Posts Tagged ‘consensus’

Credit Union "Micro" Strategic Planning

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011


Credit unions face a challenge typical to many small- and medium-sized businesses: how to make the annual Board of Directors/Management micro retreat an engaging session that sets the strategic direction for the organization. I call these "micro" retreats because small businesses do not have the time or resources to devote more than a day — and sometimes less — to the entire strategic planning process. So everything has to be scaled down, miniaturized.

Critical success factors


Too often, a board and management team show up for a strategic planning event to find a facilitator and blank chart paper. There has been little preparation and the decision-making process is opaque. The team grinds through the day, fails to agree to priorities, and finishes spent and frustrated.

Alternately, a successful micro retreat depends upon four key factors:

  • A lean strategic planning process
  • Preliminary research and detailed preparation
  • Dynamic group process and skilled decision support
  • Strong, consensus agreement to act

I will use a case study to illustrate each of these factors. Since 2003 Bridgeway Federal Credit Union has used Prism Decision Systems to facilitate its strategic planning. According to CEO P. J. Walker: "I contact Prism whenever I am ready to schedule a strategic planning retreat with my Board of Directors and executive staff.  Not only is Sean Brady an excellent facilitator, but he utilizes the most advanced technology to arrive at critical consensus and decision points for the group."

Factor #1: A lean strategic planning process


First, we need to determine which strategic planning process steps are most critical, can be skipped or can be completed before or after the micro retreat. For example, Bridgeway has a vision and mission they consider appropriate. No need for time spent there. Instead, because they typically faced a fork-in-the-road strategic decision, we customized the lean process to make that decision, and then to agree to a set of long-term targets and robust strategies to implement it. Project planning, identification of key milestones and a progress monitoring plan were assigned to be completed at a later time.

Factor #2: Preliminary research and detailed preparation


The CEO and his team determine the key information to be researched and the critical presentations to be prepared. Some research and preparation is "boiler plate," common across business sectors:

  • Five-year trends and three-year forecasts of key performance indicators
  • Updated progress implementing key strategic priorities
  • Current and emerging issues related to legal, regulatory, information technology, competitive environment, customer demographics, governance, mergers and acquisition, etc.

However, some is very specific to the organization. For example, Bridgeway prepared detailed presentations of alternative business case scenarios and financial plans to support the strategic decision they needed to make.

Factor #3: Dynamic group process and skilled decision support


Often without expert group process support, retreats ramble unproductively, leading to high levels of participant frustration and poor decision-making. Groups begin debating before they fully understand the available alternatives. They move to decision-making before they have evaluated the costs and benefits. They leave without explicit agreement and a strong, consensus commitment to act.

Prism’s efficient group process avoids those pitfalls. For example, after CEO Walker presented the business case scenarios, there was a structured question and clarification session to ensure that all 16 team members fully understood the alternatives. The group then went through a formal process to evaluate each scenario. They challenged key assumptions and assessed cost-benefit ratios. Only then did the team move to decision-making, which is accelerated and improved using Prism’s group decision support system. The Bridgeway team participated in a number of consensus votes, as well as a strategic profile (see chart above). Strategic profiling helped the team distinguish between high- and low-leverage strategies — and therefore to identify immediate priorities. By not considering all strategies to be equal, Bridgeway targets its limited resources at those opportunities providing the "greatest bang for the buck."

Factor #4: Strong, consensus agreement to act


Finally throughout the micro retreat each key decision is tested by a deliberate consensus process. For example, as the Bridgeway team began to converge on what appeared to be the group’s preferred fork-in-the-road decision, we voted to determine the degree of consensus support. The vote revealed that 14 members supported the decision but two absolutely could not. The process then required the two to articulate their irreconcilable issues. After the rest of the group listened respectfully, the whole team problem solved, addressing the "deal breaker" issues. Not only did the group then achieve consensus but they agreed that the final, modified decision was stronger as a result of the deliberate process.

The consensus chart below shows 12 members "strongly supporting" and four members "supporting" the final strategic plan. This public, explicit consensus assured that Bridgeway emerged from their micro-retreat focused and ready to act.

For additional information about Prism’s strategic planning with credit unions, see case studies with GHS and First Heritage federal credit unions.



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Reduce stress! Become more creative in three steps

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011


Life is a cascade of challenge. Sometimes the flow trickles and sometimes it roars. How well you navigate determines who you are and your quality of life. Do you embrace the flow or avoid it? Does a torrent motivate or immobilize you? Do you look to the future with hope or fear?

Your answers to these questions probably correlate to your creative skill. A creative person sees opportunity in challenge. She tolerates and does not fear ambiguity. Entering life’s white waters, she is not paralyzed by stress but energized by the exhilaration. She does not look back or paddle upstream but races downstream toward the new vistas beckoning.

In Iconoclast: a Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently, Gregory Berns explains how highly creative individuals are hard wired. fMRI studies indicate that iconoclasts’ brains differ in terms of perception, fear response and social intelligence. Importantly, he provides practical ways for each of us to nurture such capabilities in ourselves. Yes! We can rewire the circuits and become more creative by pursuing three specific strategies:

  • Bombard the brain with novel experiences and learn to see differently
  • Tame the stress response and overcome fear
  • Develop social intelligence and persuade others to accept your novel ideas

The neuroscience behind creativity


Because the human mind runs on just 40 watts of power, it constantly seeks to conserve energy. It takes a lot of shortcuts, including in the area of perception. According to Berns, “the most likely way you perceive something will be in a manner consistent with your past experience. Commonplace perceptions feel comfortable and cost little energy to process.” The brain categorizes your past experience and then draws from these categories to determine what you “see.” By its nature, the brain does not want to expend the energy required to see differently.

