Intelligent Business Facilitation

I have had an interesting, in the Chinese sense, couple of weeks. It occurred to me that many of the assignments I had worked on recently had a large degree of facilitation involved. This is one of my core skills and something that I enjoy doing, so it made sense to offer this as a service in its own right. Consequently, I have packaged it as Intelligent Business Facilitation. You can read all about it on my main site here. There is reasoning behind the naming too. Typically, a facilitator runs a meeting so that it keeps to the agenda brings out the shy ones and stops anyone with a soapbox dominating the session. A good facilitator will work with the sponsor before the project to establish a context for the session, understand the background and the objectives and then suggest an agenda that engages the audience and realises the objectives.

An Intelligent Business Facilitator employs an arsenal of analysis frameworks to capture and structure the output and ensure that the discussion moves towards a set of tangible and usable outputs. This can include SWOT, PEST, RPD, Porter 5 forces or any number of weighted decision or prioritisation frameworks. I’ve used this approach in a variety of situations including scenario planning for a failing PABX manufacturer, kicking off a change management program for local government, working with a set of district councils wanting to merge and a charitable trust wanting to engage its staff in prioritising their projects and activities for the coming year. It often beats the usual consulting approach of lots of interviews and a report as it ensures all stakeholders have a voice and that consensus and buy in is achieved. If you would like more information or you know of a situation that would benefit from this approach leave me a comment below or drop me via my Contact page.