Faciltation Sessions and Focus Groups do the same job for different audiences - one internal and one external. They use similar skills and help to achieve the same outcomes. 

Facilitation Sessions

These are aimed at getting at achieving an agreed, weighted and ranked set of priorities from an internal audience.

Case Study:

A UK trade organisation came to me with a classic trade organisation problem. They have a large and diverse membership. Some members are PLC's that operate nationally while others have a small site and are privately owned. The problem faced by the trade organisation was agreeing a public affairs agenda and set of priorities that could all agree on, benefit from and give the trade organisation a clear public affairs mandate to execute.  

Focus Groups

These are aimed at testing, refining, quantifying and weighting already identified messages. Of course, these groups also throw up new messages on occasion that are then included in the analysis.

Case Study:

I was involved from the start with the national NO2AV campaign. The initial focus groups were held in Cardiff, Manchester, Glasgow and London and conducted by an excellent external partner. I attended all of these initial Focus Groups. The results were fascinating. 

We had already identified a series of "issues" - one of which was cost. But we had not rated cost as being a high ranking factor until we saw the reaction to the cost issue at these Focus Groups. 

Subsequent Focus Group work confirmed the very high resonance "cost" had with the public. NO2AV used this argument heavily in its messaging and I believe played a significant role in the success of the campaign.