Category Archives for "Risk Management"

A diagram showing the difference between a change and a reversal.

Force-Field Analysis

Force-Field Analysis is a structured decision making technique to help you improve the chances your change project or program is successful. This process visualizes your current position and helps you and your group / team rebalance the forces in your favor so the change becomes much more likely to succeed.

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Four squares with the words strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

SWOT Analysis

At the start of a project / program it’s important to get a handle on the current situation. Appreciating your strengths, studying opportunities, pinpointing weaknesses and identifying threats is a prudent way to kick you off in the right direction. Otherwise you may stop things that you shouldn’t or spend time, energy and money on stuff that you really should be avoiding at all costs. A great activity to run with your team to achieve this is a SWOT Analysis.

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A chart showing the different stages of a project.

Open Space Technology

Open Space Technology (OST) is an event format used in meetings of 5 to 2,000 people, invented by Harrison Owen in 1985​. Participants create the agenda for themselves and facilitators lead and record the resulting discussions. There’s a twist in this version with the inclusion of a process that gives the organizers a little more control over the agenda. While keeping all the benefits the participants feel from ownership of the day itself.

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A balanced scorecard diagram illustrating the steps of a business plan.

Balanced Scorecard

The Balanced Scorecard is a workshop technique for establishing the most useful high level measures by which to monitor your company’s / unit’s progress and performance against its strategic goals. It’s a great team building activity, process management tool and, when you do it properly, you end up with an action plan that’s fully aligned the company’s strategic plan.

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A diagram illustrating the roles and responsibilities of a project management plan.

Team Roles and Responsibilities Template

Team Roles & Responsibilities is an activity using a simple template to document roles and responsibilities of those involved in a project. Use this process to assign roles and responsibilities to members of your change / project team and to ensure that the team as a whole can proceed on a firm footing.

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A diagram illustrating the various sizes of triangles for a trading game.

The Trading Game

The Trading Game is a team building workshop that simulates the negotiating activities that may need to take place between different departments or organisations in the setting up of joint ventures.

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A stakeholder mapping diagram illustrating the relationship between an individual and a community.

Stakeholder Mapping

Stakeholder Mapping is a graphical illustration of how your stakeholders feel towards your change project or program. It helps you to identify who you need to influence and what action you need to take. It’s one of the most powerful change management processes on WorkshopBank and a must-do activity for any project manager.​

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A fishbone diagram displaying various types of training.

Fishbone Diagram

The Fishbone Diagram (also known as the Ishikawa diagram) is used to identify all the factors that have an impact on your problem. It is primarily an issue analysis technique but it also has a motivational and team building effect on participants as they go through the process. There’s nothing like building a shared understanding of a tricky problem to unite a team.

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A visual representation illustrating the four stages of a project using the Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument.

Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument Workshop

The Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument is one of the most effective conflict management strategies I’ve seen. It is also known as the Conflict Resolution Inventory. It is based on a model of conflict modes, which enables an analysis of individual styles in particular situations. Individuals can identify their primary style, and assess the productiveness of that style in the various situations that they encounter. They then have the choice to continue with that style, or to adopt others if they are more appropriate.

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A flowchart illustrating the stages of a project using the 5 whys technique.

5 Whys Root Cause Analysis

5 Whys is a root cause analysis tool for helping teams quickly get to causes of an issue before developing solutions. It’s a great team-builder because the group buys-in to the *real* problems as they surface during the process.

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A paper facilitating team role development with a grid of squares on it.

Team Role Development

The core aim of Team Role Development is to build relationships between team members of the same team or between multiple team units. The process achieves its objectives by identifying and building synergies between different role types to improve cohesion and efficiency.

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A diagram showing the steps of a project.

Problem Solving Team Building

Problems have a habit of being discussed to death. Everyone has an opinion. They all think they’re right. And they’re often unwilling to consider other options. Problem Solving Team Building (PSTB for short) is a 30-45 minute activity where the problem ‘owner’ will, with the help of their team, go through a structured process of brainstorming, issue analysis, and action planning to achieve a plausible solution to their issue.

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A prioritization matrix diagram displaying the impact and doability of various options.

Prioritization Matrix

Prioritization Matrix is a fun collaborative prioritization tool to compare the relative merits of alternative actions visually. There are elements of action planning, brainstorming, issue analysis and team building in this activity and one that I often use with teams as the conversation is always extremely focused.

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An example of a contract between two people.

Expectations Exchange

Expectations Exchange is a team building activity that provides clarity over respective roles in a team. It can also easily be adapted to use between departments and with clients at the start of a project.

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