LESSONS LEARNED WORKING GROUP
WRAP-UP SESSION
08/04/2009
MEETING ATTENDEES: Greg Bronson, RJ Davies, Jean Gustafson, Stephanie Herrick (co-Facilitator), Butch Labrecque (co-Facilitator), Greg Menenski, Christine O'Brien, Ron Parks, Andy Slusar, Lisa Stensland, Casper Vanwyk
AGENDA:
- Agenda/Mtg Objectives Review
- Facilitation Team Recap
- Shared Outcomes Recap
- Best Practices Recap
- LLWG Recap
- Shared experiences and reflections on our original list of Lessons Learned "problems"
- Closing Remarks
MEETING OBJECTIVES
- Closure to the year-long (calendar time) effort
- Understand state of group output
- Opportunity for group sharing
- Do actual LL'ed on the LLWG approach itself
- Review original parking lot items
SUBTEAM REPORTS
See Tools > Attachments to download the PowerPoint presentation ( LLWG presentation Summary 2009-08-04.ppt ) summarizing the three subteam's final deliverables.
LLWG RECAP
See Tools > Attachments to download the Excel spreadsheet (LLWG themes and topics.xls) summarizing the results of the LLWG Survey into Themes and Topics. While there were half a dozen themes of feedback, the major positive themes were Learning and Networking; the major obstacle theme was Commitment. Since meeting attendees felt that the LLWG was high value, we drilled down into Commitment and asked "when would the approach of using a working group approach work best"? We came up with the following:
- You can use facilitation to prioritize work and allow people to self-select on what they work
- There are limited time pressures; deadlines are self-imposed and can be flexible/renegotiated
- All participants are knowledgeable about the topic
- All participants are direct beneficiaries of the outcomes (so they "want to" vs "have to")
- When the time allocated is finite (you will lose people's attention if it goes on too long)
SHARED EXPERIENCES & REFLECTIONS
Stephanie walked through her experiences using LLWG deliverables to assist her in leading LL sessions and collaborating with Chris Obrien to come up with some LL best practices as documented in "Conduct an LL Session" (https://forge.cornell.edu/sf/go/artf20053?nav=1&_pagenum=1&returnUrlKey=1249677012171). She then reviewed the original table of "problems" identified in Session 1 to see if each problem had been, at some level, covered by virtue of repeatedly employing the work done by the LLWG and showed that, at least in part, each one had indeed been addressed.
Others shared their experiences and Chris O'Brien encouraged the group to join the new facilitation-team-l@cornell.edu, an email list that she is now administering, that helps people network with other facilitators on campus.