• Multiyear Funding: When the strategic plan is finished does it outline a clear pathway for developing an integrated approach to multiyear funding that provides stability to the organizations programs and infrastructure?

• Capacity Building: When the plan is implemented will the capacity of the agency be strengthened?  Have we considered the operational systems and support required to ensure a healthy and growing organization?

• Risk Taking: Does the plan lead us outside of a business as usual scenario in ways that challenge us to excel? Is the plan bold enough to encourage the agency take calculated (yet protected) risks to increase the impact of our programs and services?

• Movement Building: Programs and services change lives while movements change communities.  Does our strategic plan reflect movement building that has the potential of leveraging change at the community level?

• Making a Difference: Does our plan outline a pathway to demonstrate a clear and compelling impact? Will we be able to answer the question, “do we make a difference?”

Again, the list of “meta ideals” might differ from organization to organization but the common thread is that they are anchored to the core organizational values and aspirations. These ideals answer the question, “What do we as an agency want to become?” While the mission of today may be clear, the ideals drive the focus of the mission for tomorrow.  One agency might be ready to become a “game changer” while another agency’s big idea might be to reinvent their funding model to ensure sustainability.

If, in practice,  the use of BIG ideas is tackled at the front end of the planning process then the principles can then serve as the compass points during the planning process and sometimes, more importantly, revisiting  the ideals at the the end of the planning process can become useful final evaluative criterion to check the plan’s completeness. As I have worked with numerous teams on strategic planning, the process often (and ideally) starts large, aspirational and almost dreamy. As teams work to prioritize and define with some specificity, the end of the process is often mired in details — “now should be be projecting a .5 FTE or .8 FTE development associate?”  When the final copy is produced. the board has likely seen five or six iterations of the plan and the final vote is often, “yes. let’s be done with this monster.”  Rather than that sort of unceremonious end to a large investment of time, energy and passion, reflecting on how well the plan addresses the “big ideas” related to what an agency wants to  become can give energy and vitality to the approval and implementation of a strategic plan.

While this post may seem like it is discussing a tiny facet of strategic planning (and I agree it is), I am writing about it because it is a facet that it often overlooked.  By intentionally including reflection about “big ideas” in the strategic planning process, it can help frame, reinforce and energize a process. For any agency committing to a thoughtful strategic planning process the “Big Ideas” are critical tools to build and maintain focus and give a point of reference by which an agency can judge the authenticity of the finished strategic plan.

As always, your thoughts are welcome.

Crowd sourcing is an increasingly trendy concept that is popping up in the world of group dynamics, network development and strategic planning. Elevated to prominence by books with titles like “Here Comes Everybody” and the “Wisdom of Crowds” the concept is that if you get enough people engaged and contributing ideas, unstructured, then breakthrough thinking can occur. Couple the “crowd concept” with social media technology that enables the “viral” spread of the idea and the distributed connection of larger groups, and the result is that even corporate marketing departments like Pepsi see the value in the crowd.

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So it is no longer uncommon to hear at least one voice in a strategic planning process, suggest that the group “crowd source” a strategy. In this post I’d like to tackle the question of what does it take to facilitate a crowd?

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Let me back up to the streets. Over the last several months I have worked with several clients where the facilitation processes have had a large group component.   For example, I just completed an intense three month project where I helped a leadership team facilitate the process for a group of 26 professionals from across the state tasked with creating a comprehensive and forward-thinking Health Improvement Plan for the Oregon Health Authority. I also have had two strategic planning clients where assessment work included gathering diverse opinions from a range of program partners, board and staff members, and community volunteers. In one of these projects I aggregated open-ended survey comments from over 100 people. For me, convening groups, creating authentic community engagement, and navigating agreement have been standard operating practices for as I have long been engaged in community development and coalition-building work. So along with other colleagues who came up on the streets of collaboration, I simply smile at the wonderful new-found term of “crowd sourcing.”

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On the streets of community development and coalition-building, strategy has always been “outsourced” to the community and is not a construct new to crowd sourcing. So while crowd sourcing may be the new lingo, the principles of facilitating crowds remains the same. In my experience, some of the more critical principles of facilitating “crowds” include:

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Stay Open Early On: As anyone experienced facilitator knows, the messy space of open ideas can be uncomfortable. Indeed, in a recent facilitation process, one frustrated board member interrupted at one point and said, “Can you assure me that when we leave at the end of the day that we will come out of the clouds and stop flitting around?” While being in that open space can be difficult, one of the strengths of crowd sourcing is the very broad opening that it promotes the generation of ideas. In this process, a facilitator needs to be comfortable in the open space and not rush towards narrowing too quickly. Let expansion happen.

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Recognize When a Crowd is a Crowd: A second principle of facilitating a crowd is to recognize when a crowd is all you have. When the expectation is that large, bold new ideas will emerge out of the collective input of the crowd and those expectations are not met, a facilitator needs to be a mirror to the process and acknowledge the limitations of the convening.

