Hiring an experienced facilitator can seem like an expensive business, so are they worth it?
We obviously think the answer to this question is a resounding YES, in particular with regard to strategic and creative thinking workshops. While hiring an experienced facilitator won’t guarantee you success in your workshop, NOT hiring one is almost certainly dooming the workshop to failure. Here are several reasons why: Buying Expertise Excellent facilitation is not only an art form, it is also a specialised skill set. The job of a facilitator is to guide a variety of different parties (with their attendant differing agendas, perspectives, personalities and ideas) towards an agreed objective. Not only does the facilitator need to be aware of, and manage, different group dynamics, which can often derail the best laid plans, they also need to ensure that each person is contributing to the best of their ability and feels valued enough to continue doing so. The facilitator is also charged with keeping energy high and the mood positive, thereby creating a safe and stimulating environment where discussion and ideas can flow. Further, the facilitator is responsible for keeping track of (and often recording) the multitude of ideas and discussions that emerge in a workshop, and ensuring that discussions continually head in the right direction, all while keeping a close eye on the clock. In short, facilitating is a skilled, multi-faceted job that requires the facilitator to wear a number of hats and keep quite a few balls in the air. Without the skills that come largely through experience, this can be a daunting task. Mitigating the Seniority Effect A key aspect of strategic and creative thinking workshops is challenging existing mind sets and assumptions and exploring new thinking and ideas. For a workshop to be at all useful, the facilitator needs to ensure all voices are heard equally and everyone’s contribution is considered. The facilitator’s job is to create a safe and non-judgemental environment, where everyone feels free to speak honestly and openly. Only in this way can ideas be properly explored and break-through thinking achieved (which is why you want the workshop in the first place!) One of the key threats to this process is the group dynamics that emerge from having different levels of seniority in the room. Quite often the facilitator needs to keep the more senior people from dominating the discussions with their own agendas. This is a very difficult ask of someone internal who may feel they could be jeopardising their career by telling their boss to behave. As external facilitators are not part of the internal politics of an organisation and their day-to-day happiness is not dependant on pleasing various people higher up the food chain, they are better able to mitigate the negative dynamics seniority can play within the workshop by using specific techniques and strategies not always available to a “team member”. Hiring Trust and Objectivity For a workshop to be successful, the participants have to trust both the facilitator and the process. The facilitator will often have to take participants out of their comfort zone, to help them look at issues from a different perspective. Participants have to feel that the facilitator has the best interests of the group at heart. They have to trust the facilitator is objective. This is impossible if the facilitator is part of the team. A team member automatically has a position regarding the problem at hand, however hard they work to be objective. In a sense, the facilitator holds the role of an impartial arbitrator in a workshop environment. This is a full time role, and as such, a team member cannot be both the facilitator and a participant and achieve a successful outcome. Even if a team member does opt to be the facilitator and somehow successfully maintains a level of objectivity, the group will then lose out on the valuable knowledge and insights that he or she would have been able to contribute to the discussion as a participant. Fresh Perspective Strategic and creative thinking workshops are almost always about bringing people together to try to solve a problem or to take advantage of an opportunity. To paraphrase Einstein, “You can’t solve the problem with the same thinking that created it.” To be addressed, problems need to be tackled from a different perspective. When you brief an external facilitator to run your workshop, you effectively bring in fresh eyes to the problem from the get-go. The external facilitator is not bound by your existing thinking. They will encourage you to question your assumptions and force you to look at things from a new perspective, thereby enhancing the probability of achieving break-through thinking and innovative ideas within the workshop itself. Time is Money Finally, while it might seem like an external facilitator is expensive, add up the cost of having all those the participants, often more senior personnel, in the workshop and you will soon realise that buying in the expertise to ensure your workshop has the best possible chance of success, is money well spent. Sharlene Zeederberg
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There has been a recent spate of terrible acts of “one punch” violence being reported in the media. It seems that every Saturday night brings with it another story of someone’s son on life support. It makes me wonder, what has changed with our youth of today, our millennials? Or has nothing changed at all?
