Catalyze Strategic Planning & Create Collaboration through Facilitation
Services: Strategic Planning, System Design, Meeting and Retreat Facilitation
Focus Areas: Apprenticeship and Work-Based Learning, Workforce Development, K-12 education, Postsecondary Education
Staff: Avery, Merilee, Marc
In 2021, Kinetic West facilitated a retreat for Reach Higher Montana, an initiative of the Montana Higher Education Student Assistance Corporation that helps students pursue educational opportunities. The retreat was a summit focused on bringing people together to identify work-based learning priorities to ensure youth and employers have the best possible outcomes in apprenticeships and other hands-on training experiences. Kinetic West was brought in because there was a lot of momentum and interest in work-based learning, and Reach Higher Montana thought they could do more around this work with the help of a facilitator.
As a facilitator, Kinetic West took the following approach:
Investing in preparation and prep work. Ahead of meetings, we work to gather inputs and information (via desk research, surveys, listening sessions, focus groups, and/or interviews) that we then synthesize and share so that meeting participants can have focused discussions and generate ideas in a shorter span of time. For this retreat and following retreats, this looked like pre-event surveys to participants to guide the conversation and ensure priorities are identified.
Building a tight agenda with sharp discussion prompts and sufficient buffers and breaks. In advance of the retreat, Kinetic West worked with members to collaboratively build an agenda that fostered the creation of actionable steps post retreat.
Engaging members with a mix of formats that appeal to different ways people like to process and share information. For example, “think, pair, share” equally engages both internal and external processors by giving time to reflect on one’s own before talking with a partner and then sharing out to the larger group. When utilized during the retreat, this approach helped foster learning among all participants.
Using live polling. By using live polling during the retreat, we were able to encourage broad participation and quickly gather feedback and information to guide the rest of the retreat.
Supporting ongoing communication. Communication throughout the engagement, not just immediately before and after, is key to successful sessions and continued momentum forward to the next stage of the work. For this retreat, Kinetic West has maintained communication and engagement through running annual retreats and quarterly meetings. This continued communication led to the development of a 3-year strategic plan that captures priorities and gaps and synthesizes what the collaborative can do moving forward.
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By using the above methodology, Kinetic West was able to work with Reach Higher Montana to foster the creation of a work-based learning collaborative. The idea behind the collaborative was to bring together invested parties to align on the vision of expanding apprenticeships and other work-based learning experiences and improve the quality of hands-on education across the state of Montana. The collaborative now runs a retreat every year at which Kinetic West acts as the primary facilitators and augments support for the collaborative. By bringing together partners, crafting meaningful annual retreats, and facilitating quarterly meetings, Kinetic West has ensured that the collaborative stays committed to improving student outcomes.
Through the collaborative and facilitation of annual retreats, Kinetic West is proud to have partnered with Reach Higher Montana to improve the learning and life outcomes of students in Montana. This project is a great example of how purposeful retreat facilitation can lay the groundwork for strategic planning and even organization design. We’d love to hear from partners that want to use facilitation to catalyze strategic planning and create meaningful results for their organizations.
To learn more about our facilitation approach, please email avery@kineticwest.com.