Just coming out of a long meeting where we were firming the organization and role types for an application, underpinning essentials like RBAC and the notification engine.
I remember my favorite manager saying, "Jonathan, you'd be able to facilitate meetings with the C-Suite." I thought it a very high compliment, and still lives in my head.
Good facilitation is hard. Getting people to make decisions is hard.
Design as decision making.
Facilitation is one of my key skills. For me it's part of design.
It's one of the reasons, I think, what made me good as a manager or managers. Getting the information needed for decision making, breaking them down with smarter people in the room that know the thing deeply, ask questions to inform, then make decisions and go forward.
It's a skill I've learned throughout life. When younger, seeing my dad as pastor and literal facilitator of a church service. Organizing events from cross-campus capture the flag games, to dinner parties, quarterly meetings, and conferences. Gathering managers for performance calibration meetings when there wouldn't have been a calibration if I hadn't organized it—for those roles people forget or diminish like quality specialists, copywriters, and reporting analysts.