The culture of macho is well entwined in the Australian psyche, going back as far as Ned Kelly or maybe before! West Side Story (and Romeo and Juliet before that) all show us that men being thugs in gangs is not new news. And surely Australians INVENTED the beer ad? There is no doubt that the rise of social media, mobile phone usage and 24/7 internet all mean that our need for around the clock information must be satisfied and the media have certainly risen to the occasion. This constant reporting of every event unsettles us as a population and definitely leaves the impression that a “baddie” is lurking around every corner. But is he? By most reports, violent crime (with perhaps the exception of kidnapping) is diminishing. But we don’t feel any safer. Is alcohol to blame? According to the ABS, alcohol consumption actually peaked in the 1970s (I have a sneaky suspicion it was linked to the rise of that 1970s favourite: cask wine…). Looking at recent trends in youth alcohol consumption, most sources seem to favour a decline rather than an increase. Perhaps what they are consuming just has a more dire effect (alcopop anyone?) And whilst we don’t see many “coward’s punchers” of the X chromosome, it is widely reported that females have also become more out of control, swilling back with the best of the boys. A theory is that back when ladies were more of the faint hearted variety, they used to hold their men back when it came to a fight. If someone has some evidence of that as a successful strategy to stop two blokes brawling, I would love to see it! So it must come back to the popular theory that those “baddie” fearing parents are to blame. Children are being kept at home more, neighbourhood play is being restricted, and children are even shielded from failing in competitive sports. Hence, many of this generation of young people haven’t experienced risk management or learnt their own limits, which is undermining their self worth leaving them hostile and angry. A&E departments do cite a decline in injuries sustained in the outdoors – but these have been compensated for by indoor injuries, particularly RSI and spinal injuries from too much gaming time. I find this cycle extremely sad –because parents have been trying to protect their children, it is actually leading to injuries of other children, 10 years on. In which case we can probably expect this phenomenon to persist, given that few local councils are going to reinstate the dodgy see-saw to promote manliness, particularly in our increased climate of legislation and blame. So how we do put our society to right and bring back the broken arms and legs that were a rite of passage in previous generations? Sasha Cordeiro It is unAustralian to believe that it is true, but the widening inequality gap in Australia is cited as the most likely risk to the global economy in 2014. And did you know that countries with more unequal income distribution are not only less socially cohesive, they are likely to have shorter spells of economic growth?
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/advance-australia-fair-maybe-not-20140126-31gpz.html#ixzz2sP5ovGgS How many “trends for 2014” emails have you received recently? It is that time of the year.
Just in case you missed out, the folks at Trendwatching.com have a great presentation on the seven trends to run with in 2014, complete with examples of brands already in on the action. Or if you prefer to see how communication technology might impact your consumers' lives in 2014, Ericsson’s Consumer Lab have released a rather thorough, data-backed report on their “10 top ten consumer trends for 2014”. If you would just prefer a press-release overview – you can check out Marketwired for the Euromonitor view of things as well as trends published in The Guardian and Forbes. But with so many trends about, how do you make sense of them for your brand? How do you work out which trends matter and tap into those ones in a way that is consistent with your brand positioning and needs of your target market? Key to doing this is remembering that while trends most certainly provide inspiration, insight comes from exploring the core drivers for your target market that your brand is tapping into. Trends, like all consumer (in fact, “human”) behaviour are driven by the desire to fulfil core emotional needs. Think status or security or the need for connection, for example. Understanding which of these drive your target market to choose your brand will unlock the insights you need to take advantage of the changing landscape in which you and your consumers find yourselves. Not sure what core needs are? Self-help guru, Tony Robbins, lists 6 core emotional needs that drive our behaviour and our choices. Certainty, variety, significance, connection, growth and contribution. What core drivers does your brand tap into? We’ve all heard the saying “innovate or die”. It is no doubt true that in a constantly changing world, theability to adapt to changing needs, competitor activities and market situations is absolutely key to both the short and long term survival of a business. In fact, according to a new book called Unrelenting Innovation, companies need to be ruthless about innovating, even to the point of cannibalising their own products if they want to stay ahead of the pack.
