Prepare

Set up the board and pre-seed it, so the session starts with something to react to.

Purpose

Walk into the session with a board that is ready to use and already has nodes on it. A blank board stalls the room. A pre-seeded board gives participants something to react to from the first minute.

Prepare is the only step the facilitator does alone, before the session.

When it starts and ends

Prepare starts once the session is planned: the scope is agreed, the participants are invited, and the date is set. See planning a session.

It ends when participants join the board and Seed begins.

Steps

1. Set up the board. Use a wall with sticky notes or a digital board. Keep root / problem nodes low on the board and desired state / outcome nodes high, or problems on the left and outcomes on the right (see orientation). Have sticky notes ready in the 4 node colors, and make the plain directional arrow the default connector in a digital tool. On a digital board, a starter board has the colors, the legend, and the parking lot ready.

2. Start the legend. Build the legend now: the colors, the default arrow, the flow direction, the date, and the scope in one line. You complete it at the end of the session.

3. Mark the parking lot. Label an empty area "Parking lot," for nodes that do not fit yet. It is explained in Group.

4. Write the pre-seed list. Write down 3 kinds of nodes:

   • Known problems: pain points people already talk about, recurring complaints, numbers you already have.
   • Known outcomes: goals the organization has stated, targets it wants to reach.
   • Actions already under way: initiatives in progress and changes already decided. They become action / intervention nodes.

   Aim for 5 to 10 problems and 3 to 5 outcomes, plus the actions.

5. Place the seed nodes. Problems low, outcomes high, actions in between. Color a node only when its type is obvious. Otherwise leave it white; its type is decided later.

6. Draft your opening. Write 2 or 3 sentences that explain the exercise and say that you pre-seeded the board. For example:

   We're going to map the problems and goals around why our largest customers are not renewing, and how they connect. Nothing is wrong to say. I've put some sticky notes on the board to get us started. Treat them as hypotheses, not conclusions: add to them, reword them, or disagree with them.

Timing

Allow 15 to 30 minutes before a session with a small group. Give it more time for a larger group, because pre-seeding matters more as the group grows.

For the time each step takes during the session, see timing.

Tips

• Seed from evidence the group trusts. Exit interviews, incident reports, the support queue, and survey results all make good seed nodes. A number is a fine problem node: "About 55% of fixed bugs are new regressions" is as valid as a plain statement.
• Include the actions already under way. If everyone knows about an initiative and it is missing from the board, someone will spend the session asking where it went.
• Share the scope beforehand. Send the scope and what is out of scope with the invitation, so nobody meets it for the first time on the day.
• If you facilitate a problem you own, write your own view down, and keep it off the board. Seed what is known, not what you believe. Having your view on paper helps you notice when you start steering. See the facilitator's role.

Traps

• Skipping pre-seeding. A blank board stalls the room, and the session loses its first minutes and its energy.
• Seeding the answer. A seed list written to lead the group to a conclusion turns the session into a confirmation exercise, the same harm as solution-dumping. Seed what is known, and let the group find the rest.
• Hiding that you pre-seeded. Participants who discover it later wonder what else was decided for them. Say it in your opening.

Example

In the renewals session, 3 of the company's top 20 customers had left in one quarter. The facilitator is one of the 2 customer success leads: renewals are her number, so she called the session.

She built her seed list from the exit interviews, the incident log, and the support queue:

• Five problems. Two of them were almost direct quotes from exit interviews: "Outages hit during the morning dispatch rush" and "Customers hear about outages from their technicians."
• Two actions already under way. Sales leadership had started a deal desk for custom requests, and engineering had frozen deploys during the morning rush after the last outage.
• Four outcomes. One of them is the reason for the session: "9 in 10 large customers renew."

Every node's type was obvious, so she colored them all.

She also wrote down her own explanation for the lost renewals, and kept it off the board.