to have a format planning structure in place that focused their organization. But that is not what they needed. Fortunately, between the break I switched gears and in the second half I turned things around. But I was only able to do that because I had prepared backup materials.

It was good to have the first discussion but great that we had the second discussion.

Know The People In The Room And At The Session

I pride myself on knowing the participants before going into a session, especially when there are multiple stakeholder groups present. This is about people and group dynamics. Again this is a preparation thing. But given the opportunity, I meet as many of the participants as possible who have thoughts on what we are seeking to achieve. My preference is to profile the stakeholders ahead of time to get an idea of their working-selves, to make connections and relationships in advance so I have people to call on to help me out and to get a big picture on how the group interacts. I find that when I miss getting a good group profile I am not as sharp and I have to work harder and earn the trust of the people in the room. This is also true if I am out-of-practice.

Related Article: 6 Things to Consider when Connecting with People at
Meetings, Workshops, Presentations and Group Activities

Connecting With People At The Beginning Of The Session

Related to the last point but a bit different. I know name tags, introductions, and an icebreaker game goes a long way to connect with people. Other times it is about grabbing them and engaging them early on, so there is a connection between you and the group you are working with. That’s why I show up early, meet and greet people, chat about common interests and do my best to find out something about the team. Sometimes I am surprised by how energized people are, sometimes how disconnected they are and other times how civil people are.

Recently I had a program to facilitate and was seeking an opener that would allow me to connect with the participants. I sent my sponsor some ideas, but the suggestions got killed. When I asked my sponsor a recommended opener, they did not provide the best advice. So I made the mistake of just diving in when I should have stepped back and simply asked an unusual question and got everyone to give an unusual answer. Now would this have worked for this group, maybe or maybe not?

My point, always start by connecting with people.

Making Sure You Have A Feedback Loop

As hard as this might be, I believe it is of paramount importance. Having a debrief session or discussion is the only way you can make improvements or correct any errors you have made or that took place during the session. It is great to do debriefing sessions when everything is wonderful, but when you have missed the mark, that is when debriefing is hard.

I believe in structure and engagement. So you need to request feedback about a meeting as a whole and about the facilitation specifically. Hopefully, if things did not go well, it was not completely on your shoulders. But I don’t think that is a reality.

As difficult as it is, one thing I have learned, when things don’t go totally to plan there are usually other factors at play that maybe were misunderstood, not communicated, or misguided.

For example, I once did a half-day session with 40 people. The objective was to discuss ways to improve the organization. No one told me that just before we started, the CEO announced that they were cutting 1/3 of all positions. No one in the session said anything; I didn’t know and I left feeling like I failed. It was only three days later that I found out what had happened. From the ‘get-go’ I was the scapegoat. I found out during a feedback session.

It is a misuse of our power to take responsibility for solving problems that belong to others. Stewardship, Peter Block Share on X

Invest In Yourself As A Facilitator

Facilitation is part science and part art. You need to train and practice. I know for me, when things go wrong I go back to my training and see what I could do differently. When things go right, I go back to my training to see what I could do differently. Good facilitators make it look easy. Investing in yourself as a facilitator can really make a difference, even if you are training, coaching and mentoring others. So find a place to work on your facilitation skills and practice.

Final Thoughts

I am sure I could cover a lot more items for this topic. But I guess this is my confession; after a long career with a ton of experience, there are times I make mistakes.

There are many things that can go right or go wrong when it comes to facilitation. The sessions that worked well often meant that we had the preparation time, sponsor and stakeholder engagement, good direction and clarity on goals, objectives, and outcomes way before the session work began. But that does not mean that every session goes as planned. I have been in many sessions where we got derailed because suddenly the CEO didn’t get it, but the management team did, the Enterprise VP provided poorly defined business problem and driver statements, or the program manager requested a training approach, approved materials only to discover that all these people really needed was a conversation, someone to listen to them, ask questions and create a list of possible solutions and outcomes.

Here’s the thing, success rests on the facilitator’s shoulders no matter what happens. Like Paul Simon said in the song Something So Right, “When something goes wrong, I’m the first to admit it, I’m the first to admit it, but the last one to know.”

I think facilitation is like those words. As a facilitator, it is great when everything goes right, but it’s tough when things go wrong. But you need to be the first to admit it, even if you are the last one to know.

Do your best, Invest in the success of others, Make your journey count. Richard

Recently, I presented one of my most popular keynotes, People and Group Dynamics – the Characters in the Room Part A, to a large group of Business Analysts and Project Managers. The room was packed. I was pumped, excited and into working with the crowd.

