I especially appreciate the individual think / process time created by both the pre brief and the individual silent writing space. This is a game changer for folks who need think / sponge time, and ultimately creates better, more diverse and creative ideas !!! Thanks for outlining the session format minute by minute and for providing rationale. It’s excellent!
Most leaders running meetings don’t realize they’re the bottleneck. They call it facilitation but what they’re actually doing is thinking out loud in front of people who are waiting for permission to contribute. The room fills with their processing instead of the team’s thinking.
What Nick is really describing is a transfer of cognitive load. From the leader to the room. The structure exists to make that transfer possible. Most meetings never attempt it.
Thirty-five years in organizational leadership taught me that the rooms where the most got done were almost always the ones where the leader said the least.
I love this. Too often I see organizations optimizing for information transfer when they should be optimizing for behavior change. To me, the most valuable part of your framework isn’t the time reduction, but the discipline of removing everything that doesn’t contribute to a clear outcome, ownership, and action. In my experience, performance improves when we reduce friction and make the desired behavior easier to execute than the old one.
Love the way of starting from scratch yet remain focus on the outcome that the participants want and the problem/issue that warrant to be solved as a team. I agree that we as facilitators only hold the process yet the knowledge, discussion and outcome belong to the participants. As facilitators, be comfortable with the silence as we are nurturing, protecting the conducive environment that our participants longing for.
I especially appreciate the individual think / process time created by both the pre brief and the individual silent writing space. This is a game changer for folks who need think / sponge time, and ultimately creates better, more diverse and creative ideas !!! Thanks for outlining the session format minute by minute and for providing rationale. It’s excellent!
Most leaders running meetings don’t realize they’re the bottleneck. They call it facilitation but what they’re actually doing is thinking out loud in front of people who are waiting for permission to contribute. The room fills with their processing instead of the team’s thinking.
What Nick is really describing is a transfer of cognitive load. From the leader to the room. The structure exists to make that transfer possible. Most meetings never attempt it.
Thirty-five years in organizational leadership taught me that the rooms where the most got done were almost always the ones where the leader said the least.
I love this. Too often I see organizations optimizing for information transfer when they should be optimizing for behavior change. To me, the most valuable part of your framework isn’t the time reduction, but the discipline of removing everything that doesn’t contribute to a clear outcome, ownership, and action. In my experience, performance improves when we reduce friction and make the desired behavior easier to execute than the old one.
Excellent piece, Nick!
This is so needed
Love the way of starting from scratch yet remain focus on the outcome that the participants want and the problem/issue that warrant to be solved as a team. I agree that we as facilitators only hold the process yet the knowledge, discussion and outcome belong to the participants. As facilitators, be comfortable with the silence as we are nurturing, protecting the conducive environment that our participants longing for.