Echelon is a new practice, so we won’t show you invented client logos. Here is the facilitation experience behind it, why it transfers to leadership teams, and exactly what a session with us looks like.
Dr Andrew Greenland is a consultant emergency physician and clinical senior lecturer who has facilitated co-creation programmes in NHS and university settings. As a senior medical educator at a UK medical school, he designs and facilitates the workshops that create, test and agree the final exams that decide who qualifies as a doctor. The material has to be accurate, fair and defensible - and it has to be produced on the day, by busy senior experts who don’t always agree.
facilitated development workshops each year
participants in the largest working sessions
people briefed and aligned in a single training day
very different groups in one room: clinicians, academics and professional actors
A room of senior clinicians and a leadership team have more in common than you’d think. Both are full of experts, both have status dynamics, and both need to leave with something they will stand behind.
| In an assessment workshop | In a leadership team | The facilitation skill |
|---|---|---|
| Senior consultants, junior academics and actors in one room | A CEO, division heads and functional leads in one room | Stopping the most senior voice from anchoring everyone else |
| Exam material must be accurate and defensible | Decisions commit budget, people and reputation | Turning opinion into choices that survive scrutiny |
| Experts agree one pass mark despite different judgements | Leaders agree priorities despite competing agendas | Structured disagreement that ends in a decision |
| Large volumes of usable material produced in one day | A decision log and named owners produced in one day | Time-boxed design that delivers outputs, not notes |
| Draft items are piloted before they go live | Plans are tested before money is spent | Building in challenge before commitment |
| 80-90 actors aligned to portray a scenario the same way | A decision cascaded consistently across the organisation | Making sure everyone leaves with the same understanding |
Please note: this is an illustrative example of how we design and run a session. It is not a write-up of a specific client engagement.
A UK professional services firm of 300-500 staff is mid-way through a restructure. The executive team has held three strategy sessions in six months. Each ended with a slide deck and no binding commitments, and middle managers are getting contradictory direction.
| Decision Log | Every decision with options, trade-off, owner, deadline and success criteria |
| One-Page Priority Map | Top priorities ranked and resourced, with what was de-scoped |
| Stopped Initiatives List | Work formally stopped, with the reason, ready to communicate |
| 30-Day Review Framework | Check-in cadence, escalation rules and who calls time on drift |
Please note: this example shows how the approach used in large assessment workshops would apply to a business. It is not a write-up of a specific client engagement.
A 60-person senior leadership group meets for a transformation kick-off. Large sessions like this usually produce energy and a long list of ideas - and very little that anyone owns a month later.
A short, ranked list of initiatives that met an agreed standard, a named sponsor for each, and consistent messages to take back to the business.