I was there early and opened the presentation with high energy pre-session interaction, getting the group to do voice testing, shaking hands, giving everyone a bookmark and getting pre-session thoughts from some people before we even started. I did this to set the tone of the presentation, to make a connection with people, and to get participants thoughts, ideas and to set some expectations. When I don’t do some form of pre-session opener or exercise sometimes the group just doesn’t gel and the presentation does not go the way I planned. This can especially happen in some formal presentations with more senior audiences. It is not a good thing when you don’t connect immediately with your audience and deliver substance fast.

Here are six insights to help you connect with people in meetings, workshops and group interactions.

Anchored in Audience Direction: I have noticed having a great sponsor with keen insight, who can provide you excellent information, is key to killing-it when it comes to audience understanding, preparation, and being your best. So your best to find out everything you can prior to preparing your presentation.

Your Preferred Audience is Key: This is one of those areas that can hunt you if you don’t have it right. There are some audiences that when I show up I am in among my people. The audience fits like a glove. There are other audiences where that might not be the case. When I use the word audience here I don’t just mean audience from a stage. I mean your peeps, the groups you hang with and the ones you get and they get you. I have two audiences, primary and secondary. I often find one thinks they know it all and the other is hungry to know more. My point, think about who you are serving.

Poorly Structured: I see this often in meetings and other types of presentations. When I attend conferences I make a point of just stepping into other presenters presentations for just a short while. I like to see if I can gleam a point from them and then quote them in my presentation. Unfortunately what I often see is the over use of slides, too many words on the screen, forced completion, or engaging people with the wrong questions. Follow a formula; openly engage, state the problem, use a story or example, ask and/or offer solutions, summarize and move on, repeat, overall summary, close.

Go off Topic: I love to improvise during presentations, especially if I get the audience engaged early and I have a solid structure. But improving does not mean going off topic. You can quickly think on your feet, improvise and stay on topic. Sometimes you get derailed by one person taking over or people engaging in their own conversations. The key is to move in quickly, engage these people back to target topic and move on.

Ripple Effects: This is one thing that always concerns me. You see ripple effects are the things that can cost you positively or negatively in relationship and reputation.  If you host a great meeting, workshop or facilitated session then the word gets out there a little bit. But if you run a one bad program you can be exiled. For employees it shows up on your performance reviews and for independents, the sponsor won’t return your calls, whether they are a CEO, a HR Manager or a Meeting Planner. The relationship component is all about meeting people’s expectations. Negatives include feeling cheated, frustrated, and angry or any other combination. Reputation costs bigger because all it takes is one person to roll their eyes and the next people states that it was a bad session. The gossip mill will get you. That is why you need great direction a head of time, excellent insight and feedback, rounded feedback and a formal debrief.

Related Article: 9 Known Group Characteristics Present
during Facilitated Planning Sessions and Meetings

Where I Like to Start: When working with a group, whether it being a meeting, a workshop or facilitated event I like to start with two short questionnaires. One questionnaire is for the meeting planner and the other is for the audience. The audience or meeting participant’s questionnaire has five simple questions. What is the definition of (the topic in one word), who are you/we as a team, what are the rules of engagement, why are we meeting, and what do you hope to achieve.

These questions I find are some of the most important questions I have asked teams when they are coming together to discuss something. The first question the participants demonstrate their understanding of the topic, the next two questions provide insights and set self governing rules for the participants that they own, the final two questions tells me if people are aligned, understood the purpose, received appropriate communications and outcomes required. For some meetings and facilitated sessions if this step is skipped then alignment and proper communications may not be achieved. That creates a negative ripple effect. Unfortunately, sometimes you are asked to do something without the right amount of time to do this level of preparation.

Honestly, if everyone likes what you say something is wrong with your message. Ashley Ormon Share on X

Final Thoughts

In this blog I wanted to provide some insight into things to consider when hosting a meeting, workshop, discussion of facilitated session. I know for me there have been times where I nail the presentation and session and other times I missed something. I do find that when I miss something it usually has something to do with poor communications or directions, inadequate pre-session participant feedback, inappropriate material selection and preparation, or even just being sick or off that day. It happens. Here’s the thing, if your meetings or sessions go well you are a hero but if goes wrong you can become an outcast. If anything that I can say on this topic, no matter what, focus on the right preparation process and always find a way to connect with your audience.

Do your best, invest in the success of others and make your journey count, Richard