Looking back at a year of work, and drawing some lessons from the reflective summaries I write after closing each project.
After several years of managing the Co-production Network for Wales and doing freelance consultancy in parallel to sustain me, and after attempting to take a 6 month sabbatical in 2023, this year – 2024 – has been my first full year back to pure freelancing. I have done projects directly with clients, and also as an associate of the Co-production Lab Wales / Co-production Network for Wales, Tai Pawb, and Platfform.
Engagement:4 projects
Webinars and learning sessions:3 projects
Training workshops:5 projects (several were more than 1 session)
Events facilitation: 7 projects
One-off pilots and experiments: 1x well-being in nature (team development)
TOTAL:20 projects closed during the year (not counting projects carrying over into 2025)
What I’ve learnt:
Facilitation:
- Facilitation design is generally 2 or 3 days for every 1 day delivery (and also 0.5 – 1 day reporting depending on the level of detail and analysis). Factor in more prep time if the client team is big (this means additional meetings so everyone’s on board) and additional materials (e.g. with translations, in easy read format, etc).
- When the brief is vague (the client knows they need help but aren’t sure exactly what they need), factor in time to research and understand the background and context, so I can draw my conclusions and design what I think they need. This always takes more time than expected! Add in 1:1 research:prep (i.e. design) time. (The alternative is the client comes back with a clearer brief.)
- When finding the communication stilted with the client, prompt for a more honest and open conversation. Look to understand their worries and frustrations. One time I did it and it worked out well; one time I did not and the session was difficult.
- Me being online remotely running a session with everybody else physically in the room does not work! I said yes to the format because of the clash of dates and locations, but I should have said no.
- Hybrid events (in person + online room at the same time): the online room can feel very disconnected from the in-person space; they are effectively 2 different spaces running concurrently. We need an experienced 2nd facilitator in the online room AND they have to be thoroughly briefed about the running order and any transitions.
- Beware of time pressured turnaround to design and deliver events (e.g. if the dates and event descriptions have already been published before we are contracted) – especially if the client teams wants to be hands-on. It’s difficult to build trust and respect for each others’ roles when decisions have to be made very quickly and everyone wants to be part of the decision-making process. (You can either have full democracy, or you can have speed, but not both when nobody knows each other well!!) The most challenging project all year: I did not feel the team trusted me / my experience / my decisions – they took on a facilitator role and vetoed my facilitation decisions. And they felt they weren’t consulted, included and listened to, which reflected a team that hadn’t gelled fully as they were all seconded in from other teams.
- Don’t use off-brand post-its, they fall off!!
Training:
- Workshop sessions around “soft” skills like conflict and dialogue benefit from more time so people can have a go in the session. Shorter sessions (2 hours) can serve as a useful intro to concepts but people need to build their confidence with applying them.
- When training participants keep asking for more case studies, which are more relevant to their very specific focus, this is more of a confidence issue (or permission?) and hesitation to start. Offer reminders of operating in complexity where no two situations are the same, and case studies can only go so far – talk to other people but also draw your own learnings (don’t expect the perfect example you can follow to the letter, because it doesn’t work like that).
- When the client keeps asking for more case studies for the training participants, same – and are they trying to equip themselves against all eventualities? What is the organisation’s relationship to risk? (This shows up in the client asking for a lot of prep meetings prior to the training session, which can significantly bump up the prep time.)
Engagement:
- Balance doing with the client team (building skills and confidence) and doing for the client team (adding capacity).Me building relationships with a community is awkward knowing my project will end, me brokering relationships between the community and the organisation is more sustainable, as long as the organisation intends (or has the ability) to remain present.
- Pick up the phone and talk to people to secure buy-in. Emails aren’t enough.
- Don’t underestimate the time that analysis and reporting take once the active engagement has been carried out!
Quitting a project:
- Huge procrastination and many supervision sessions dedicated to the topic are a sign that a project is not working! (I could have realised faster why I was so blocked.) I quit a project for the first time ever, and returned the balance of budget to the client. Sometimes the project evolves from the original brief, and in this case I no longer believed in the product, or in the process (no longer participative), and I wasn’t the right person to carry it out (someone with more professional AND lived experience joined in the meantime – as an employee, which is more cost-effective than an external consultant). It was a hard decision but it was the right one.
Photo by Unseen Studio on Unsplash