Module 7 quiz | Facilitation Foundations

Question 1 of 8

You announce four minutes for a divergent round. It is going well, so you let it run to nine. What is the cost, and what should you have done?

You taught the room your numbers are decorative, and every timebox after it is worth less. Either hold the number or change it out loud, naming what it comes out of. You lost the constraint that was producing the quality, so the last five minutes will be weaker than the first four. The cost is the five minutes; take them off the break to stay on schedule. No cost — extending a productive activity is exactly the responsiveness module 4 argues for.

Question 2 of 8

You are thirty minutes from the finish time and the group is not going to reach the artifact without more time. What is the rule?

Overrun quietly and keep going — nobody objects when the work is clearly landing. Finish on time. People have made arrangements, and a promise kept is worth more than one more agenda item. The outcome wins and something else gets cut. What you must not do is let both slip: overrun by twenty minutes and still not get the outcome. Split the difference: overrun by fifteen and accept a rougher version of the artifact.

Question 3 of 8

Which set of statements about the arc is right?

Attention is roughly flat if the content is good enough; energy problems are really engagement problems. The ninety-minute cycle is established by ultradian rhythm research as applying to meetings, so plan blocks against it precisely. Hardest thinking after lunch, once people have settled and eaten; the morning is for warming up. Hardest thinking in the first ninety minutes, something physical or social after lunch, never the key decision at quarter to five — and the ninety-minute figure is a practitioner rule of thumb, not a measured finding about meetings.

Question 4 of 8

The room is difficult. How do you tell whether to call a break or hold?

Offer a break either way. If they are working they will decline it. Tired looks like withdrawal — shorter answers, less eye contact, quick agreement, phones. Groan looks like effort — talking over each other, repeating, frustrated but still leaning in. Check the clock — if it has been more than ninety minutes it is fatigue, otherwise hold. A frustrated room is always a tired room; frustration is what fatigue looks like in a group.

Question 5 of 8

You are twenty minutes behind with an hour to go. How do you cut?

Cut a whole activity from the middle, say so out loud, and protect commit and close. Drop the close and write up the reflection afterwards; it is the block that survives being done by email. Ask the room which activity to drop, so the decision is theirs. Trim two minutes off each remaining activity so nothing has to be dropped.

Question 6 of 8

At the break the sponsor says: “While we’ve got everyone, could we also cover the budget question?” What do you say?

No — the objective was agreed and adding to it mid-session undermines the frame. Yes — they are the sponsor, and refusing an addition in the corridor is a bad look. “Let me see if it fits” — then quietly compress the afternoon to absorb it. “We can, and it’ll take about forty minutes, which means we drop the prioritisation round or we finish at half five. Which would you rather?”

Question 7 of 8

You run an exercise and it does not land. Blank faces, thin output. What do you do?

Carry on positively. Drawing attention to it makes the room self-conscious and costs you more than it saves. Name it plainly, switch format and go again — thirty seconds, no apology, no post-mortem in the room. Explain the exercise again more carefully; most flops are instruction failures. Ask the room what went wrong, so the next attempt is designed with them.

Question 8 of 8

The objection: the best moments are the unplanned ones, and cutting a conversation off at your timebox serves the agenda and loses the session. What is the honest answer?

It is right, which is why timeboxes should be treated as guidance rather than commitments. It is wrong: the timings came out of the design work, and overrunning wastes it. It confuses two things: timeboxes govern activities, and open discussion should not be timeboxed at all. Partly right, and you can usually tell the difference — a conversation going somewhere has new information entering it, one that is overrunning has the same three points restated with more conviction. Extend if it is the real conversation, but extend out loud, with a price.

0 of 8 answered

Managing Time and Energy

A letter for facilitators who give a damn.