Advanced collaboration frequently requires a skilled implementor or facilitator. We get asked all the time about experts who can help. But there are so many to choose from that we decided to publish a breakdown of facilitators. We have customers using our software in each category, but thought this breakdown would help you decide what type of facilitator you could get assistance from:
of facilitation.
Design Thinking: Creative and solution based facilitation for everything from designing physical products to corporate strategies. This well established facilitation realm encompasses the classic Ideo/Stanford d.School approaches as well as Human Centered and Template based ‘Canvas’ experts.
Design Thinking: Tom Hulme – Google Ventures Partner & Facilitator
Design Thinking: Tim Brown – CEO IDEO
Organizational Development: Alignment and structure based facilitation where experts are often classically trained and certified by numerous OD and/or OE Organizational Effectiveness groups. This group represents the largest formal sub-set of facilitators. Thousands of leadership consultants and learning & development departments are frequently experts in at least one OD facilitation method.
Roland Sullivan – OD practitioner for 55 years
Bill Gellermann – Founder OD Network (50,000 people)
Purpose/Principle Based: Facilitation focused on leadership, deeper conversations and participant-driven, self organization. The most widely used versions are Open Space Technology, Appreciative Inquiry, Art of Hosting, Unconference, World Cafe.
Harrison Owen – bestseller and early expert OST facilitator
Ria Baeck – global AoH steward and facilitator
Model Based: Rigorously adopting models, these facilitators help to achieve transformative change management and wicked problem solving with large groups/organizations. While there are thousands of facilitation models available, Theory U out of MIT, MG Taylor System originally out of the US Air Force, have tens of thousands of practitioners.
Otto Sharmer – MIT Professor, trainer of 10,000 Theory U Facilitators
Gail Taylor- MGT founder and Columbia peace facilitator
Newly Developing: As work cycles rapidly accelerate, new methodologies are being invented every day. While their roots frequently stem from other methods, they have successfully differentiated themselves enough to warrant a category. Some of the most popular in recent years are Circular, Emergent, Essentialism and Holocracy.
Brian Robertson – Inventor Holocracy
Greg McKeown – NYTimes bestseller and Essentialism inventor
Performance Based: With roots in ancient Japanese philosophy (inspiring Toyota production lines and the 2001 Agile Manifesto) Agile and Lean are the most popular methods for waste reduction and incremental improvements. Facilitators in these categories have not only mastered facilitating teams, but are frequently subject matter experts as well. For example, within Agile, a Scrum facilitator is often a computer programmer as well.
Kent Beck – founder Agile Manifesto
Eric Ries – author Lean Startup
Andrew Stellman – O’Reilly selected agile facilitator author
Front of the Room: Although not driven by an overarching methodology, this collection of facilitators, usually taking the title of Moderator (event or panel), M.C., Speaker or Rapporteur, masterfully lead groups through a client/customer driven agenda.
Maria Giammarinaro – UN Special Rapporteur for human trafficking and Italian judge
Dan Rather – journalist and master panel moderator
Behind the Scenes: These facilitators work their magic by designing and producing medium to large events with hundreds to thousands of participants, frequently integrating multiple methodologies
This is UNLIKELY to be included as it is currently too wide ranging with thousands of methods contained
Targeted: Trained to achieve industry-specific workflow, business requirements and change flow processes. For example, McKinsey & Accenture have excellent facilitation approaches with thousands of experts.
Stewart Emery – Bestselling author and facilitator of Mastercard Priceless campaign
Kaye Adams – BBC journalist and master facilitator
Other – please list (as this is the first time publishing, we’d love to know readers thoughts on any additional categories and/or methodologies within a category that we will consider moving forward).
