Strategic facilitation
Strategic facilitation refers to working with senior groups of decision makers. These might be senior management teams tasked with the development of new strategies or with implementing existing strategies. Or they might be groups involving senior managers and full-time union officials who wish to address strategic issues together for the first time. Strategic facilitation might involve a single workshop or meeting or it can involve a more complex and longer engagement. Some examples of strategic facilitation are:
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Working for one day with the senior management of a third level institution to help them identify and review major current issues that needed to be addressed for the college to move forward effectively. This led to a set of recommendations some of which were for immediate implementation and some for further consideration. By putting aside a whole day the senior management team were able to make progress more quickly than by extending discussions over a series of management team meetings.
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Working for a period of months with a national partnership body to help it to develop a new strategy. This involved a series of local review workshops, a national conference of key stakeholders, and a working group to draft an outline strategy. This was then ratified and reworked to include an action plan for a three-year period.
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Working for a period of months with a major trade union to help it develop a new structure and a new strategy for a large division of members. This involved the design and facilitation of visioning workshops for different occupational categories and branches as well as two major workshops for all categories together. This led to a statement of broad strategic objectives that was then elaborated into an action plan for a two-year period.