Diamonds Are a Facilitator's Best Friend

Because the mass of data should not keep you from making a decision.

How to Run Scientific and Technical Meetings That Actually Decide Something

Picture this: Your scientific advisory panel has been meeting for six hours. Coffee cups have been refilled four times. The whiteboard looks like a conspiracy theory wall from a crime drama. You have 47 sticky notes, three competing frameworks, and a marine biologist who just discovered a deep-sea connection to the salmon data that absolutely cannot be ignored.

And you are nowhere near a decision.

OR: Your panel made a decision in the first 40 minutes — before two of the quieter members had said a single word — and now those members are publishing their dissent in footnotes three years later.

Either way, something went wrong. And it has a name.

The Two Conversations Your Team Is (Accidentally) Having

Every productive group decision requires two completely different types of conversation — and most technical teams have no idea they're switching between them, or when they should.

Divergent conversation is the opening-up phase. It uses open-ended questions to explore options, develop understanding, examine data from multiple angles, and generate alternatives. Think brainstorming, status reviews, listing, and "what if" territory. It's expansive. It's creative. It's the intellectual equivalent of dumping all the puzzle pieces on the table.

Convergent conversation is the closing-down phase. It uses closed-ended questions to winnow alternatives, build agreement, and reach a decision. Think ranking, criteria matrices, dot voting, and "which of these options best fits our mandate?" territory. It's focused. It's decisive. It's putting the puzzle together.

The shape these two conversations make, when drawn on a diagram? A diamond. Broad in the middle, pointed at each end. Hence the name: the diamond of participatory decision-making. Which, I will now point out, is far more useful than an actual diamond, and considerably less expensive.

Why This Matters Especially for Scientific and Technical Teams

Here is where it gets interesting for those of us who work with scientists, engineers, natural resource managers, and other technical professionals.

Technical experts are, by training and temperament, superb divergers. They will find angles you haven't considered. They will raise the data anomaly from 2009 that actually matters. They will cross-connect the fisheries model to the climate projection to the tribal treaty right and be absolutely correct to do so.

But left unmanaged, they will diverge forever.

Conversely, a panel with a strong-voiced majority and a tight agenda can race through convergence — generating a recommendation that technically satisfies the question but doesn't reflect the full expertise in the room. The quieter members with the critical insights never got the floor during the divergent phase.

In both cases, the group fails. Not because the people are bad at their jobs. Because no one managed the conversation type.

The Move That Changes Everything: Knowing When to Switch

Here is the core facilitation skill: recognizing when to shift from divergent to convergent conversation — and having the tools to make that shift stick.

A common misconception is that this is a one-way journey: explore first, decide second, done. In practice, effective panels cycle back and forth multiple times within a single meeting — even within a single agenda item. You converge on a framing question, then diverge again when new data surfaces, then converge on a set of criteria, then diverge briefly when someone points out an overlooked risk, then converge on a recommendation.

Missing this cycling pattern — staying in exploration mode too long, or jumping to closure prematurely — is one of the most common and costly failures in scientific advisory panel work.

The Move That Changes Everything: Knowing When to Switch

Here is the core facilitation skill: recognizing when to shift from divergent to convergent conversation — and having the tools to make that shift stick.

Missing this cycling pattern — staying in exploration mode too long, or jumping to closure prematurely — is one of the most common and costly failures in scientific advisory panel work

How to Put This to Work: A Practical Toolkit

DIVERGENT PHASE — Tools to open things up:

✅ Status reviews and data presentations with open-ended Q&A

✅ Brainstorming (with a strict "no criticism during generation" rule)

✅ Listing alternatives without evaluation

✅ Round-robin input before open discussion

✅ Written idea generation before verbal sharing (the introverts thank you)

CONVERGENT PHASE — Tools to close things down:

✅ Ranking exercises

✅ Criteria matrices ("rate each option against our agreed standards")

✅ Dot voting (quick, visual, and surprisingly satisfying)

✅ Explicit decision-point framing: "We have explored this thoroughly. Let's identify our top three options."

THE SWITCHING SIGNAL — Words that mark the transition:

✅ "I think we've identified the key considerations. It's time to start narrowing."

✅ "Before we go further, let's check: is there anything important we haven't yet surfaced?"

✅ "New information has come up. Let's briefly re-open this before we finalize."

The Bottom Line

Your scientific or technical team is probably doing both of these conversations — they just don't know it, and no one is managing the transitions. When you name the pattern, learn to recognize it, and acquire tools for each phase, you stop running meetings that exhaust people without producing decisions.

And if someone asks why you're drawing a diamond on the whiteboard at 8:45 AM, you can tell them: this is how we get out of here by noon.