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MindSights Meeting Mentor Example

Jump start your meeting planning by choosing from pre-developed meeting agendas that ask the right questions and use the right tools. MMM emulates how skilled meeting leaders function and empowers any meeting leader with these same facilitation skills needed to run successful meetings – every time.

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MindSights Meeting Mentor

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(Table of Contents – TOC)

I. Navigation & Need for Quality meetings

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II. Pre-developed meeting Modules to jump start your planning

◙ Seven Critical Thinking Types of Meetings

◙ Meeting “Thinking” Tasks Matrix

◙ Quick Start Meeting Planner

Text Box: The purpose of MMM is to guide any meeting leader to use professional facilitation skills ranging from deciding if a meeting is necessary, to planning the meeting, to running an effective meeting b asking the right questions, to post-meeting action item follow-up.

III. Build your own meeting from scratch

Step 1: Planning the Meeting

◙ Decide if a meeting is even needed.

◙ Basic meeting components and decisions.

◙ Meeting Purpose & Planning Thinklet

◙ Identify the right meeting Participants

Step 2: Developing the Agenda

◙ Prepare for opening the meeting

◙ Build an “Automated” Agenda

◙ Prepare for closing the meeting

Step 3: Conducting and Managing the Meeting

◙ Determine your meeting delivery approach

◙ Determine meeting logistics

◙ Select Meeting Productivity tools

◙ Anticipate common meeting problems

Step 4: Post-meeting Evaluation and Action item Follow-up

◙ Post meeting basics

◙ Conduct a facilitator assessment

◙ Conduct post meeting Evaluation & Action Follow-up

Addendum I: Meeting Productivity Tools

Addendum II: Build an Automated Agenda

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Pre-developed Meeting Modules

Seven Critical Thinking Types of Meetings mtgtypes

Why Use It

Fundamentally, there are two types of meetings:

Learning oriented meetings: Participants attend these meetings primarily to learn and acquire/disseminate information, knowledge or wisdom

Thinking oriented meeting: Participants attend these “Participatory” meetings primarily to interact and contribute their thinking and knowledge to produce a specific meeting result or action. These types of meetings can significantly benefit from skilled facilitation.

How to Use It

MindSights Meeting Mentor is primarily designed to help plan and run “Thinking” oriented meetings.

Critical thinking meetings in business and organizations typically have one of the following 7 aims. Pick the one that fits your needs.

Virtual Meeting Consultant	Critical Thinking Meeting Purpose/Aim
Basic (90-minute) Problem Solving	Resolve an urgent problem, issue or challenge.
Corrective Problem Solving	Fix or correct a problem by restoring it to a past, standard or original condition.
Systems Problem Solving	Resolve a complex cross-functional or organizational problem.
Create & Innovate	Brainstorm and develop something new and of value that has never existed before.
Improvement	Improve upon current levels of performance (process, product, service).
Planning	Anticipate and prepare for future opportunities or imminent problems.
Decision Making	Select a course of action among alternatives.

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Creativity & Innovation (instructions & uses) cre

[Meeting Name]

[Day of week; Date; Time]

[Location]

Meeting Purpose Statement - (?)

Attendees - (?)

Agenda Items	GoTo	Leader/ Presenter	Time
Opening the meeting.	Go
Task 1: Describe the situation requiring innovative thinking	Go
Task 2: Define innovation purposes, goals and outcomes.	Go
Task 3: Define requirements that all ideas/solutions must meet.	Go
Task 4: Prepare for creative thinking.	Go
Task 5: Generate lots of creative ideas.	Go
Task 6: Categorize and turn creative ideas into valuable innovative ideas and solutions.	Go
Task 7: Prioritize Ideas and identify action steps.	Go
Closing the meeting.	Go

*Meeting Productivity* Tools** (Use as needed)
Meeting Communication Style	Go	Parking Lot and Idea Notepad	Go
Progress Check & Key Facilitator Questions	Go	Movements, Silence & Incubation	Go
Creative & Innovative Thinking	Go	Participation -Nominal Group Technique	Go
Meeting Decisions and Actions	Go	Team Games & Exercises	Go
Manage Conflict	Go	Brainstorming with Note Cards	Go
User Tool #1	Go	User Tool # 2	Go

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Meeting “Thinking” Tasks Matrix matrix

(Click on blue hyperlinks)

