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FAQ

Your Questions About Strategic Planning and Meeting Facilitation Answered

Keeping It Real, and Fun

C.J. brings clarity, presence, and the ability to read a room. He keeps the energy up, the conversation focused, and the group engaged. With the right mix of structure, insight, and humour, your team will be at ease — and on task. 

What does a Strategic Planning Facilitator Do?

Long story short, we help you get better results faster by letting you focus on your business, not the planning process itself.

A strategic planning facilitator designs and leads structured conversations that help leadership teams make thorough decisions, align on priorities, and establish accountability.

A good facilitator brings a proven framework, manages the process first and keeps the group focused on the agenda and outcomes that matter most.

We make sure all voices are heard, disagreement is handled productively, and discussions move the group to decisions people understand and support.

When you value effectiveness and efficiency for critical meetings or strategic planning, a facilitator can help.

Basically, we recommend using a facilitator when the stakes are high and the conversations matter. We’re not your chiropractor asking to see you every week ‘just because’. We know you probably have a good handle on your day-to-day meetings. Where we come into play is when everyone in the room needs to be fully focused on the business, not on running the meeting.

Strategic planning and leadership meetings often involve competing priorities, strong opinions, and decisions that affect the whole organization. A facilitator allows leaders to fully participate in that discussion without also having to manage the process, time, or group dynamics.

If you want focused conversations, productive disagreement, and decisions that don’t unravel once people leave the room, an experienced facilitator can deliver great ROI for your team. 

We get this question a lot. 

A facilitator is responsible for guiding the process of your conversation. Think: clear agenda, ensuring “Dave” doesn’t take over the meeting and making sure your team is aligned and assigned accountability at the end. Our role is to guide the process, apply a framework, and help the group surface perspectives, work through disagreement, and reach decisions YOU OWN.

A consultant is typically responsible for their opinion. They analyze the situation, offer recommendations, and often tell the organization what they think should be done.

We’ve done both. However, we like facilitation because it creates ownership for the team for their ideas. At the end of the day, it’s not the consultant’s business – it’s yours. Yours where you need to be responsible and accountable to the work and the outcomes.

In short, facilitators help groups do their own best thinking and commit to it. Consultants provide answers. Both can be valuable, but they serve different purposes.

Of course we get this question every time… here’s what we can tell you before we’ve had a chance to connect in person: It depends.

But! Before you think we’ve copped out on the answer, here is some information that will help:

The cost of a facilitator depends on the type and complexity of the meeting, the number of participants, and the level of customization required. A single quarterly planning session for a leadership team is priced differently from multi-day strategic planning offsite or programs that include follow-up support. Pricing will then also vary based on the size of the organization, the leadership level of the participants and 

Good facilitators focus on your outcomes, not just time in the room. That investment reflects the value of decisions made, alignment achieved, and accountability established rather than the hours spent together.

If we had to put numbers on it, let’s say we don’t take projects for less than $1,000 for something like a two hour small group meeting with a not-for-profit up to higher five figures for a multi-million dollar company multi-day strategic planning process with their executive team at an offsite location. 

We are confident that we price our facilitation work in a way that generates high value and strong ROI for your organization.

See, it really does depend!

 

The right facilitator feels like a fit for your team.

Look for someone who is confident but neutral, skilled at managing strong opinions, and able to keep the group focused on decisions and outcomes.

Professional experience with similar types of organization and leadership teams  can matter, but so does the facilitator’s breadth of experience because they can draw from different industries, best practices, etc.

We think a credential is also important to show a facilitator has the actual education to do the work. Facilitation is an unregulated industry and lots of professionals can say they are facilitators when they lack the emotional intelligence, quick thinking and ability to manage team dynamics fairly.

Basically a combination of personality, facilitation skill, and real-world experience will determine whether a facilitator can guide your team to alignment and action.

One additional note – we aren’t for everyone. Our facilitation is best for people and teams who want to speak directly, in plain language and have some fun with the process. You’ll learn that when you contact us. 

How motivated is your leadership team?

For small organizations, the strategic planning process can take a few weeks from start to finish. This is from the time you decide to engage a facilitator until you have a solid strategic plan with accountability baked-in. 

For larger organizations, the process can take a couple of months. The complexity of issues, scheduling of leaders and pre-work are generally intensified. 

As general, really general guidelines, the smallest organizations can do strategic planning in three weeks. This involves a week or two of pre-work, a full one-day facilitated planning session to see the big picture priorities, come to alignment and accountability and then have the leadership team prepare a final document in the days following that session.

For medium and large organizations, the minimum time would again be three weeks, that would be a scheduling miracle. At minimum it would take two weeks of pre-work, a two-day facilitated planning session (this can be on consecutive days but it can be good for larger organizations to come back for the second day with advocates for each proposed strategic priority and they need a week or two to prepare their positions). Then after the facilitated sessions, those strategic plans can take a week to six weeks to be finalized by the organization. 

What we can’t do is facilitate your strategic planning session later this week. There simply isn’t enough time to prepare in a way that delivers the value we promise our clients. Aim to plan your sessions at minimum one month but generally two months in advance. We want you to succeed and have the best possible experience. 

Yes, when those conversations are part of a strategic planning or leadership process.

However, a good facilitator does the work of managing a lot of conflict before the session. This includes understanding personalities, pressures, and where leaders stand on key strategic priorities. Going in informed allows us as facilitators to anticipate friction, manage group dynamics with respect, nuance and forward momentum. We keep difficult conversations productive and focused on decisions that move the organization forward.

When there are deep seated conflicts or challenges, we recommend our executive coaching or leadership development services.

Coaching is often the right tool for ongoing or deeply personal challenges, but facilitation focuses on helping groups work through tough issues that affect direction, priorities, and execution.

The most common mistake is lack of accountability after decisions are made. Teams leave the room aligned in theory, but ownership, next steps, and follow-through are unclear.

A close second is allowing certain voices to dominate the conversation, which limits perspective and focuses on personalities more than problem solving.

The third is lack of preparation and focus/ committmentby participants, which leads to surface-level discussion and rushed decisions.

Working with us solves all three by establishing accountability during the session, balancing participation and personalities in the room, and doing the pre-work that gets people thinking strategically before the meeting ever starts.

to dominate the conversation, which limits perspective and weakens commitment. The third is lack of preparation by participants, which leads to surface-level discussion and rushed decisions.

Working with us solves all three by establishing accountability during the session, balancing participation and personalities in the room, and doing the pre-work that gets people thinking strategically before the meeting ever starts.

Yes and no. Facilitators make many decisions, often on the fly during a session. However, we do not make decisions for your organization. Our role is to guide the process, apply a framework, and help your leadership team work through the issues and strategic priorities.
We recommend working with a facilitator with experience across industries. We can point out potential blind spots and suggest areas of strategic focus that may not be on your radar.

At the end of the day, decisions stay with your leadership team. This keeps them accountable. Our value is helping you see the full picture, have the right conversations, and make decisions everyone understands and is prepared to act on and be accountable for.

Working with a facilitator makes your leadership team’s time together far more effective. We help you focus on the decisions that matter, keep discussions on track, and ensure everyone participates. Accountability is established during the session so next steps are clear, and potential conflicts are managed proactively. No derailed conversations.

With our framework and experience across industries, we can also surface blind spots and highlight opportunities your team might overlook. The result is better decisions, stronger alignment, and a plan your team can actually act on.

Less of this:

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More of this:

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