LO – Refining a 100-Day Goal

Hint

Tools to help reach an agreement:

Voting: Secret ballot, a show of hands, or using voting dots

After narrowing down options (e.g. 3-5) on a flip chart, use voting dots to indicate preferred options.  If there is a tie, do a second or third round of voting.  In our 100-Day Challenge work, we use voting when we can, as it is important that people feel they have had a voice in making the decision and will more likely support it. 100-Day Challenge decisions where voting can be used:

• Electing team leader – secret ballot for this to avoid embarrassment
• Deciding on focus areas – Dot voting is helpful here
• Dot vote prioritizing ideas for the work plan after using a payoff matrix.

Workable Consensus:  A solution that everyone can live with.

It is important to listen to minority/opposing voices because they can be the source of innovative alternative approaches to solving the problem. When there seems to be broad agreement, it is advisable to test the level of agreement of all team members.  Options you could use:

• Agree fully and will actively implement
• Agree and will participate somewhat
• Neutral, not ready to participate, but will not stand in the way
• Disagree but will not stand in the way
• Disagree and will resist implementation.

If the group is still stuck, use a super-majority vote (75+ agreement) as a last resort.  Workable consensus can be used when the team is setting its 100-Day goal.

Hint

You can challenge the team to come up with a definition of what we mean by a good experience, and a method to measure this as the first step in the work plan. Something to be completed in the first 30 days of the project.

Or you can ask them to be more precise in the way they frame the goal. For example. “80% of victims will say that they have no hesitation whatsoever coming back to the same court if are ever victimized again”.

Hint

The mentor should give baseline info with the challenge note, but this does not always happen. Sometimes the teams have to gather info after they start, and sometimes they have to estimate or use the first 30 days to create data which can then be used to see if they can improve – this should be added as a problem situation to discuss.