Guild Facilitation Guide

The guild is usually open to all individuals interested in the specific area of the guild. All participants are equal in the guild. 

The Guilds often meet monthly or biweekly, with one of the co-facilitators facilitating the meeting

The Guild facilitator's job includes:

1.     Scheduling the Guild meetings

2.     Preparing and distributing the Guild agenda

3.     Keeping the guild moving forward and honoring the timeboxes 

The Guild facilitator is not a manager but an equal peer of all the Guild participants

The guild's agenda will include some of the following as time allows:

1. Review of the Previous Meeting and Assignments

2. Continuous Improvement Activity - see our e-Guide, The Definition of Awesome - Creating Awesome Teams Through Continuous Improvement Activities.

a.) Review and update the adoption board.

b.) Ideation activity for Continuous Improvement ideas

c.) Selection and building of an action plan for a Continuous Improvement idea

d.) Implementation and assignments for the action plan

3. Lean Coffee Activity (Peer Coaching) – see our blog, How to Organize and Facilitate Lean Coffees

a.) What to discuss

i.)Before or at the beginning of the lean coffee activity, the participants are asked to right on a post-it note a topic they would like to have discussed. one issue per note.

b.) Voting

i.) All the post-it notes are gathered with common topics grouped. The team members are then given three sticky dots and asked to place a sticky dot on the three issues they are most interested in discussing.

ii.) The topics are then prioritized by the number of dots they receive.

c.) Discussions

i.) The discussion starts with the highest prioritized topic. The discussion will last for up to five minutes. At the end of the five minutes, the team will be asked if they wish to continue for an additional five minutes. Suppose the team wishes to continue talking about this topic after the second five minutes. In that case, the issue will be set aside for a future Guild activity.  

d.) Next topic

i.) The topic is closed, and the team moves on to the next issue if time allows.  

4.) Case Study Review

a.) Often, one individual will be asked to present a short case study on some aspect of This specific area of the guild.

5.) Training

a.) Some sessions will be solely dedicated to training or guest speakers.

6.) Peer / Collaborative Training Assignment

a.) Reporting of learnings from recent peer training assignments

b.) Opportunities will be identified where peer training could take place

c.) Participants for the peer training opportunity will be identified and recorded.

7.)Sharing of Memorable Guild-related Moments & Thank-you

In the early days of the guild, the key to success is the preparation and involvement of the guild members.  As the guild gets going, the guild members often become more involved, and the guild may shift focus as priorities change.  Guilds are a great way to build the skills of the members and find better ways of doing things through continuous improvement activities.