Principled Innovation LLC

Attention agenda

June 28th, 2006

As a follow-up to yesterday’s unsession on the attention economy, I am posting a generic attention agenda template that I’ve used successfully with my clients over the last few years. The attention agenda is a radical departure from the traditional timed agendas we typically use, mostly because it challenges participants to focus their attention on the specific outcomes of meetings rather than the component pieces of the agenda itself. An attention agenda also creates the freedom for conversations to flow to what is most important at any given moment rather than what is “supposed” to be discussed during a specific time block. The attention agenda makes it possible for groups to engage with critical, complex and substantive issues in a non-linear fashion, which is frequently a more productive way to achieve desired outcomes. On a very basic level, I have found that when you present an attention agenda to a group, it quickly sends the message that the organization does not want a traditional discussion. This kind of very clear signal is extremely valuable in shifting and calibrating expectations and changing the way everyone engages in the conversation.

From a facilitation perspective, the attention agenda shifts the approach from “running” the meeting to orchestrating the conversation. The control over what happens in the meeting shifts from the chair or facilitator to the group, which is really where it belongs. After all, it is the group’s attention that is being invested (or squandered, depending on how things go) and so it should be the group that drives, with guidance and support from a process advisor. It is definitely more demanding for the nominal leader, but I think that extra effort produces far better results, both in terms of getting at what is most important and in the richness and depth of the dialogue that leads to those outcomes.

If you have questions about how to create or facilitate around an attention agenda, please contact me. By the way, the document is posted in a new format called Macromedia FlashPaper 2 which doesn’t require any kind of reader (just for you Ben) and can still be printed. I think it is a great product and one I’ll be using on my website going forward.

Entry Filed under: Principled Innovation Blog, What's New?, Innovation, Associations, Extreme Makeover, The Association Innovator, Simplicity