Problem-Solving Facilitation

I (James Lucas) just sat through a conference that was so excruciatingly boring it could be used either to produce medically induced comas or to get terrorists to talk.  It was advertised as a problem-solving, solutions-oriented, strategic thinking conference.  This is akin to calling the clown-stuffed car at the circus “thoughtful entertainment.”

The problems with this conference were legion: no new thoughts, no takeaways, no meaningful discussion.  They actually thought they could spend 3-4 hours doing “breakouts.”  Now, a breakout can be a good thing, if there has been content given to set it up, if there is a thoughtful exercise, if there is time to discuss the topic thoroughly, and if the report-out is well done.  That’s a lot of ifs, though, and these facilitators hit none of them (we have seen very few facilitated sessions that hit all four of these, but this one was special). 

The exercise, with no setup, was to have each person at a table fill in an “absurd” solution to a given problem on a 4-quadrant page.  Then these sheets were picked up and handed to people at another table, who were told to fill in a less absurd follow-up to the absurd “solution.”  Then back to the first table to fill in the 3rd quadrant with a more reasonable follow-up, and…well, you get the idea.  They gave people 1-2 minutes to do their fill-ins, which minimized actual thought, and allowed no time for discussion at the table, which minimized development of the idea (but maximized disinterest).  Report-outs were handled as a “pick one at your table to share.”  They were as lively as a day at the dentist.

What is this so-called “adult learning method” all about?  Well, like so many of these methods, it’s trying to be cute but it’s too clever by half.  It leaves people and their needs out of the equation, and is more concerned about busywork than about improving work.  It doesn’t matter how your facilitation and breakouts are structured if no one gets anything useful out of it.

At Luman, we have a simple yet sophisticated approach to facilitation.  We start with provocative content, designed to challenge status quo thinking and to get people to give up their illusions and face reality, all part of our Diamond of Excellence development model.  Then we break people into groups based on the content they’ve just heard and ask them to have a wide-ranging, dynamic, no-holds-barred but guided conversation.  We tell them that each group has to come up with at least 5-8 ways to use or implement the content.  And then we have a detailed report-out driven by a facilitator who can add even more to the discussion as it evolves.  Lots of depth, lots of takeaways, lots of interest.

Adults in organizations don’t need “adult learning” methods that simply get people to complete an exercise that has no value to the participants.  The conference I attended today made it even worse by being so incredibly boring, but “interesting yet useless” is still not worth very much.  The key is good adult-learning methodology tied to first-class content. 

If you want rich content followed by rich dialogue, leading to real ideas to improve your organization, Luman has what you need.  But if you want cute and worthless, contact us and we’ll give you the name of today’s conference facilitator.

Italicized terms are trademarked property of Luman International.  All rights reserved.

Good Enough…Isn’t

How often do we hear the comment, “It’s good enough” or some variation of it – that’s fine, that’ll do, that gets the job done?  I like to kid my Oklahoma friends about the motto, “Oklahoma, OK.”  OK?  We’re average?  Right in the middle?  Nothing special?

 The big problem with this isn’t the specific instance – often, what’s been done is enough and spending any more time or resources on it isn’t productive or valuable.  The big problem is the mindset it creates in actual human beings.  It sets the bar too low, and we’ll end up getting “good enough” even on work where it isn’t.  With people, we tend to get what we expect (or less).  If we expect average or okay, we’re going to get average or okay (and even that only if we’re lucky).

At Luman International, we created the concept of Pure-Performance.  We came to hate not only “it’s good enough” but “let’s work for high performance.”  “High” is too often subjective.  Higher than what?  Last year, last quarter?  Everyone facing bankruptcy?  Higher than whom?  Our peers?  The biggest people in our market?  Google?  Apple?  We can always find someone or something that we can be “higher” than.  It doesn’t mean the comparison is worthless, or even wrong.  It just means that we’re setting the bar too low, or maybe too fuzzy.  The output is not likely to be labelled “great.”

Pure-Performance says, “Good enough isn’t.”  It lines up with football legend Vince Lombardi’s guidance, “Aim for perfection, and you might end up with excellence.”  It urges us to throw out everything that isn’t producing results, adding value, or leading to improved performance.  If it isn’t leading to something useful and great, why on earth are we doing it?  We might not be able to weed out all of the useless activity, but we’re sure going to be a better organization if we try.

The vast majority of training and leadership development misses this mark almost entirely.  Even worse, it often forces everyone toward the “norm:”  “This is how leaders act/should act.  Go and do likewise.”  But in our 29 years of working with hundreds of organizations, we can say with absolute certainty that most leaders are leading something that is 20 or 30% performance and 70 or 80% nonsense.  They don’t even try to build the pillars of performance into their cultures, or to drive out the barriers to performance (even if they knew what they were).  Organizations that have managed to survive for decades – in part because their competitors are even more clueless – are wasting resources and exposing themselves at some point to organizational disaster.

Examples?  Recent ones are:

• Kodak – facing bankrupty from the digital onslaught, even though they invented it – more available in digital than just a short time ago, but not “high” enough to save them
• Barnes & Noble – coming to dominate the bookstore market just in time to watch it become burdensome, costly, and a distraction from the digital world and the introduction of their Nook (but at least they were operating “higher” than Borders!)
• Circuit City – trumpeted by Jim Collins as one of the 11 “Good to Great” companies right before they shuffled off this mortal coil
• Fannie Mae – dominating the mortage market right before they helped destroy the mortgage market and themselves (also a “Good to Great” company)

These were all once great companies, operating at a “higher” level than their competitors.  Higher didn’t save them.  They all had way too much waste, misdirection, and focus on the wrong things.  They not only didn’t get to Pure-Performance  – they didn’t even know what it was.

Pure-Performance.  There are keys to getting it, and things to avoid like the plague if we want it.  We encourage you to stop worrying about high performance.  Enter the world of pure-performance instead – different in kind, not just in degree.  There is leadership and market dominance in people who go through that door.

Italicized terms are trademarked property of Luman International.  All rights reserved.