Tips and Checklists

Tips to Enhance Group Productivity

Shared Vision Planning requires the successful interaction of people with different values and backgrounds. In recent years, processes have been developed and tested that can make this interaction much more efficient and effective, and they can actually help disparate groups becomes teams.

Workshops

There will be several workshops held in the course of even a simple Shared Vision Planning effort. There are many good books offering suggestions on how to run effective workshops. Here is a summary of some of that advice that is directly applicable to water management workshops:

Agendas should be established in advance of meetings and workshops. An agenda should list the time and place of the meeting, the goal and objectives of meeting, and then specific tasks designed to meet those objectives. The agenda should name the person responsible for completing each task and establish the start and stop time for each task.  If a group meets regularly, development of the agenda for the following meeting can be the last task of the current meeting. If not, draft agendas can be developed and then circulated by e-mail so that participants can add objectives or ask for revisions in time allotments.

Facilitators are useful in most meetings and should be used in all workshops.  Facilitators help groups meet the objectives they have set for themselves. The primary duties of a facilitator are to help the group design an effective agenda;  to point out when a discussion has gotten off the topic or run over the time allotted in the agenda;  to solicit input from quiet participants; to help clarify miscommunications between meeting participants; to negotiate agenda changes during the meeting;  and to run group processes like brainstorming. The group cedes some power about how the meeting will be run to a facilitator. For example, a facilitator may ask someone to stop speaking so that another point of view can be heard. To assure that this power is not abused, facilitators should not participate in the substance of the discussion.   

Facilitation requires more than good manners or commons sense - it requires training and good communication and interpersonal skills. Because of this (and because the facilitator should not participate in the discussions) it is usually better to hire a professional facilitator than to ask for volunteers from within the group. 

Breakout sessions. Research and experience show that it is very difficult for groups of more than a dozen or so people to work creatively on a group product. In an hour conversation among 12 people, there will be an average of only 5 minutes per person to speak, and in practice, it's even worse because people quickly get a sense that there is little time for their opinion, so they censor themselves. Participation will be more even if large groups are broken into small groups, but each small group then needs the discipline that the facilitator brought to the larger meeting. A simple way to assure this is to assign clear and specific tasks to each small group and make one member of the small group responsible for reporting back on that task to the larger group.

Reviewed 13 Feb 2009