From public meetings to internal planning sessions, we provide facilitation to drive broad initiatives, planning efforts, and organizational change.
STRATEGIC PLANNING AND FACILITATION
Each planning and facilitation process or event is designed around the needs and expectations of our clients: meetings to communicate and advance broad initiatives, strategic planning to establish a visionary framework for action, and Lean events to drive necessary process improvements. We aren’t afraid to help teams tackle hard issues—we assist them in facing challenges with grace, wit, and rigor.
PLANNING AND FACILITATION
We assist leadership teams with strategic planning, work teams with work flow and process improvement, and work groups and their managers with interpersonal issue resolution. Our processes are tailored to the organization, the team, and the issue(s); we provide meaningful engagement instead of process for process’ sake. We dive deeply into issues, seeking to understand the variety of viewpoints, and we actively engage with participants to ensure meaningful participation. Both are key to finding consensus and achieving successful outcomes.
For the past three decades, we’ve provided partnering for more than 100 project teams, strategic planning for design and construction firms, and issue resolution for government and university clients across the United States. Whether starting a project off right or resolving issues midstream, we help teams use communication to achieve project and process success.
“Considering the nebulous nature of strategic plans ( I have reviewed many that did nothing more than meet the test of preparing a strategic plan), I am pleased to say that our plan is working.”
WHY PARTNERING?
Partnering helps teams develop the communication structure and agreements needed to achieve success. Effective partnering is tailored to the project and measured against achieving specific project outcomes. Teams come away from partnering with a common understanding of project values and delivery expectations—and what they have to do to achieve them.
Effective partnering is hard work and requires a highly skilled facilitator who understands both the technical and team challenges team members face, and who can help teams come to agreement on their ‘rules of engagement.’
A typical partnering process likely includes the following deliverables:
Detailed team charter
Clarified team expectations
Communication plan
Decision-making structure and schedule
Dispute resolution structure
Team partnering agreements
“Using her outstanding partnering and facilitation skills, Meg has helped build a strong cohesion between Sound Transit and King County team members with which to solve problems, achieve individual and collective goals, and advance the project to a timely implementation.”
VIRTUAL FACILITATION
We have been providing quality virtual facilitation and partnering since before the COVID-19 pandemic. We are proficient with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Skype, WebEx, and GoTo Meeting and can easily adapt to any preferred platform. We also use additional tools—such as Miro, MURAL, and OBS Studio—to augment standard virtual platforms to enhance participant engagement.
“These individuals provide excellent staff support. Details are tended to with care, discussions are well-facilitated and essential conclusions duly recorded, and our final written report was superbly organized and articulated primarily by Meg and her people, with very little editing required by the Commission members.”
OTHER SERVICES
