用团体工作程序技术改善会议成效(四)

 二. Where in the decision-making process are we?
   9. Reaching a decision usually requires a number of discrete steps, such
as defining the problem, generating alternatives, and so on. Sometimes those steps all occur in one meeting. But on major decisions these steps are often sequenced over a number of meetings.
  10. At each step, different behavior is required of participants. So it is imperative that the meeting planner specify where in the decision making process this meeting (or this agenda item) is.
 There are a number of ways of describing the steps in the decision-making process, but the one I continue to find the most universal is:
  Define the problem or opportunity (may include defining criteria for acceptability or success)
  Generate alternatives
  Evaluate alternatives
  Select a course of action
  Define the implementation plan
  Establish mechanisms for determining whether or not your approach is working
 11. I find it very helpful, particularly among people who work together frequently, to have a clearly defined series of steps that the group uses whenever they make decisions. It doesn't have to be the one above, so long as it works for the kinds of issues people in your organization are addressing. What does matter is that it is used frequently enough so that people develop a common language and common set of expectations for each step in the process. I recommend you post these steps in each meeting room, so that participants can refer to them at a glance.
三.Which group process technique is appropriate for this meeting (or for this agenda item)?   12. Most group process techniques are useful for only one of the steps in the decision making process. A key example is the technique known as "brainstorming." The key elements of brainstorming are to engage the group in generating a large quantity of alternatives, suspending judgment as to which ideas are workable. This is a very powerful technique – in fact, it often generates so many options that it overpowers the team's ability to evaluate the alternatives in a reasonable period of time.
 13. But it is a technique that is useful primarily for the "generate alternatives" step in decision making. Yet I've seen people use the technique at many other steps in the process. The participants will obediently generate all kinds of answers, but then nobody will know what to do with these answers because the don't seem to be contributing to resolution. In fact, they seem to be taking you back to an earlier step in the process (they are).
 Here's a quick summary of some of the issues at each step in the decision making process, and some of the useful group process techniques for each step:
  四.Define the Problem or Opportunity   14. The biggest problem with this step is to get people to do it! Groups have an amazing capacity for skipping over problem definition and going straight to thinking about possible solutions. Not only do they go straight to solutions, they go straight to the solutions they already know how to do, (e.g. if your company makes widgets, you'll assume that the solution to the problem is to make a widget).
  15. The problem with this behavior is that you are likely to come up with a truly wonderful solution to the wrong problem, or you don't think through the fundamental issues so you come up with something that is just a patch on top of prior patches.
  五. Here are a few techniques for helping groups define problems:
   16. Force Field Analysis: Have the group brainstorm two lists: (1) forces that are "driving" for change; (2) forces that are "restraining" change. Then discuss strategies to eliminate the restraining forces and capitalize on the driving forces.
 17. Relationship Diagrams: Write a short statement of an issue or problem on a card (or large post-it) and stick it on a blank wall. Give everyone cards and ask them to identify the factors that affect the issue or problem, writing one idea per card (big enough so that they are easy to read). Move the cards around so that the factors that are related to each other are located together. Analyze the relationships. Use colored tape or strings to show cause-effect relationship Those cards that are most often seen as being a cause (have the most tape or strings attached) are more likely to be the root cause of your problem.
 18. Immersion: Hold the session in a facility that permits the group to move around, break off into small groups, or even work alone. Before the team gathers, create a "high stimulus" environment containing anything that might be related to the issue -- articles, books, pictures, (even toys that can be used to diagram or model ideas, e.g. Tinker Toys). Break into small groups and ask small groups to prowl through any of the materials they want. Give them a time deadline to report back anything they've found that might apply to the problem. After the reports, agree on promising trends and give teams new assignments related to those trends. Only after you've totally immersed yourselves in thinking about the problem from many different perspectives does the team try to reach agreement on the problem definition.
 19. Invent the Problem: After "immersion," state the problem as if you know the outcome, but just don't know how you got there. For example, a car rental executive might say: "Picture this. You've got no central reservation system and things are running very well. The workload is up but costs are way down. How did you do it?"
 六. Generate Alternatives   20. The real challenges during this step are to: 1) help people suspend judgmental ways of thinking; 2) help people get out of old ways of thinking about the problem, and 3) separate ideas from personalities (If Bill has identified 10 ideas, no particular idea is so associated with Bill that people feel a need to support or oppose the idea because it is Bill's).
 21. Most people who work in the creativity field stress that people need to be in a playful, even joyous, mood to be optimally creative. Some R&D companies even provide water guns, have toys on all the meeting room tables, encourage food fights – anything to get people out of being too adult.
 Here are a few of the simpler techniques for generating alternatives:
 22. Brainstorming: Get people to generate lots, and lots, of ideas. List them all on a flipchart or whiteboard. Don't permit any evaluative comments (even positive ones). The creative ideas are likely to come after you've flushed out the old ideas, so push for quantity.
 23. Analogies (Synectics): Get people to identify options by working through several analogies. "If our organization was a biological system the way we'd solve this problem would be ...." "If it were a virus, we'd ...."
 24. "If I had My Druthers" Fantasy: Create fantasy solutions with no rules or "givens" including physical laws like gravity or market realities. "If I had my druthers we'd all communicate using ESP, and then we wouldn't need..." After several fantasies, talk about ways you could solve the problem in a similar manner while addressing physical or market realities, i.e. use cell phones instead of ESP.
七. Evaluate Alternatives    25. If you use the techniques described above for generating alternatives, your problem is likely to be that you've generated so many alternatives that you don't know how to evaluate them in a timely manner. Sometimes it is even worthwhile to put off the evaluation for a follow-up meeting so you can have a work group do some analysis of the alternatives between meetings.

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