Small Victories

Today I had one.

A meeting that I'd been asked to facilitate, that had an ambitious goal and involved a large number of people (nearly 20), had been scheduled to last three hours. The organizer of the meeting, and I, had decided that three hours was the best bet for length based on how much ground there was to cover, some of the personalities involved - not known for their brevity any more than I am, nor for staying on topic particularly well - and just the size of the group.

In planning for the meeting, he and I had also discussed what format to use. I find that we still suffer from a noticable lack of creativity when it comes to things like activities for Retrospectives at work, although that's not intended as a blanket criticsm as some people are better than others. But for this particular challenge I felt strongly that something new was required, and so I suggested to the organizer that we try an idea that popped into my head pretty spontaneously as we were talking. (Aside: This sort of harkens back to my thoughts on how I solve problems.) At first he thought what I was suggesting was a bit weird, but as talked about it, he became more enthusiastic and was completely on-side before too long.

At the start of the meeting, I told everyone I thought we could get through it in an hour or two - rather than three - if we all worked at keeping ourselves at the right level of detail and resisting the urge to dive into the details. I also explained the unusual format we were going to use for capturing the large volume of data that we hoped to draw out of them, and there was, I'd say, a mixed reaction, although no open revolt. Once we got going, though, the format seemed to work perfectly, and sure enough, we got through all of the material in just over an hour and a half, with (as far as I could tell) general agreement that we'd gotten just the right level of detail. I'd had to cut off a few side discussions and bring the group's focus back a few times - ruthless faciliation, as I call it! - but what really seemed to help speed things along was having the proper means to draw the data out of people and capture it quickly.

Things like this tend to restore my faith in being able to do my job, but of course, that feeling never lasts long!