Experimenting in Europe
I was asked to co-facilitate a regional cost-reduction session with my Armstrong mentor, Fred, in Europe. He had facilitated many of these sessions over the years with great success. I was excited for the opportunity to work with him and tour around countries I wasn’t familiar with.
We planned the session together for a month before we left for Europe. It wasn’t unusual for these sessions to identify tens of millions of dollars of actionable improvement opportunities, so the investment of time was well spent. I was always impressed with Fred’s attention to detail and the way he was able to get strong engagement when he facilitated. I knew I was going to learn more about facilitation and strengthen my skills.
We flew to Europe on the weekend and spent a day looking at some castles and the little town we were staying in. Then, on Monday, we went to the corporate office and set up the conference room for the next day’s session.
Fred shared portions of the agenda with me to facilitate. He wanted me to gain experience leading this important session. He took most of the critical elements, including brainstorming and prioritization, as these were the areas in which he truly shined.
During the brainstorming session, I could tell Fred was getting a little tired and running out of ideas on how to draw more creativity out of the room. I suggested a short break and Fred was open to it. I asked Fred if he would be willing to let me step in for a few minutes, changing the tone of the session, by changing facilitators. He allowed me to do so, and I was able to squeeze a few more ideas out of the group.
Then, we took a lunch break. We were about to get into what Fred thought was going to be a lengthy session: the prioritization of the hundreds of ideas that had been generated. During lunch, Fred and I talked about his approach to prioritization. He was going to compare ideas against all others, generating an “A vs. B vs. C vs. all alternatives” matrix. Basically, the ideas that won the comparisons the most times would be the highest priority ideas to work on for the rest of the session.
I told Fred I thought it could take many hours to accomplish this and I may have a quicker way to complete the prioritization. He told me he’d like to try it his way first, but we could talk about adjusting if necessary.
After lunch, Fred drew a complex matrix on a whiteboard and explained his approach to prioritization. The team understood and was engaged as he took them through the initial stages of comparisons.
About thirty minutes in, I noticed some of the participants looked distracted and tired. I also realized we hadn’t finished the first set of comparisons. There were literally dozens more to be completed. I started thinking about how I could help get all these ideas prioritized in a shorter time. Then, an idea hit me. I asked Fred if we could take a short break and regroup. He accommodated my request.
During the break, I explained what I was noticing, did a quick calculation of how long it would take to finish it the way he had started, and asked if he was willing to try my suggestion. He asked for more details, and I explained I would like to try multi-voting with criteria. Using this process, each team member would pick the top 10 ideas they thought would provide the best cost-savings, be easiest to implement, and do no harm to anyone from a safety or quality perspective. Even though this approach didn’t seem scientific, I believed it was a way to utilize the diverse perspectives in the room and quickly build consensus around the many ideas generated.
Fred gave me the go-ahead, with a caveat. If this concept didn’t generate the results the team needed, from their perspective, we’d go back to his method.
I framed out the approach and explained multi-voting with criteria in detail to the team. They asked a few questions and even added an additional criterion to the list. I knew this approach had a chance because they were owning it!
Thirty minutes later, we had prioritized the many ideas into the top 20 to develop further for the company. We took the temperature of the room and by an overwhelming majority they agreed these 20 ideas were truly the top ones out of the total group. We documented all the other ideas, just in case they might be needed in the future.
Fred agreed this quicker approach likely got to the same conclusion that the “A vs. B v. C vs. all alternatives” comparison approach would have. I don’t think either of us could prove that, but we were relieved we had completed the prioritization in a way the team owned.
Over the years, I have refined my multi-voting with criteria approach to cut the prioritization time in half. I can explain it, facilitate it, and train others to do it. I am convinced I have found something to save precious time, even in the most complex ideation and prioritization sessions.