Five key points need to be consider to run a successful Business Improvement Workshop. These are:
- Who should be in attendance
- The agenda
- Running the meeting
- Facilitating, gaining agreement and highlighting change
- Measurement “to be” and processes against goals, objectives and KPIs
If we look at these in more detail:
- Who should be in attendance? The answer is the right mix of decision makers and their supporting teams including:
- Line managers responsible for the processes and tasks that are in the project
- Supporting managers and professionals that provide IT or other support to the line managers
- Designated staff members with specific responsibility to measure and implement programs from the initiative
- An executive or champion who can endorse/support or reject larger change recommended by the team
- Yourself as lead facilitator and at least one other person to document results and decisions.
- The agenda. A detailed draft agenda will be the topic of tomorrow’s post.
- Guidelines for running the meeting. Some guidelines for the moderator/facilitator:
- Try and keep to the timelines in the meeting
- Avoid side meetings unless you have broken the group into smaller teams with clear objectives from their separate discussions and decisions
- Don’t be obnoxious but make it clear that you want to generate results and make best use of everyone’s time. (Believe me most will thank you for it)
- If the meeting topic is going to be more than 2 hours, plan for breaks
- If more research or analysis is needed to come to group decisions postpone these decisions and bring the team together when you have the data you need
- Facilitating, running the workshop and highlighting change. Cover the following points in detail and you likely won’t miss much.
- The agenda and how to run the workshop
- Post a clear title of the Business Process Improvement program and its purpose
- List attendees and their role(s) in the meeting
- Timeline for sections of the meeting with cut off
- Introduce the moderator (if not yourself)
- Measurement “to be” and processes against goals, objectives and KPIs
- Allocate time to:
- Introduce the target processes along with relevant analysis and previously captured materials
- Gain agreement that the presented “analysis is accurate”
- Brainstorm goals/objectives and further refinement into KPIs that can be measured.
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