Face to Face Choosing a Focus for your 100-Day Challenge
Choosing a Focus Area for Your 100-Day Challenge
There is no right answer here, but whichever focus areas is chosen, it is important to define it sharply enough so it is possible to pick a reasonably sized 100-Day Team (8-12 members).
If the focus of the 100-Day Challenge is too broad or too vague, such as “we want to make progress on ending gender-based violence in our municipality”, it will be very difficult to decide who needs to be on the 100-Day Team, or the team will be way too large to be a real team. As you probably have experienced, when teams get to be too large (more than 15 people), they become very slow and tough to manage.
It is important to engage other leaders in making the decision about the focus area. This will create buy-in.
Steps to Zero in on a Single Focus Area
1. Clarify
Go over the menu – the relevant impact indicators. Ask if there are clarification questions on any of them.
Make sure that you only allow clarification questions at this stage: questions aimed at understanding what is meant by this. You have to be firm in not allowing the conversation to drift to evaluation or commentary on the impact indicator.
2. Agree on Criteria
Share the criteria for deciding which focus area to start with (slide in the deck) and make sure everyone is clear on these.
3. Reflect in Silence
Ask group members to reflect in silence for 5 minutes on which of the impact indicators they feel particularly strong about: either as being appropriate or inappropriate to start with as a focus area for the 100-Day Challenge.
4. Advocate
For each impact indicator, ask if anyone would like to share a strong perspective about it. Ok if no strong views are expressed. If they are, try to bring the discussion back to the criteria and how well it fits. Allow follow up questions or comments by others in response to opening perspectives. But try to limit the commentary on any particular impact indicator to 7 minutes. Use a timer if necessary.
5. Vote
If the discussion on # 4 extends to 30 minutes, signal that “we will sped no more than 10 minutes, and then move to voting”. And hold the pace. Then give each member of the group 2-5 voting dots (depending on how many impact indicators are on the menu), and ask them to use the dots to vote on their choice of impact indicator to start with. If you are distributing more than 2 voting dots per person, tell them that one person cannot cast more than two votes per impact indicator. So as not to skew the vote.
6. Confirm Group's Decision
Count the dots. Pick the one that gets the most votes to start with. Remind them that this is just a start, and that they can tackle the second one in the second 100 days. Resist the temptation to combine two impact indicators!
