When do you really need to use an expert facilitator?
Only when you have to produce
the best possible results.
When do you really need to use an expert facilitator?
Only when you have to produce
the best possible results.
When do you really need to use an expert facilitator?
Only when you have to produce
the best possible results.
When your senior team meeting, executive retreat, board meeting, or high stakes gathering is critically important, an experienced, highly skilled facilitator ensures you achieve your most critical results.
When you have an extremely important meeting that needs to produce meaningful results, remember Steve Lishansky’s axiom of facilitation:
Clarity of outcome and quality of process
produces the most outstanding results.
Most organizations struggle with one or both of these essential requirements for achieving the best possible results.
Your investment in a highly skilled and experienced master of facilitation ensures:
- Your most important results are delivered
- The process is engaging and energizing
- Everyone participates fully and meaningfully
- Difficult conversations are handled exceptionally well
- Tough decisions are made elegantly and efficiently
- Decisions are embraced and owned by the participants
- After the meeting back-biting is eliminated
When your senior team meeting, executive retreat, board meeting, or high stakes gathering is critically important, an experienced, highly skilled facilitator ensures you achieve your most critical results.
When you have an extremely important meeting that needs to produce meaningful results, remember Steve Lishansky’s axiom of facilitation:
Clarity of outcome and quality of process
produces the most outstanding results.
Most organizations struggle with one or both of these essential requirements for achieving the best possible results.
Your investment in a highly skilled and experienced master of facilitation ensures:
- Your most important results are delivered
- The process is engaging and energizing
- Everyone participates fully and meaningfully
- Difficult conversations are handled exceptionally well
- Tough decisions are made elegantly and efficiently
- Decisions are embraced and owned by the participants
- After the meeting back-biting is eliminated
CEO on Strategic Planning
& Facilitation by Steve Lishansky
Why Organizational Decision Making Is So Slow and Ineffective
How to avoid the ways good people get stuck
The Four Levels of Leadership Decision Making
The keys to each ascending level of leadership thinking
Strategic Alignment Process Overview
Why it pays to go above and beyond typical strategic planning
How many times have you been subject to what I call “the death march of strategic planning” – the long, drawn out struggle to come up with something you can at least live with, and which you know is not as good as it should be?
Most top professionals agree that the typical strategic planning process is neither strategic, nor good planning.
What is the key to a highly efficient, effective, engaging, aligning, inspiring, and clear process that brings your people together, focuses your leadership and organization, and actually drives meaningful results?
Let’s clarify the critical terms that come into play in highly effective strategic planning:
- Strategies – explain how will we accomplish our most important objectives and goals
- This presupposes you have clear objectives and goals
- Goals – the best way I have found to define goals is: the measurements of accomplishment of our mission and vision
- Of course this presupposes you have a clear mission and vision
- Mission – why we exist to do what we do
- This presupposes we know what we want to be to the people we serve. Mission is truly about what we are committed to being after doing what it is that we are great at doing.
- Vision – the picture of the future in 1, 3, or 5 years we would see when we fully manifest who we are, why we’re here, and what we value most
Let’s be clear, strategy only matters in service of a meaningful goal(s). Meaningful and effective goals are really benchmarks of progress and success towards our vision and mission. Our mission articulates what we’re ultimately committed to being, while the vision describes what our impact on the world would look like when we are highly successful.
So few organizations have a meaningful and compelling vision and mission, which is the real starting point for defining the goals worth pursuing. Get these in place, and clarity about the strategies that will help us achieve them almost write themselves.
However, the opposite is not true. Making up strategies and goals first will never produce a compelling mission and vision. Too many organizations start with made up goals (i.e.: grow 12%, increase profits 15%, reduce expenses by 18%, etc.). These lack any fundamental basis as to why these are the best and most meaningful goals worth achieving.
Failure to be able to answer the question “why should we focus on these goals as the best and most important choices we could make for our organization and its future” is the reason why most strategic planning processes make no sense.
This is Part I of a series explaining how to make strategic planning – and what I call “Strategic Alignment” – one of the most powerful forces for accelerating and elevating the success of your organization.
You can find more information about Strategic Alignment at http://bit.ly/StrategicPlanningAtOptimize.
To your success,
Steve
“I was incredibly impressed with how Steve helped our team through some difficult discussions and was able to navigate the many egos, personalities, and agendas in the room. He guided our executive team through tough subjects, including issues we’ve been avoiding for 10 years. Our challenges were clear to him, and he was able to put some truths in front of us, so individuals didn’t react defensively. His skill at executive team building is quite remarkable. Few people can do what Steve does – and in such a short time.”
Neil Pye
VP, Parelli International
“At the FAA, we were faced with an unusual situation: a project that had never before been attempted and a group of people who were, quite frankly, very skeptical about its chances for success. Steve Lishansky helped us plan how to run the conference and facilitate the conference itself. Was the conference successful? Absolutely! The entire group was truly engaged in what was happening, and the more they worked together, the more they collaborated and contributed. A lot of those skeptics weren’t skeptical by the time the conference ended. They began to network and brainstorm, which is saying quite a bit given the cultural differences of the audience. Given the uncertainty of the task and its total uniqueness, Steve did a fantastic job facilitating.”
Chris Hart
Asst. Admin., Federal Aviation Administration
“We are all very much in your debt for how you deftly helped our Board through a very rough start last year, and supported the needed mobilization and process improvements throughout the year.”
Daniel Moirao, Ph.D.
Professional Association President
“I recently worked with Steve at a Leadership Summit. Steve has the incredible ability to listen, clarify, draw in, and align executive teams for optimal performance. For us, Steve took a group of creative, independent thinking leaders (most with large egos) and optimized our power by leading us in a strategy of focus, teaching us about the power of working together. I highly recommend Steve Lishansky for your Senior Executive Team.”
Maureen O’Brien
CEO, O’Brien and Sons
“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.”
Japanese Proverb“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.”
Michael Jordan, Superstar Athlete“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
African Proverb“When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves.'”
Lao Tzu, Influential Philosopher“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.”
“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.”
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
“When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves.'”
Need Executive Team Facilitation?
Start a conversation with Steve today
Contact us to discuss how you can assure your best results in:
- Strategic Planning – and going far beyond the typical experience to produce Strategic Alignment of your executive team and organization
- Executive Team Retreats – ensuring customized and outstanding results
- Executive Level Team–Building – enhancing your team’s communication, collaboration and collegiality (with powerful, non-gimmicky approaches)
- Board Retreats – elevating your Board’s ability to be a well-aligned, strategic force for the good of your organization
- High Stakes Meetings – producing clarity, focus, and agreement on the critical results when important decisions must be made
Contact us to discuss the results and current situation facing you that requires an outstanding outcome.
Need Executive Team Facilitation?
Start a conversation with Steve today
Contact us to discuss how you can assure your best results in:
- Strategic Planning – and going far beyond the typical experience to produce Strategic Alignment of your executive team and organization
- Executive Team Retreats – ensuring customized and outstanding results
- Executive Level Team–Building – enhancing your team’s communication, collaboration and collegiality (with powerful, non-gimmicky approaches)
- Board Retreats – elevating your Board’s ability to be a well-aligned, strategic force for the good of your organization
- High Stakes Meetings – producing clarity, focus, and agreement on the critical results when important decisions must be made
Contact us to discuss the results and current situation facing you that requires an outstanding outcome.