Facilitate Proceedings

Managing Facilitated Processes
A Guide for Consultants, Facilitators, Managers, Trainers, Event Planners and Educators
By Dorothy Strachan and Marian Pitters
Published by Jossey-Bass, 2009

When I heard that Dorothy Strachan and Marian Pitters had published a new book I was excited to read it. I have seen both of these facilitation experts lead workshops at International Association of Facilitator conferences (www.iaf-world.org) and their sessions have ranked in the top echelon every time.  This book lives up to expectations and is full of practical advice and ready-made checklists generously shared from their many years of experience.

As the sub-title of the book infers, this guide is meant as a resource for a long list of practitioners in a wide variety of corporate, non-profit, educational, government and community organizations. Strachan and Pitters write in an approachable, organized way and I found myself reading the book from cover to cover before returning to the table of contents to drop back into particular chapters or worksheets. Many of the latter are available for download from a web site for easy access. The authors do not presume that the reader will have a lot of facilitation and project management experience and cover some fundamental aspects of defining and contracting for a facilitated process or consulting engagement. Their systematic and thorough approach also has value to experienced facilitators and consultants, however, and you certainly sense that their checklists and techniques are ones that they themselves use on every engagement.  

Three sections of the book particularly drew my attention on first reading. The first two chapters discuss initial client contact and building agreements that work, providing a practical approach to the due diligence required at the front end of a process. The tables, checklists and sample contracts help us think clearly about the type of process we are engaging in and the relationship we can expect with the client. Like Peter Block, whose work Strachan and Pitters refer to in several places, the authors emphasize the need to take care of oneself in the planning and contracting stage of a process to create an arrangement that will work for consultant and client alike.

Part Three of the book focuses on what Strachan and Pitters call Management x5: Participants, Speakers, Logistics, Documents and Feedback. I found the chapter on participants to be very thorough in guiding us on how to make sure that the right people are invited (and sometimes disinvited) in order to ensure the successful completion of the session objectives. By taking a focus on outcomes the authors provide a wide range of examples of different types of processes and provide an easy to remember PIE chart (Persuade, Inform, Engage) as a way of considering how best to invite people to a session in order to secure the right mix and motivation. All very wise, practical and accessible advice. Strachan and Pitters pay similar attention to how to select, invite and guide speakers – matching style and process to session objectives and outcomes.

Throughout the book Strachan and Pitters provide examples from their own work and project experience. The examples are clearly laid out with Situation, Decisions and Results allowing the reader to quickly skim the context and details, taking mental notes for future references and stopping to ponder longer where the scenario has immediate applicability. 

For more information about this book and other resources, visit Dorothy Strachan at www.strachan-tomlinson.com and Marian Pitters at www.pittersassociates.ca. This book is available directly from the authors or online at Amazon.com.

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