The POP Planning Model for Gatherings
Organizational teams gather for a number of reasons and on a variety of timelines. Often leaders know intuitively that they need to pull the team together. It may be to create or review goals or to generate a strategic plan. Sometimes, it’s a crisis. Regardless of the context of the gathering, it’s almost always true that planning is critical, but time is scarce.
We always have this in mind when we work with justice-oriented nonprofits and collectives to facilitate a meeting or retreat.
To make the most of valuable time, we have only two short, focused planning calls, informed by the simple, yet effective framework of POP - (P)urpose, (O)utcomes and (P)rocess.
For our first call, we identify the purpose and outcomes of the planned gathering.
(P)urpose - Why are we doing this?
This is when you need to be clear about why you are meeting in the first place. The questions we ask leaders are…
Why are you bringing people together?
Why this group of people?
Why now?
Why in this way? (i.e., size, modality)
How does this time together serve your larger mission?
The purpose should be clear, informed by the needs of the people, and worth the time you plan to invest. Any meeting or gathering requires solid answers to these questions.
If leaders are unable to clearly answer these questions, it is probably not a good idea to meet.
(O)utcomes - What will we accomplish?
Desired outcomes may include: 1) knowledge 2) attitudes 3) skills and/or 4) deliverables. Therefore, here are our outcome-related prompts:
When our time together comes to a close…
What do you hope the group will know?
How do you want the group to feel about the work?
What do you want the group to be able to do?
What document(s) need to be drafted or finalized?
Is there anything else you hope each person in the group will walk away with?
Clarity is also necessary for outcomes. They should also be informed by the needs of the people and realistic given the time you have dedicated.
In our follow-up planning call, we share a proposed process for how the gathering will go based on the stated purpose and desired outcomes.
(P)rocess - How do we get there?
This is when we offer the draft agenda, which features the POP. The purpose and outcomes are at the top, followed by a plan for how we move through our time together - the process. We can then discuss if this agenda is true to our purpose and if it can give the group the map it needs.
The agenda not only has times and topics, but also includes who will lead each part and how we will communicate (small group discussion, individual reflection, etc.). Our agendas also include a set of group agreements on how we will collectively hold space.
Keep it focused. Keep it simple.
We love elegant facilitation tools. Asking groups to think about their POP in advance helps Freedom Lifted efficiently and effectively plan gatherings of almost any size.
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We are so grateful to have learned this framework at Rockwood Leadership Institute where it was developed by Leslie Sholl Jaffe and Randall Alford. This blog is also informed by the Social Transformation Project’s The Fabulous POP model document.