Fall 2026 Facilitation Certification Application Deadline Sept 18th
Fall 2026 Facilitation Certification Application Deadline Sept 18th
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AI | August 12, 2026

Explore why AI transformation efforts focused on workforce cuts often fail to deliver meaningful ROI. Research shows that reducing headcount may create budget room, but it does not necessarily create business value. This article examines the accountability gap between measurable cost savings and the long-term opportunities organizations may be destroying in the process. Learn why successful AI transformation requires outcome-based measurement, strong governance, human expertise, and investment in the capabilities needed to guide, adapt, and scale AI systems over time.

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New Friction | July 22, 2026

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson interviews Taran Lent, Chief Technology Officer at Illumia, about how his organization moved from individual AI experimentation to enterprise-wide capability. Lent describes building an "enablement task force" that deliberately avoided becoming a governing bottleneck, instead creating conditions for employees to play, learn, and share what worked, before this year's push to elevate personal AI habits into shared team and company-wide skills, standards, and vetted tools. He talks about using AI as a contrarian thought partner and even having it grade his own interviewing and meeting behavior, while cautioning that transcripts alone miss tone and body language. The conversation also covers the governance side of scaling AI, including a stakeholder review process for new tools and skills, the four-to-six-week approval timeline for new vendors, and guardrails to prevent incidents like an unauthenticated internal dashboard. Lent connects this to Illumia's recent merger of Transact and CBORD, crediting a shared "humble, hungry, smart" culture for making the integration smoother, and closes by arguing that judgment, creativity, and human discernment remain the differentiators as AI adoption accelerates.

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Design Thinking | June 30, 2026

According to statistics, 79% of companies agree that design thinking improves the ideation process, and 71% have enjoyed a significant shift in their work culture after adopting design thinking. While it does contain the word design, design thinking and it’s iterative approach to creative ideas is not only for design teams, in fact, any team can benefit from this human-centered design process.

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The 2026 Facilitation Lab Summit brought eight extraordinary facilitators together in Austin, Texas to explore the theme of Edges: the moments of tension, uncertainty, and emergence where the most powerful work gets done. Across two days of hands-on sessions, participants explored collective wisdom, whole intelligence, embodied presence, trauma-informed facilitation, the power of metaphor, and what it truly means to show up as a facilitator rather than just perform as one. This recap covers every session with links to the full blog post and video for each speaker, offering both a window into what happened and a practical resource for your ongoing facilitation practice.

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Facilitation Lab Summit | April 23, 2026

At the 2026 Facilitation Lab Summit, Brian Buck invited facilitators to ask a question most technique-focused training skips entirely: who are you becoming in this work, and why does it matter? Drawing on a three-part fire model built around ember, kindle, and illuminate, Brian offered a practical framework for shifting from a facilitator who brings the fire to one who ignites it in others. Through a paired exercise in illuminating presence, participants experienced firsthand how asking different questions and offering different kinds of attention can unlock belonging, collective intelligence, and breakthroughs that no agenda alone can produce. A powerful session for any facilitator ready to make presence their most important tool.