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Approaches, skills, and techniques must be sharper when facilitating virtually.
Approaches, skills, and techniques must be sharper when facilitating virtually.

The good news is that the basics remain the same whether you are facilitating in person, virtually (remotely), or in a hybrid format. A person (facilitator) still leads a group of diverse people to create and agree upon a course of action.


The obvious challenge in a pandemic is that we do it virtually. Approaches, skills, and techniques must be sharper. We do not have time for facilitators to “move from good to great.” In a pandemic, facilitators must be great.


The key concepts discussed in the previous post – facilitator characteristics, facilitator roles & responsibilities, and troubleshooting – are essential for all good facilitators.


Good to Great Facilitation

Five essential topics are briefly discussed for moving from a good to a great facilitator.


Powerful Questions because active thought and dynamic debate are necessary for compelling results. Powerful Questions come in the form of introductory questions and clarifying questions. Great facilitators have different approaches and types of questions within each category.


Pre-Session Participant Exchange because great facilitation takes work to achieve meaningful outcomes. Pre-Session Participant Exchange is exponentially important in the era of pandemic-driven remote sessions. Great facilitators understand that the worst outcome is wasting everyone’s time.

Exercises that Engage because interaction produces input from all participants and generates a collaborative atmosphere. A great facilitator has many exercises in their bag. Great facilitators migrate those exercises into the virtual space for remote participants.


Anticipate Disruption because disruption is going to happen. Disruptions in live sessions usually are in the form of verbal confrontations or physical gestures. In remote sessions, disruption may come in the form of silence. Great facilitators embrace the reality of all types of disruption and are prepared to move through it.


Control the Tempo, Roll with the Ebb and Flow because getting a group of people to create and agree on solutions is not a linear process. This is especially true with remote facilitation when body language is not always discernable and there is no time to chat during breaks. Great facilitators appreciate – even thrive – on the peaks and valleys and are not frustrated by the give-and-take of the process.


Moving Forward

We would all like to meet face-to-face to create, develop, and agree upon solutions and future actions. Arguably, facilitators like it too because it is easier to get some type of results when you are in person.


As those of us know who have facilitated virtually long before the current pandemic, there is no room for being sloppy or just being average. Facilitating virtually heightens the need for everything to be sharper and proven. Virtual facilitation requires moving from good to great.


 

JD Solomon Inc provides facilitation, asset management, and program development solutions at the nexus of facilities, infrastructure, and the environment. Contact us for more information about providing facilitation for your organization or training your future facilitators.


Facilitating in the facilities, infrastructure, and environment sectors follow good practice for any market sector.
Facilitating in the facilities, infrastructure, and environment sectors follow good practice for any market sector.

Good facilitators do a respectable job at both planning and executing their sessions, and normally excel at one or the other. Keeping the basic facilitation roles and responsibilities in mind allows the facilitator to focus during sessions and to improve in key areas between assignments. Focusing on three troubleshooting skills also helps separate the good from the average facilitator.


Basic Facilitation Roles and Responsibilities

Facilitation has many definitions. The industry-leading definition, and the operable definition used throughout this paper, is "a facilitated session is a structured meeting in which the meeting leader (the facilitator) guides the participants through a series of predefined steps to arrive at a result that is created, understood, and accepted by all participants.

  1. Prepare in advance - “who, what, when, why, where, and “how”

  2. Plan and distribute the written agenda

  3. Define objectives at the beginning of the event

  4. Establish expectations

  5. Guide the group in presenting and sharing information

  6. Provide closure and reiterate action items


Basic Troubleshooting

There are three areas of troubleshooting skills that are common to all good facilitators. Good facilitators are respectable in all three areas. Great facilitators excel in all three subgroups.


Staying On-Task and On-Time

Staying on-task and on-time include:

  • Remind the group of the keep-focused expectation

  • Do not be afraid to directly re-focus the group on a particular agenda item

  • Try to close each item or set it aside in a “parking lot” for consideration later

  • Let the group decide on tradeoffs between staying on-task or on time when issues arise


Dealing with unproductive behavior

Facilitators understand that some form of unproductive behavior during a session is the norm and not the exception. Some tips for dealing with unproductive behavior include:

  • Use gentle and appropriate humor for redirection

  • Restate the ground rules directly

  • Direct questions to the individual for clarification

  • Seek help from the group

  • Address the issue during a break or offline


Stimulating Productive Inquiry, especially related to subject matter experts (SMEs)

Stimulating productive inquiry is truly both a function of planning and execution. It also requires practice and experience working in different situations. Finding the balance between SMEs that either dominate or retreat from engagement is important for discussion to be productive.

