Key Stages in planning, designing and delivering a Large Group Intervention

Scoping

What's the scope of the whole project and what are the 'givens' for this event? This is generally a couple of hours meeting with the key personnel involved to action plan what needs to happen, when it needs to happen by, and what roles people are taking on to get things moving.

Planning/design meeting

Always with people from within the organisation. Typically we would work with a 'design' or 'planning' team made up of a cross-section of the participants who will attend the event. Our preference is for this to be a face-to-face meeting. However we have designed ways to illicit this information where face-to-face is not possible. Typically this takes two - three days but can be done in half day sessions to suit your needs.

It is important at this stage that the leadership data from the system is integrated into this meeting. Leaders are not abdicating responsibility to this group to design the event; they are sharing responsibility with them for a successful event from everyone's perspective.

Draft design

From this information we would put together the first draft design for the event. This would have several options for each of the pieces of work. This is the worked on further by the design team to ensure the design ideas are a good 'fit' with the organisation

At this phase we would also be working with the internal team to ensure the logistics are on track and we would be able to give the venue more details on timings etc. You would also be ready to send delegates more detailed information on what will happen during the two-day event- especially any pre-work.

Second planning meeting

This is where we are able to finalise the design. This ranges from minute-by-minute timings right through to briefings for speakers. We would ask questions such as, 'Does the flow of the activities make sense now you can see the whole two-days laid out?' Is the timing right for each piece of work? At the end of this meeting we would draw up action plans for the continuing work - who is going to brief speakers, what information do they need and who will supply this.

Final design

We would work with the internal team to finalise the wording on any handouts, to ensure all of the logistics are prepared and what details they can send to delegates prior to the event.

Set-up

It is important for any event, and even more so for an event lasting two-days, that the set-up is done well. This means testing any sound equipment, the tables are in the correct position, that flipcharts are ready etc. We typically spend up to half a day getting ready for an event. During this time any speakers who want to rehearse in the room are able to do so. If organisations are providing their own stewards to look after the event we spend time briefing them on their role.

Event

Large group events have their own dynamics and it is important that the language of any facilitation builds on the dynamics in the room. We are fully experienced facilitators and can facilitate events with our consultants or we can work with the internal or leadership teams to coach them to co-facilitate. The dynamics of facilitating large groups are very different from more tradition smaller groups so we encourage internal teams to have coaching prior to the event. Understanding the processes and dynamics is vital to the smooth running of the event

At the close of day one (during a two-day event) we would ask evaluation questions on how the day had been and any tips and advice for tomorrow. Based on the responses and feedback during the day, overnight we can then re-design any of the day two processes to take account of this data. At the start of day two we would always feed back the evaluation data in a non-judgemental way but which shows that the data has been listened to.

Evaluation

The final part of any event is for delegates to complete an evaluation form. This typically asks questions, 'How far did we achieve the purpose/outcomes of the event?' 'What else needs to happen?' We can work with the internal team to provide an analysis of this data or can take on this analysis ourselves. Most organisations we work with find this evaluation data invaluable in their forward planning and more often than not send this to all delegates.

Review

After the event we will plan in a review session to talk through the event, give our feedback and support any further plans work working in this way with the organisation. One of our principles is rigorously transferring learning from ourselves to our clients.

In-house capability

Our preferred style of working is to transfer some of our large-scale capacity to an in-house team. It's impossible during the design of one event for an in-house team to learn everything about this type of working but it's always beneficial for them to know what questions to ask, when they need to ask for additional help, when large-scale is appropriate etc.