Nominal Group Technique: a versatile facilitation approach to clustering and creating synthesis

A few times now I have used the Nominal Group Technique and this post is a short description of what it is, when to use, and further below some facilitation notes for both in-person and on-line gatherings.

My highlight of using the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) was when Martina De Sole invited me to co-facilitate a dialogue session at Harvard University, for which we thank Aurelie Pachkoff-Singh for the help and Peggy Darnowsky for the welcoming. We were helping a community of researchers and funding agencies to come up with new priority areas for their specific field at Harvard Medical School.

What they needed.

It was a group of prominent researchers in their field from both the US and Europe, who would gather annually to talk about the state of the art. They were tasked to create a position statement at the end of their annual 2-day conference in which they would outline the priorities of research in a clear manner, to communicate them to EU and US funding agencies. Previous conferences were rich of insightful debates but they reportedly had difficulties in mapping what their consensus on the priority areas was. Martina and I had about four hours in total, after the opening remarks in the morning and until 3pm, to help them come up with

• A list of 8-10 priority areas, clearly outlines
• A 8-10 page document that went deeper into each of these priority areas

The task was clear and straightforward: we needed a process aimed towards synthesis from a multiplicity of ideas, making sure that we collected rich and nuanced information from all individual contributors.

What is NGT and when is it useful?

NGT is a process that clusters individual ideas onto patterns that works very well for mapping convergence of ideas. It is particularly suited for times when the brainstorming task is straightforward enough, when the participants already have plenty of subject-matter expertise on the topic. There are plenty of scenarios in which I would not use it: for creating a vision or a strategy, for conflict resolution, for prototyping actions, just to name a few. Always put in the center what type and form of results you need - choice of process is in service of that.

Facilitation notes

We began by clearing all the round tables (this is important, you will see later why) and had three large tables where the researchers were divided into, of about 6/7 participants at each table. At each table, there was a stack of paper slips cut in small size (large as sticky notes). Since the room was big, we showed the instructions on a PPT presentation, one instruction at a time.

First part: identifying the research areas

• We asked the question "What should the future research priorities be in [their field]?" Write each different idea on a separate slip of paper, keep them all for now. Write them clearly enough so that the text is self-explanatory. This goes on for 5/10 minutes, depending on how much there is to write
• We asked everybody to stand (if it's in their ability to do so) around a table clear from all objects. One person at a time reads their first idea and places it at the center of the table. When the second person shares her note, she can place it somewhere new, or near the previous paper if it seems conceptually related. The circle continues clockwise, no discussion at this moment.
• Only when everybody in the circle has finished reading their first paper note, the one who started can read the second one, and so the circle continues. This is important as to equalize airtime and to have one idea per person at a time, no more. The group keeps going until all the notes have been read. By this time, the notes have already been placed near one another by similarity of topics
• Each table is then encouraged to have an open round of conversation name the patterns they see on the table, and when the naming of a pattern seems clear enough for all, they would write it on a larger sticky note of a different color as to give a name for each category.
• Consolidating the research areas. The final goal is to come up with a list of research areas, so it is important to consolidate the categories. People are encouraged to move around and see other tables. If the same research area is similar enough on two tables, the scientists would consider incorporating them into one.

Second part: deepening each research area

By this time there were about 8-9 big clusters of stickies, each of them with a clear name, which were the research areas of interest. For every topic, a participant volunteered to write a page-long description with more detail on the specifics of what the future direction of research could be. People worked in an open space for about an hour on this, with the task to present back one paragraph that summarized the topic back to the plenary.

The presentation took place after lunch, for each topic a poster was hung on the wall with the original stickies underneath, and participants were asked to vote on priorities that would be of interest for US / EU cooperation (we prepared separate sticky dots with EU and US flag to see at a glance the preferences).

Final considerations

The process went really well and I owe a debt of gratitude to Marilyn Mehlmann for teaching me the NGT for the first time back over a decade ago. With some attention the process can easily work very well on a virtual whiteboard. In this case I have crated a large wheel and have placed the participants' names on the outside, and have placed 3 blank stickies for each participants. People are encouraged to brainstorm by themselves first and hold the stickies there. They later share by reading their sticky and adding it somewhere inside the circle. Having their names along the circle makes it easy to give it a cadence, so that everybody knows who goes next.