  • Use probing questions

  • Invite the experts to speak up

  • Call on individuals in the group

  • Invite debate

Applying It

Keeping the basic facilitation roles and responsibilities in mind allows the facilitator to focus during sessions and to improve in key areas between assignments. It starts with learning and delivering the basic duties well. Focusing on three troubleshooting skills helps separate the good from the average facilitator.


 

JD Solomon Inc provides facilitation, asset management, and program development solutions at the nexus of facilities, infrastructure, and the environment. Contact us for more information on providing facilitation for your organization or training your future facilitators.


A tall tree with deep roots

“The Roots Are Deep” is this month’s artistic interpretation by Paul Frantz. Finding the root causes requires a deeper dive that involves more time and effort. Like removing a tree or bush, “do it right the first time or do in again,” says expert Bob Latino.

 

It is indeed an honor to have both brothers Bob Latino and Mark Latino for this month’s Ask the Experts lightning round on Root Cause Analysis. While I am considered an expert in this subject, I chose to take the opportunity to simply listen and moderate these two gurus. Brothers in the same field also add a little flair to the conversation as I can certainly attest by having a brother in the same field too.

The Latino family has been involved with root cause analysis and reliability engineering for more than 50 years. Father Charles Latino built the first reliability department in the US in 1967 at Allied Chemical. He founded the Reliability center in the 1980s. Siblings Mark, Diane, Julie, Bob, and Ken followed in the family tradition and became experts in their own rights in Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and Reliability Engineering (RE). Their trademark RCA approach is called PROACT. Later this year, this company will release a universal Root Cause Analysis software that is independent of the PROACT methodology.

Bob specializes in more higher-level facilitation, involving aspects related to human factors and human performance. Mark is much more a metallurgical specialist who also does facilitation and training. Ironically, both have more experience in facilitation, physics of failure, human factors, and training than most experts who only specialize in one area.

 

Is there usually a single root cause? (and how have the different ways of describing root causes confused the non-expert)

BL: Our biggest competitor is our customers’ definition of root cause analysis. There are a lot of people who believe one root cause is the way to go – the 5 whys crowd – and there are other people who know better

ML: I think there are some things that confuse people. The 5-Whys tends to confuse people because the why, why, whys get to only one cause. Others have casual factors. We call it something different.

BL: A lot of people just view RCA as a commodity. These are the people that believe there is one root cause.

ML: Most people have a job already and they have RCA added to them. Many times, they are just looking for something simple. Often too simple.

BL: I don’t blame the people who do a poor analysis as I do those who accept it.

Can anyone perform a root cause analysis?

BL: We are brothers and our third brother is Ken. I hope he sees this. If Ken can do it, anybody can do it! (ha!)

ML: Anybody can do a root cause analysis – based on your definition. The differences are the depth and breadth of what and how you do it.

BL: Humanity makes you a root cause analyst. Yes, we do it in our everyday life. If you are using deductive analysis you are doing some form of root cause analysis.

ML: One criterion is to pick someone who wants to do it. If someone wants to do RCA well, they can do it well.

BL: We never have the time and budget to do it right, but we always have the time and budget to do it again.

What are the minimum types of training that you recommend before someone leads a root cause analysis?

ML: All of it. Physics of failure, decision making, human factors, communication.

BL: Our greatest competition is people’s definition. If people think it’s just the physics of failure – Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA)– then that is all they will train in. If you believe it is more than the physics of failure, then you will train in other aspects.

ML: Everything in RCA is about getting people to make the right decisions.

BL: The big difference in RCFA and RCA is getting the “F” out!! RCA is much broader, including the human and organizational systems aspects, and people must be trained in the other areas.

There are a number of commercial systems for performing a root cause analysis, including yours. Is buying a software product necessary?

