facilitation – Reimagine. Strategy.

February 2, 2026

Centralized Specificity

I have a love/hate relationship with centralization.

It’s a tension I see all the time. In federations, what is the optimal level of shared service to be provided by the national office to gain efficiencies, while still maintaining local personality and autonomy? In community development, where does it make sense to amalgamate back-office functions while maintaining specificity of neighbourhood or cultural preference? In philanthropy, granting committees would rather receive a single, coordinated funding proposal than a dozen similar, disjointed ones.

January 26, 2026

Collective Missions

I work with a lot of nonprofit Boards of Directors.

I’m noticing that the ones I enjoy the most are the Boards who understand their role primarily as advancing the organization’s mission more than advancing the organization’s existence.

December 9, 2024December 9, 2024

Vanilla Strategy

In this last installment of my mini-series on ‘facilitation tips from the trenches,’ I’m turning my attention to how the feedback elicited shapes the decisions we make.

Remember that I am a fan of collaborative strategy building. Multiple perspectives are protective. They reduce blind spots and build buy-in.

Except…

…when they encourage us to play it too safe.

December 2, 2024

A Topic I’m Tired Of

In this next installment of our mini-series on running better meetings based on what I’m learning as a facilitator lately, we’re going to focus on meeting formats.

It’s a conversation that I’m really sick of, but it keeps coming up in my work, so I guess it needs to come up in my writing too. Because it’s a decision that can make or break your meetings.

November 25, 2024

Less Consensus Makes for Better Meetings

This week, I’m shifting gears from “curated content” to “facilitation tips from the trenches,” to catch you up on what I’m learning in the rooms I’m leading.

As a facilitator, I find it much easier to help groups articulate their divergent ideas than to converge around a single idea. So maybe I’m just taking the easier road, but I find myself delaying the search for convergence these days. Here’s why: