Facilitation practices in decision workshops

Abstract

Decision workshops, sometimes called decision conferences, help a group of decision makers gain a shared understanding of a decision problem, analyse issues and commit to an action plan under the guidance of an experienced facilitator. This work seeks to identify best practice in the early stages of the facilitation of such workshops when the emphasis is placed on problem structuring and the main issues of a complex decision problem are identified and explored. Four decision workshops, based on the same hypothetical scenario but facilitated by a different person, were organized. Video material of the simulated workshops was analysed to compare and contrast the facilitated meetings including the problem structuring methods used. A framework for studying facilitation practices emerged. The effect of a facilitator on the structuring of the problem, the group decision process and the outcome of the workshop was studied. The results of the work indicate that a facilitator's style and approach to the workshop may have an impact on the action plan devised. Further research is required to generalize the findings of our work.

Keywords:

• decision workshops
• facilitation
• problem structuring methods
• soft OR

Acknowledgements

We owe an enormous set debt of gratitude to Valerie Belton, Jutta Geldermann and Martin York for their facilitation of a workshop. The fourth facilitator was Simon French, who is one of the authors of this paper. We are also grateful to the postgraduate students who took part in the workshops, role playing the problem owners. The CAMaR laboratories were funded with a grant from the UK's JIF funding scheme. Manchester Business School provided pump-priming funding for the study.