BL: No, that would presume the software does all of the thinking for you.

ML: The software is not required for success. The software makes it easier and faster to do the analysis

BL: A software tool is only helping you to manage an investigation, to document, to communicate, to share. It makes the process more efficient.

ML: The software also helps you trend the results. You can trend the global results together and share the trends.

BL: An analysis is only as good as the analyst.

Should we do a root cause analysis on all failures? Are there gradations?

ML: When we started doing RCAs a long time ago, we did them on everything because we did not have a proven criterion. Then we got away from the fifty-dollar failures. With PROACT we started using $300,000 as a cut-off.

BL: The ones under $300,000 are with the “hand you are dealt”. Not very good because you are relying on opinion instead of making time to collect the data, but may be sufficient for the resources you have.

ML: In a base failure analysis we still want to learn, but the cost factor may not be the driver.

BL: No company can do them on everything. Usually, organizations develop compliance-type triggers around costs, lost lives, or some other values. That is not always where your money is.

ML: Understanding what is happening is important in many applications.

BL: People need to be able to make the business case for RCA on chronic failures. In our latest book, I use an example of the thousands of times a hospital needs to redraw blood. There was no trigger on a $300 redraw but it happened 10,000 times each year. That was $3M+ hidden in plain sight! That’s a lot of money laying around based on frequency.

How does an RCA team know when to call in an expert to do advanced testing or evaluation?

BL: When I am not 100% knowledgeable in a certain area, I call in an outside expert.

ML: I come at this as a metals-type expert, but as a facilitator, I still call in specialists when we are uncertain. We recently did this on a chemical-related RCA in Virginia even though we are experts in some of the areas.

BL: You are not always going to have all the resources you need on a team, no matter how cross-functional it is.

ML: The facilitator is important in making these decisions. They must be well-rounded and humble enough to know when to call in for assistance.

What is the role of human factors?

BL: It is very important. There is a lot of people that think it is either the physical side OR the social side. It is hard to get people to understand that they are totally dependent on each other.

ML: I spend a lot of time on the human side. Usually, the physical side prompts me to look at what people are doing.

BL: Social scientists suck at the physical sciences and those that excel at physics typically suck at the social sciences.

ML: Most of the time, mechanics and millwrights do what they are told. They shape their behavior around the procedures and what their managers want.

BL: You need both social sciences and physical sciences to produce an effective RCA. They are dependent on each other.

Both of you have worked in many different fields. What has surprised you most when it comes to root cause analysis?

BL: I am surprised at what people think RCA is – that so many people see it as a checklist.

ML: Most managers think RCA is something that fixes everything. They think some training and doing the process just fixes the problem.

BL: Managers do not know how to measure RCA effectiveness. This means they don’t expect much from it and do it only for a regulatory purpose. We see it differently – RCA should produce value. Managers should clearly set that expectation of value.

ML: A second one is how many people do not follow the methodology. Then they make it fit into the RCA methodology…they do their own thing and call it ‘RCA’.

What is the best single tip that you would give someone who is preparing to lead an RCA or failure-related investigation?

ML: Go to wherever the problem occurred, do a first-pass observation without any team, and do an evaluation. Then the facilitator can decide who they need on the team and make a second pass.

BL: Do it right or do it again. If you stop short for whatever reason – time, resources, politics – the problem will happen again, and you will be doing the RCA again. At some point, progressive management would question why someone was getting so much RCA practice!

ML: My second one is that you have an answer for everything in your logic tree. Anything less than a “5” in terms of confidence factors (strength of evidence), you have to be able to explain before you go in front of management and they start shooting holes in it.

BL: Hearsay does not fly as fact in RCA…contrary to popular belief!

 

Solomon’s Wisdom

1. Whenever you are in the presence of greatness, sit back and listen.

2. RCA is painful. If you do it right, it is introspection.

3. We often try to find what management wants to hear. That is not helpful, but that is often how people survive and keep their jobs.

4. We run through too many cycles of fully integrating, and then not integrating, human factors into RCA. RCA cannot be done effectively without integrating physical factors and human factors.

5. We often outthink ourselves and get too philosophical – in one camp or another. Most things, including Root Cause Analysis, come down to doing the basics, well.



Experts
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