Melbourne KMLF Feb 2014

I’ve been attending the Knowledge Management Melbourne sessions without still being entirely clear what a Knowledge manager actually is, but I find the topics they present interesting and relevant, so…

Tonight’s topic was a paratactical session on facilitation techniques, which is something I undertake occasionally so was interested in hearing some ideas and suggestions.

These were both techniques from Thiaga (www.thiagi.com).

First was ‘Reverse brainstorming’, where instead of focusing on the positive, solution based approach to breaking out an idea, you look backwards, so for example instead of brainstorming “How will we get senior management buy in?”, we brainstormed “How will we not get senior management buy in?”. This was a good technique for engaging people who are hard to engage as it’s fun and get people saying things that maybe they always really wanted to say.

This then led to the next exercise, which is ’35’ a sorting and prioritising exercise. Take the previous negative outcomes, reverse them, then write them onto cards and get your audience to swap them weigh each other 5 times, discussing how they would rate the point from 1-7. Finally, add up the scores on the back of each card and this gives a good indication of what needs to be prioritised.

Well, that’s the summary anyway…