The importance of innovation is perhaps most apparent in technology related fields, where the rate of change is unprecedented and global. Apple and Google are good examples of the power and value of innovative cultures. Blackberry, Palm and Kodak may well be examples of what happens when you fail to adapt quickly. But, how important is this ruthless style of innovation to FMCG companies, where needs and behaviours from a consumption point of view are not changing anywhere near as fast? Don’t get me wrong, innovation is essential and aninnovative, ideas culture absolutely ideal. But is product innovation always the best way to achieve your short term marketing goals? Every year hundreds of new products are launched onto the market, at great cost and time. Very few of these can be considered successful enough to justify the expense. Especially when you consider the opportunity cost of resource taken away from making existing, successful products even more so. In fact, taking an innovative approach to marketing an already successful product may well have a more positive impact on profit than launching a new extension, range or brand. Coca-Cola Classic will remain an enduring example of innovating for innovations sake. The “share a Coke” campaign is an example of clever (and successful) marketing innovation to drive sales of an existing product. Of course, there is absolutely a need for vigilance and for innovation in the products offered to consumers by FMCG companies. But the starting point to this is not “we need innovation,” but rather “what threats are there and how can we address them?” Central to success in innovation (and business survival) is keeping a keen eye on changing consumer needs and evolving tends, and spending time regularly identifying threats to your business. In addition, dedicating time and staff to addressing these threats in the longer term is absolutely essential. I think Nescafe is perhaps a good example of this – they spent years looking at how they could compete with the growing trend towards “real coffee”, a threat they identified long before every second street corner held a Starbucks or similar. They had an entire innovation department working on it, for years. They identified the business threat and made it a priority of a dedicated someone, rather than just an add-on to some poor over-burdened instant coffee brand manager. Nespresso is the reward for that investment. So, next time you start a conversation with “we need some innovation”, it is perhaps worth considering what threats you are responding to and what your real objective is. One of my favourite brainstorming techniques is where participants spend time looking at their problems from the perspective of other people, and use that output as stimulus for ideas to solve their own problem. It is an effective problem solving technique because it takes you out of your existing patterns of thinking, which always lead to the same answers, and moves you down new thought pathways bringing fresh ideas into the open. It can also remove the subjectivity and frustration we feel when faced with a tricky, seemingly unsolvable problem, where often the phrase “hitting my head against a brick wall” may well apply. As a technique, it allows you to leave all your preconceptions about how the solution has to look at the door, so to speak, and frees you up to explore alternatives that you may usually dismiss because they don’t fit the solution you think you are looking for. It is a simple and effective way to relook at stubborn problems and get a new perspective on them and you don’t need a room full of creative types and a specially designated workshop day to do it. Although idea generation always works best with two brains over one, it is good habit to get into, when looking at your problems, even on your own. When you are stuck for an answer, spend some time asking “how would… solve this problem?” and see what comes up. Make sure you choose a different perspective through which to view your problem, rather than one that is to close to your own. Make yourself a set of “perspective” cards and pull one randomly out to use – from Richard Branson to Madonna, from an alien to an 80 year old woman – the list of perspectives you can try on is endless. Once you’ve generated a page full of ideas on how that person would solve your problem in their world, use that as stimulus to come up with ideas on possible solutions for your business issue. You’ll be amazed at what you find. I (for obvious reasons) am a great believer in hiring professional facilitation services to run workshops and meetings. But that is not always possible. If you are running your workshop in-house, there are some key things to get right to make the time and energy invested by everyone worthwhile.
