Action Plan Review
Demonstrating the Value of a Professional Facilitator
By Michael Wilkinson, CMF
Managing Director, Leadership Strategies, Inc.
“I don’t understand it. If all we are doing is reviewing the action plans created by the teams, why do we need a facilitator? Each team leader is going to present his or her action plan, the rest of us will comment, and then move on to the next action plan. Why do we need a facilitator for this?”
As professional facilitators, we all have to be able to demonstrate the value that a professional facilitator brings, especially in tough economic times like we are experiencing. With this particular client, we had helped them through strategic planning. They had identified their mission, vision, goals, objectives, strategies and priorities. And for each of the priority strategies, they had assigned team leaders who were responsible for working with their team to develop a comprehensive action plan for implementing the strategy.
The twelve team leaders had completed their work and each action plan included the following.
1. The purpose of the strategy
2. The expected deliverables
3. The owner of the strategy
4. The overall due date, total out of pocket costs, and anticipated people time
5. The specific action steps (typically 5-12), with details for each action step including the person responsible, the due date, related costs, and people resource requirements.
The purpose of the meeting was to review the 12 action plans and gain consensus on moving forward with them.
“Why do we need a facilitator for this?”
It sounds pretty basic doesn’t it? Have each leader get up and share his/her plan, and then have the other people in the room ask questions and give feedback.
But as professional facilitators, we know that facilitators have two primary roles. First we must be able to design processes that are tailored to achieve specific purposes. Second, we must be able to facilitate the process appropriately, while managing group dynamics, to achieve the desired end. Both roles are vitally important, though most people think of facilitation as only the second role.
For this client, their purposes were several.
- Ensure that each action plan would likely achieve its stated outcomes.
- Ensure that each action plan was worth actually doing.
- Ensure that each action plan could clearly be monitored.
Accordingly, we designed a process that was intended to drive those outcomes. The process we used follows.
1. Getting Started
- Review session purpose, session deliverable, agenda, ground rules
2. Comments on the Action Plans
Following opening remarks, the participants worked in teams to identify the things they liked and the concerns they had based on their reading of the action plans prior to the session.
3. Key Questions
Based on the concerns and using comments from the facilitator as a starting point, the team adopted the following as the key questions for focus during the review of each action plan.
- Does the action plan accomplish the strategy?
- Is anything missing (e.g., investment info)?
- Is it realistic?
- Does the action plan go far enough? Does it go too far?
- Are the results of the action plan worth the investment?
- Are future costs included and accounted for?
- Do we have adequate existing resources?
- Is the action plan monitorable?
- Is there clear ownership of the actions and who is responsible?
- Is the action plan not only monitorable, but meaningfully monitorable?
4. Review of Action Plans
Up to 30 minutes was allocated for the teams to review each action plan, as follows.
- Strategy leader presentation (up to 10 minutes)
- General questions from other planning team members about the plan (up to 10 minutes).
- Answer the key questions for the strategy
- We used sub-teams – each responsible for answer one of the four questions
- We rotated the responsibility for each question occasionally (up to 8 minutes)
- Identify recommended actions and decision to adopt/not adopt the action plan as amended by any recommended actions from the planning team. (2 minutes)
Note how the process was designed to get everyone involved in creating and then focusing on the most important questions for making the decision. With this as the planned process, the facilitation of the agenda was executed without a hitch!
Interested in learning more facilitation techniques? Check out our course, The Effective Facilitator.
Michael Wilkinson is the Managing Director of Leadership Strategies – The Facilitation Company, and a much sought after trainer, facilitator and speaker. He is a Certified Master Facilitator and a Certified Professional Facilitator. As a past president of the Southeast Association of Facilitators and a board member of the National Institute of Facilitation, Michael is a national leader in the facilitation industry. You can get more tips from either of Michael’s books, The Secrets of Facilitation or The Secrets to Masterful Meetings. You can receive a signed copy through our website.