24 Meeting Tasks	Common “Thinking Oriented” Meeting Tasks	1.	2.	3.	4.	5.	6.	7.
Mission/Vision	Describe the organization’s purpose, vision and mission						Go
Observation	Observe trends, problems and opportunities.					Go	Go
Prioritize	Decide what is most critical to work on NOW.					Go	Go
Problem State	Precisely state the problem or opportunity.	Go	Go	Go	Go	Go	Go
Systems Think	System think and validate the real problem.			Go
Goal Setting	Determine the GOAL (desired outcome).		Go	Go	Go	Go	Go
Future State	Identify the preferred future.						Go
Build Team	Assemble a high performance team.			Go
Data Strategy	Identify data gathering strategies and sources.					Go
Define	Gather data and define the current state.	Go	Go	Go		Go
Obstacles	Find obstacles that prevent reaching the goal.					Go
Analysis	Analyze gaps and find root causes.		Go	Go		Go
Requirements	Establish requirements for proposed ideas.			Go	Go
Incubate	Prepare the mind for creativity				Go
Brainstorm	Brainstorm creative ideas, solutions or actions.	Go	Go	Go	Go	Go	Go
Refine Ideas	Refine creative ideas into innovative solutions.			Go	Go	Go
Eval. Criteria	Select evaluation criteria and decision strategy.			Go				Go
Decide	Decide the best idea or solution to implement.	Go	Go	Go	Go	Go	Go	Go
Validate	Validate the correctness of the decision			Go				Go
Design & Test	Design and test the proposed idea or solution.			Go		Go
Plan Work	Develop an implementation work plan.	Go	Go	Go			Go
Implement	Implement the work plan.			Go
Feedback	Create feedback for continuous improvement.		Go	Go		Go
Lessons	Document lessons learned for future use.					Go

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MindSights Planning

Task 1: Describe your business/organization’s current purpose and mission. Task1

Purpose: The critical starting point for any planning initiative is to have an accurate understanding of the current situation because it provides the foundation from which all change will be based. NOTE: This is a high level or whole-picture understanding.

Thinking Workspace (Use this space to record ideas or meeting notes)

Key Facilitator Questions to Ask
What does the business or organization do? What was the original mission and vision? What was the mission and vision today? Who are our customers or clients? How have customers been changing? What philosophy or value guides actions? What are the key business drivers? From a societal standpoint what are the right things? From a competitive standpoint what must we do?
Facilitator Tools to Use
Go	Planning Objectives: Why do you want to do a strategic plan?
Go	Vision, Mission and Value Statements: Guides actions and organizational direction.
Go	Historical Pattern Recognition: Understanding historical patterns helps chart the future.

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Task1

z1 vision

Vision, Mission and Value Statements

Why Use It

Vision and mission statements guide people in making critical decisions that affect the direction of their organization. A mission statement defines what an organization currently does. A vision statement looks into the future at least five years and defines a desired future state - one that may not even seem possible today.

How to Use It

1	List the current mission and vision statements.
2	If no statements exist, write them using the trigger questions and template on the following pages.
3	Consider writing a mission statement first and then the vision. In general, this is better because the mission is grounded in current reality and helps in articulating a realistic vision.
4	Based on your Mission and Vision, get the creative juices going and do a little brainstorming to generate some What If questions.
5	In Step 3 determine how they might change or be different in the future.

Mission Statement
Current	Future (What would be different from current)

Vision Statement
Current	Future (What would be different from current)

What If Questions

Writing a Mission Statement

A mission statement is typically one or two sentences or a short list of easy-to-remember bullet points. The purpose of the mission is to guide the daily actions and decisions of employees. For example, Walt Disney’s mission was simply “To make people happy every day.” Answer the following questions to develop your mission statement.

Mission Statement Facilitator Questions	Answers
What does the business or organization do?
What things are we especially good at doing?
Who are our customers or clients?
What are the key business drivers? Customer Satisfaction? Employee Satisfaction? Profit?
What markets do we serve?
What is the company image?
What is the value added that our customers receive for us?
What makes us unique?
What philosophy or value guides actions?
How do we contribute to society in general?
Write Mission Statement
After the Mission Statement is written, test its quality with the following question. What if 75% of our resources were taken away? Would we still be doing the mission anyway?

Writing a Vision Statement

A vision statement portrays the desired future of your business or organization. It should provide a powerful mental image that captures minds and hearts, giving people a higher purpose for their actions. For example, Walt Disney’s vision statement is: “To create quality, engaging entertainment for the whole family.” Answer the following questions to develop your vision statement.

Vision Statement Facilitator Questions	Answers
Pretend you are five years in the future. What will things look like?
If you could create anything you wanted in five years, what would it be?
What are the right things to do in the future?
How will we be different from our competitors in the future?
What are the key business drivers? Customer Satisfaction? Employee Satisfaction? Profit?
Will our client or customer base change?
Will our products and services need to expand?
What contributions will we make to society?
How will our people be working together?
What do we really want to create?
What reputation do we want to have in five years?
What values will we embody?
Write Vision Statement (Note: Write the vision statement in the present tense. Say ‘We Are’ rather than ‘We Will’. This helps promote actions toward the future.)

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Agenda Items

Task 1: Describe the situation requiring innovative thinking

Writing a Vision Statement