Discussion Guide

Generation West Virginia’s Lead the Change Campaign is astatewide initiative to empower our state’s young professionalsand leaders to identify and lead the changes needed to makeWV a destination for the next generation to live, work, and play.Generation chapters around the state are leading communityaction planning sessions convening people of all generations,backgrounds, and professions to move from talking about theneed to attract, retain, and advance the next generation ofleaders and professionals to taking action.

Break the attendees into small groups (size depending onsize of your crowd). Instruct them to take 10 minutes todiscuss what they see to be the biggest challenges specificto our community's ability to attract and retain youngtalent. Give each team a large post it note and markers.Ask each team to appoint someone to record the thoughtsand comments of the group. Ask each team to appoint areporter who will report the highlights of their discussionto the group.

Small group discussion. 10 minutes

Agenda

Take a few minutes to introduce your Generation chapterleadership and Generation WV's Lead the ChangeCampaign. A quick way to introduce your leadership is toask each of them to say their name and why they loveliving in this community as a young professional. Feel freeto use the introduction powerpoint available atgenerationwv.org/lead-the-change.

Introductions. 10 minutes

Directions: Ask one small group's reporter to go first,sharing the challenges they discussed and having themrecorded at the front of the room. After they share theirs,ask for a show of hands for other groups that had a similarchallenge--make a talley beside that idea to account forthis. Ask groups with different ideas to then report andrepeat process for getting show of hands of other groupsthat had similar responses. Ask for group reports until allideas have been shared.

Using the list of challenges generated from the groupdiscussion, explain that we will choose a few to focus on.Lead a discussion on similarities between ideas,opportunities to combine into a larger all encompassingchallenges, etc. Come to a consensus on 3-5 challenges tobrainstorm solutions for in the next part of the session.

Small group round up. 15 minutes

Write each of the chosen challenges on its own large post itnote and place them at separate places around the room.Depending on the size of your event, you can create morethan one post it note for each challenge to allow for morethan one small group rotation. Break the group intodifferent small groups than the ones they just left. Again,the number of groups should be decided by your attendancesize but the goal is to have groups of 4-6 people. Each smallgroup will start at one of the challenge post its and rotatearound until they have reached each of the 3.

Solutions Ideastorm. 30 minutes

Therefore, create as many duplicates of the 3 challenges asyou need for every small group to be at a post it note foreach rotation. For example, if you have 30 people inattendance and you break the group into 6 small groups of 5people each, you will need to create two sets of thechallenge post its so that both groups can rotate throughthe 3 challenges at the same time.

Give everyone 7 minutes at each challenge to think aboutideas for local solutions that are actionable. Write downtheir main ideas on the post it note before moving on to thenext challenge post it station.

Since the next group will see the other group's ideas, makesure to emphasize to not rewrite the same ideas but adddetail or new ideas.

Directions: Have the facilitator briefly read through theideas listed on the post its, asking for any clarification ordescription as needed. Look for options that are on allthree--actions that would address all three challenges--aswell as any duplicates. Make a more succinct list of theaction ideas, this time not by challenge, but combined,since many will likely address more than one challenge.

Ideastorm Roundup. 20 minutes

Conclusion. 5 minutes

Thank everyone for coming and explain that the next stepsare for the Generation chapter to go back and decide on afew priority projects based on both impact and doability.

Next StepsSo you have generated all of these great ideas for keepingthe next generation in your community but now what? Theprimary goal of the Lead the Change campaign is to movefrom just talking to ACTION so it's important to quicklyidentify your action priorities from the long list of potentialsolutions generated at the event.

One way to do this is to sort the generated ideas accordingto both do-ability (i.e. is there already momentum behindthis idea? is pushback anticipated? etc.) and potential forimpact. The ideas worth pursuing first are those that aremore do-able and have high potential for impact.

Using the graph below, you can do this visually with yourchapter's leadership. First, describe the graph and how itworks. Give a few examples, pointing to where a "hard butimportant" idea would go or an "easy but not important"idea. Show how there can be a spectrum within eachquadrant so that there is prioritization even within eachcategory.

Lead a discussion by starting with one idea written on a postnote and determining together where it should go on theprojected chart. The goal is to have at least a few ideas inthe 'easy and important' priority region that will providegood first steps for Generation chapter projects.

x

Do-ability

Impact

y

1

2

3

4

Priority Region

1 2 3 4