My top ten tips are: 1. Have a clear, written-down plan, but be prepared to be flexible 2. Set up a “task” that everyone can work towards (people love a challenge) 3. Create a “parking lot” where thoughts not completely relevant can be captured 4. Establish and enforce rules on how to be to get the most of the session 5. Gather everyone’s expectations from the session 6. Start with an energiser to break to ice, even when everyone knows each other. 7. Don’t be afraid to “be in charge”, even if there are more senior people in the room 8. Let the real boss speak last so as not to influence the other attendees 9. Break up the session with big and small group activities – keep the energy moving 10.End with an Action Plan For more detail on each of these, check out my website Absolute key to a successful ideation project is a clear understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. This might sound deeply obvious, but in fact it is incredibly common to set up ideation projects with the main purpose of “having ideas”. Ideas to expand brands, ideas to generate growth, ideas to beat the competition, ideas for communication. These are not problems. It is important, to get a really useful outcome, to drill down into why you want these ideas in the first place.
Having a real problem to solve provides the ideation session with a springy focus and give direction to the session. By defining the problem clearly you will find you are already part way down the road to solving it. Sometimes it is tempting to set up the ideation session around a desired outcome. ”How can we be number 1?” for instance. Again, spending the first part of the project drilling down to obtain a clear understanding of what the hurdles and problems are is key to finding ways in which to achieve the desired outcome. All in all, understanding the problem is the essential first step to idea generation. Once upon a time in a previous work life, I was tasked by the business to put together a creative development process. They wanted a one pager, complete with boxes and arrows, a linear, step by step guide marked out in days and weeks, to help them demand great advertising out of their creative agencies. It was a near impossible task.
The thing about ideas is that the process of finding them is not linear. Not in the slightest. It is iterative, quite often random and more often messy. However, when you read books on idea generation techniques, it can feel like a simple, straightforward process. In his book ThinkerToys (which I highly recommend), Michael Michalko talks through the principles of a technique called SCAMPER, using the example of McDonalds. These are great techniques, but at first read, it seems that for every problem McDonalds had, a quick and simple solution was found using the SCAMPER techniques. It might lull you into thinking that problem solving is simple, that idea generation is linear. It is not. It is easy to apply a retrospective view on the final winning idea, linking it back to how a technique (which may or may not have been used) would have got you there, but the process of getting to that winning idea would have required a lot more work, thinking and wild goose chases along the way. So what can you do to give you the best chance of having a great idea? Here are five key steps to keep in mind. 1) Understanding the problem This is an absolutely essential first step. This is not about the objective of your project (for example, we see an untapped market in providing a breakfast cereal to reach teenage girls), it is about the problem you want your ideas to solve (eg: teenage girls don’t eat cereal before school, they are operating on empty all day and then filling up on junk at lunch). Remember, idea generation is all about problem solving. The clearer you are about the problem you want this idea to solve, the better shot you have at ensuring the ideas you develop are on on target. What is the problem you are having as a business that requires solving, and more importantly, why does that problem exist in the first place? 2) Defining the problem Once you understand the problem, it is key to define it in such a way that it is both inspiring and directive. You don’t want to restrict your definition of the problem with too many solutions. You want to open it up, but at the same time, be very clear about the playing field you are operating in. You want your problem statement to inspire ideas right from the get go, but it also needs to set boundaries. Often, the first part of an idea generation process is an entire session just dedicated to defining the problem – it is that important to the outcome! So, “How do we get teenage girls to eat breakfast cereal” is one way to do it, but a better way might be “How do we get teenage girls to fuel up for the day ahead.” Note, we’ve taken the word cereal, with all its preconceived assumptions out of the question. We’ve also removed breakfast here. This is a quick example, but in a problem definition session, you could come up with all manner of statements that might suit the task better. Incidentally, the more mandatories you include in the definition, the less likely you are to come up with breakthrough ideas to solve the problem in the first place. It has to be a cereal, it has to look like this, it has to be available under this brand. Forget about those at this stage. You can apply them at the end, using creative technques to fit it all back together. 