Step #1: Bombard the brain with novel experiences and learn to see differently

Bern’s studies indicate that iconoclasts’ brains are more easily able to see differently — that is, their brains do not seek to conserve energy at the expense of creative insight. What about the rest of us? When confronting life’s cascade of challenge, what can we do to generate innovative solutions?

Berns suggests that we intentionally shock the brain with novel experiences, compelling it to expend the energy required to achieve creative insight. “By forcing the visual system to see things in different ways, you can increase the odds of new insights.” Specifically, he suggests that the “surest way to evoke the imagination is to confront the perceptual system with people, places, and things that it hasn’t seen before…In order to think creatively…bombard the brain with new experiences. Only then will it be forced out of efficiency mode and reconfigure its neural networks.”

For those who can learn to see differently, the brain has another, even more primal attribute that inhibits creative action. Fear. We fear the criticism, rejection and ridicule that may result from thinking differently. We avoid the risk associated with possible failure. We recoil from ambiguity because we fear the unknown. According to Berns, “The stress system is not rational. It reacts when provoked, and this reaction is powerful enough to derail many of the most innovative people out there.”

Step #2: Tame the stress response and overcome fear

Berns offers a number of specific strategies to overcome fear. None are simple and all require persistence and courage. For example, he says we need to understand the effects of fear and then re-frame it. Instead of fearing failure, train yourself to focus on its potential for learning and growth. Similarly, learn to tolerate ambiguity. The unknown can prove either detrimental or helpful to us. Berns suggests that we nurture the ability to mitigate our fear of the unknown by seeing its possible benefits. Finally, to avoid fear of ridicule, recruit a like-minded person to support you when you present an innovative idea to others.

Let’s assume that you have successfully tamed fear and are generating creative ideas. According to Berns, you have one final hurdle: taming the fear in others. Novel ideas are different. By its nature, the brain perceives what is different to be threatening. This is a primal response.

Step #3: Develop social intelligence and persuade others to accept your innovative ideas

Seeing differently and taming the stress response do not guarantee your success in creative endeavors. To implement novel ideas, you need to light up the brain’s circuits for social networking.

“In order to sell one’s ideas, one must create a positive reputation that will draw people toward something that is initially unfamiliar and potentially scary. Familiarity helps build one’s reputation…successful iconoclasts have an uncommon ability to connect on a social level that transcends the idea itself. The key to doing this is through social networks. In order to be successful, the iconoclast builds a network through two fundamental approaches: familiarity and reputation.”

Navigate life’s quick water with dexterity and joy


Reduce your stress! Face your unique cascade of challenge with a creative worldview. See differently, tame your fear and build social networks based on familiarity and reputation. While you may not become an iconoclast, you will surely navigate life’s quick waters with greater dexterity and joy.

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The Rashomon Effect

Monday, April 12th, 2010


Here’s a typical pattern in collaborative decision-making. A team meets, works through a series of issues and reaches agreement on a course of action. They leave the meeting confident that there is consensus and alignment. They begin to act on the details of their agreement.

In the days and weeks that follow, however, it becomes increasingly apparent that team members have left the meeting with different and sometimes conflicting interpretations of their agreement. “That’s not what I heard” is the common refrain. Consequences can include wasted time, poor work product, and — more seriously — distrust and suspicion as team members begin to question one another’s integrity and start to speculate on ulterior motives.

Yes, team members sometimes lack integrity and speculate on ulterior motives. However, very often the scenario described above results from the “Rashomon effect,” named for Akira Kurosawa’s cinematic masterpiece, Rashomon. In the film, four individuals witness an horrific crime. Each then recounts the story with absolute honesty but in mutually contradictory ways. The Rashomon effect is the “effect of the subjectivity of perception on recollection, by which observers of an event are able to produce substantially different but equally plausible accounts of it.”

There are two simple strategies to prevent the Rashomon effect from undermining a team’s agreement.

First, replace verbal with written agreement. As the group converges, display the exact language of the agreement’s details — on a flip chart or preferably on a projection screen. Simple bullets will suffice. Team members will engage with the language, clarifying its nuances and making it increasingly clear and unambiguous.

Second, replace casual with explicit agreement. Once the agreement’s details are displayed, survey the team to test publicly each member’s understanding of and support for the final agreement.

This public commitment to a written, explicit agreement significantly reduces the risk that team members will produce “substantially different but equally plausible accounts of” that agreement and, therefore, you will have avoided the hazards of the Rashomon effect.

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Breaking Through Impasse

Friday, February 12th, 2010


At some point in most meetings, there is impasse. Two participants take opposite sides on an issue. You know the drill: as they defend their positions, they dig their heels more firmly in. The group’s frustration builds; energy levels diminish.

Don’t get me wrong. Conflict can be necessary to group decision making. No group should fear conflict or disagreement.

However, by using two simple techniques from the worlds of negotiation and creativity, you can ferret out and eliminate the unnecessary discussion of disagreement.

  • Replace the habit of “Either… Or” with “Both… And.” Using this technique as a facilitator, I am regularly reminded how often two competing alternatives are actually compatible. In fact, participants usually begin smiling when they realize that the two alternatives they saw as mutually exclusive are actually complimentary — more powerful together than either one alone.
  • Use “Split the Difference.” When the difference is quantitative in nature, propose a solution that is half way between the two positions.

If impasse emerges at your next meeting, try these two simple techniques. Reduce frustration, generate energy and build a habit of collegial agreement.

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