Practical thinking on strategic planning, team facilitation, leadership retreats, and the craft of helping groups do their best work together.
Open Space Technology trusts that the people in the room know what matters most. The facilitator creates the container; the group creates the content. When done well, it produces more real work than any pre-designed agenda could.
Read article
Google's Project Aristotle studied 180 teams and found that who is on the team matters less than how the team works together. Here is what that means in practice – and how to build it.
Read articleThe facilitation industry's biggest credibility gap is measurement. Nearly three-quarters of facilitators rely on participant satisfaction as their primary metric. Here is how to do better.
Read article
Most planning agendas allocate time by topic. The ones that work allocate it by decision – and reserve the last block for who owns what.
Read articleThe question is not who is more skilled. It is whether the person running the session can afford to be neutral about the outcome – and whether the room believes they are.
Read articleMost sessions fail after everyone leaves the room, not during. A decision record is the difference between alignment people felt and alignment they can act on.
Read articleGood facilitators manage agendas and keep groups on time. Great facilitators change what a group is capable of producing together. The difference is not talent – it is practice.
Read articleEnergy companies cannot afford generic strategic planning. The commodity cycles, regulatory complexity, and societal pressure they face demand a planning process designed for their specific reality.
Read article
A board retreat is one of the few times a governance body can step back from agenda-driven meetings and think strategically together. Here is how to make those hours count.
Read article
Executive coaching builds individual leaders. Facilitation builds how leaders work together as a team. Knowing which to deploy – and when – determines whether your investment produces real change.
Read articleGreat teamwork does not happen by accident. It is the product of intentional design, honest communication, and – more often than most organizations realize – skilled facilitation.
Read articleWhen done with intention and skilled facilitation, it produces the kind of team cohesion that activity-based events never will.
Read articleA workshop should produce something a meeting cannot – shared understanding, creative solutions, or collective decisions. Here is how to design and facilitate workshops that deliver.
Read articleThe facilitator you choose shapes the outcome more than the agenda, the venue, or the slides. Here is how to find someone who will actually move your team forward.
Read articleA strategic planning consultant helps your leadership team make better strategic choices – but only if you hire the right one for the right reasons. Here is how to decide.
Read articleWorld Cafe turns a room of 40 to 200 people into a living network of connected conversations. Here is how the method works and how to run one that produces real insight.
Read articleMost organizational change starts by asking what is broken. Appreciative Inquiry starts by asking what is working – and the difference in outcomes is dramatic.
Read articleThe right technique at the right moment can transform a stuck group into a productive one. Here are 15 techniques we use regularly and the situations where each one shines.
Read articleYour team offsite should not be a meeting in a nicer room. It should be a genuinely different experience that produces outcomes your office environment cannot.
Read articleVirtual facilitation is not in-person facilitation on a screen. It is a different discipline with its own rules, tools, and design principles. Here is how to make online sessions that actually work.
Read articleEscape rooms can be fun. They do not fix unclear priorities, roles, decisions, or dependencies. Here is how Toronto teams can scope the work they actually need.
Read articleVancouver teams value consensus and inclusion. Here is team building that honors that while still reaching decisions.
Read articleEdmonton's business culture is shaped by its institutions, universities, and public sector. Your team building should reflect that.
Read articleMost leadership training teaches people how to be a better individual performer in a leadership role. Real leadership development teaches people how to lead with and through others.
Read articleMost team interventions focus on the individuals in the team. ORSC focuses on what happens between them – and that shift in focus changes everything.
Read articleHorizontal development gives leaders more tools. Vertical development changes how they think. One of these is dramatically more valuable for navigating complexity – and it is not the one most organizations invest in.
Read articleA leadership retreat is one of the biggest investments you will make in your team this year. Here is how to make sure it produces outcomes that outlast the weekend.
Read articleA town hall where 200 people listen to presentations is not facilitation. It is a broadcast. Here is how to create genuine engagement at scale.
Read articleAnybody can stand at the front of a room with a marker and a flip chart. The difference between that person and a skilled facilitator only becomes obvious when the conversation gets difficult.
Read article
The problem with most change management is baked into the name. You are not managing a process. You are asking human beings to give up something familiar for something uncertain.
Read articleThe Latin root of facilitate is facilis – to make easy. But the work of a facilitator is not about making things easy. It is about making hard things possible.
Read article
I have been training Scrum teams and coaching agile transformations for over two decades. The organizations that struggle are almost never struggling with the framework. They are struggling with what the framework asks of them.
Read articleMost strategic plans fail – not because the strategy was wrong, but because the process that produced it was. Here is what actually works.
Read articleA facilitator is not a presenter, a consultant, or a therapist – though the best ones borrow skills from all three. Here is what they actually do.
Read articleFacilitation is not a soft skill your HR team picks up at a conference. It is a professional discipline – and understanding what it includes will change how you think about your most important meetings.
Read articleYou do not need a 40-page playbook to run a great strategy session. You need clear decisions to make, the right people in the room, and a process that does not let the group hide from the hard choices.
Read articleMost professionals spend a substantial part of every month in meetings, and much of that time is wasted. It does not have to be this way.
Read articleThe best team building does not feel like team building. It feels like a group of smart people doing something interesting together – and coming out of it understanding each other a little better.
Read articleThere is no responsible universal day rate for corporate facilitation. Here is the scope logic and quote checklist Canadian buyers can actually use.
Read articleChoose the decision before the activity. These 15 retreat formats connect protected time away to strategic, governance, and team outcomes.
Read article