3) Get stimulated Ideas don’t happen in a vacuum. Get out there andimmerse yourself in your target market, look at what your competitors (and perhaps even better, non-competitors) are doing in the space, talk to experts in related fields, explore trends that impact on your target market. Even if you are just doing a one day workshop, ensuring you have stimulus related to the problem to springboard idea generation off is far more efficient than plain blue sky thinking. In his book The Art of Innovation, Tom Kelley has a chapter called “Innovation starts with an eye”. I often adapt this - because Ideas start with an Eye too, as does Insight. 4) Have lots of ideas The more ideas you have, the more likely you are to have a good one. Getting great ideas is a matter ofquantity (at this stage) over quality. It is like gold panning. You’ve got to sift through lots of sand, pebbles and rocks before you find ideas that might just shine. Use a range of creative techniques to generate lots of ideas, before you get into culling stage. 5) Build in time (or culture!) to develop and test ideas When you feel like you have an idea that has merit, it is time to move onto the next stage. The first round of idea generation merely gives us the thought starters. Building in time to really work through key ideas, to stretch them, build them and grow them into new thoughts and ideas that are stronger and more developed is where gems lie. When we find an idea in step 4 that we like, we have to then take the time to ask what could this look like? How could we apply this to our problem? Often the outputs of this are concepts, precepts or idea blue prints. Often workshops end here, but in fact, it takes a lot of time to really work through and develop good ideas. When you leave the workshop with your concept boards or idea blue prints, that really is the start of the process to come up with winning solutions to your problem. Giving team members space and time and a forum to think through the possible ways in which this idea can manifest itself as a solution to your problem is as important as having the idea generation in the first place. This is where iteration comes in. When new problems present themselves (because they do), they have to be solved (by going through the steps again). It takes time, and investment and commitment. Which is why companies that have an ideas culture (or at least a team dedicated to solving the problem on an ongoing basis) tend to win over those with a one page process they need to adhere to. In the aftermath of the Alan Jones debacle, there is a lot of chatter about the “threat” of social media. Or as Mr Jones himself put it, cyber-bulling. There are questions being asked about how social media should be “monitored” or “controlled”. There are warnings to businesses to set up social media steering committees and to be aware of the risks social media represents. Some bright spark even suggests insuring (seriously?) against social media risk.
Here is the problem – all of these descriptions and calls for action forget one, essential thing. Social media is not about “media”, it is about consumers finally having, and more importantly, exercising their power; power to influence others, power to change purchase behaviour and ultimately, therefore, power to impact brands where it hurts most – on the bottom line. Power, which for the longest time has sat almost entirely in the laps of brands and businesses. For all that it is called “media”, “media” it is not. Media is what businesses have traditionally bought to sell their message to consumers. Media is a controlled environment through which brands have communicated and connected with their target market and built their personalities and profiles (and if we are being cynical, their facades). Traditionally, media has been an entirely one way enterprise, with brands telling consumers how to feel, think and act. Social media, it seems to me anyway, is quite the opposite. Social media is about consumers telling brands what they think. And some brands (perhaps like the Alan Jones brand) are still finding that a little difficult to deal with. In fact, the very fact that we call this phenomenon “social media” may well contribute to the problem marketers have with getting their heads around how to engage with it. The upside of social media is that it can be about a two-way conversation, with both parties listening to each other. Brands can participate in the discussion, and get their view across. Social media can provide instant feedback to brands on what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong. Social media, in fact, presents the first real opportunity to establish a “relationship” between your consumers and your brand. This is something brands have been claiming to be doing for years, but it’s always been on their own terms. The difference is, this is an equal relationship, where both parties have power, and it requires businesses to seriously rethink how the marketing game works. And that is proving difficult for some to do. The easiest way to mitigate the risk of a social media backlash is to start listening to your consumers, deliver them good value products and customer service and start treating them with the respect that they deserve. Do that, and you might just find social media is your best friend. |