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The Pepsi Refresh marketing campaign, thinly veiled as corporate giving, is a great relevant example. When the Pepsi Refresh project started, the concept was that by engaging people in voting for, defending and promoting great ideas, the nonprofit world would reap the benefit of innovation and up-start new ideas would come out of the “wise crowds.” Several months later, one just needs to peruse the list of funded projects to see that they range from the mildly innovative to the immediate & tactical (such as building a kindergarten playground and starting an animal food bank). Worthy projects? Absolutely. The cutting edge of social innovation to large-scale social needs? Not so much.

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Pepsi Refresh has become an exercise, not in “crowd sourcing” but “crowd re-sourcing.” That is to say that those agencies best at mobilizing the time and energy of networks of people to vote (again and again) likely can succeed. In facilitation, a crowd is just a crowd when it is orchestrated engagement meant to influence an outcome. When a facilitator recognizes that s/he is facing a crowd, then s/he is able to adapt the facilitation process to ensure the inclusion and equity in voice, not only of the crowd but the voice of the crowd outliers.

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Recognize Differential Knowledge: In every large group process I have facilitated, one of the core tasks of facilitation is to draw attention to differential knowledge. I have used this imagination as an illustration of the concept. Imagine a group of 5th grade boys walking back from a field trip when a box falls off of a truck speeding by. The boys bring the box back to the classroom and see that it is labeled “chocolate candy, keep out of direct sunlight.” If these boys were left to their own “crowd sourced” strategy related to that box of chocolates, what do you think the outcome would be? Indeed, there would likely be a super-majority of agreement, if not outright consensus on the course of action to open the box and devour the contents. Now enter a teacher who brings differential knowledge about ethics, the purpose of the contact information label on the box, and even the consequences of consuming pounds of chocolate. Do you think the crowd sourced outcome would be different? While the point is oversimplified, the concept should not be lost. In every crowd there is differential knowledge that needs to be given weight. All ideas are not equal.

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Seek Community Not Consensus: A final principle is to recognize that the goal of a large group is to find shared understanding and not necessarily consensus. Facilitation for a large group is about engagement that involves creating equity, voice and understanding. If you achieve these three things then often times consensus matters less. On a level playing field where all participants are given voice, community will emerge and, in the context of community, the collective will trump the crowd. When a group is meaningfully engaged through an empowering facilitation process then more authentic outcomes result. I have written elsewhere about the concept of community engagement because such a process is fundamental to the authentic community-building.

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Taken together, these four principles outline a framework that can assist in facilitating a crowd. Now I recognize that for some, bringing a facilitation process to the concept of crowd sourcing defies some the popular literature on the subject.  It is a flaw of the crowd source construct that creates an artificial either/or dynamic.  It is either “crowd” or “crowd control” with no in between. In the minds of those extolling the virtues of the self-organizing crowd, they believe that crowd control is a bad thing. I contend that a true crowd source process is aligned with (and a cousin of) community organizing, which requires a layer of intelligent design and group process. As with good basic community organizing, a skilled facilitator recognizes the power in the crowd and unleashes the potential of the crowd through a carefully constructed facilitation process.

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As always your thoughts are welcome.

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If you were to align models for program planning, strategic planning, instructional design, organizational learning, and knowledge management, it would become apparent that the contour of all these processes includes a similar pathway of gathering information, making connections between information, interpreting information, and acting on information.  Specific to structuring a “learning group” facilitation there is the added dimension of community building. As such a learning group processes needs to be grounded in a participatory framework (more on frameworks) while moving through four phase pathway that looks like this:

Generating:  For most group processes, the first stage of the convening is to help all participants gather and share information.  Whether the information is derived from a structured assessment process in advance of the meeting or is a real-time sharing process, participants need to open the universe of information before moving to understanding and action.  In addition, when you are trying to help nurture a learning community it is critical to build interaction and participation into the generative phase.

Integrating/Interpreting: The second stage of the learning group pathway is to begin to create a share understanding of the connections between information.  As a group starts to move towards learning the process of synthesis begins to take place.  In group settings this is also the stage where participants begin to weave together socially.  In this context, the process of integrating and interpreting is both a constructivist activity and is also a social exercise where transparency, listening and sharing become stated values.

Participatory Meaning:  As the group’s understanding how the information connects together as a whole, the group is then able to start to create meaning out of the information and begin to sort and choose what is relevant and actionable.  In essence, the actions of this stage are prioritizing and narrowing.  Critical to this stage is that the process of narrowing must be grounded in principles of inclusion, voice and democracy.  Without a sense of authentic participation and ownership, the process of collaboration and network weaving is undermined.

Creative Action: The final stage of of the process is moving towards creative action.  This is the point where the group decides “what’s next.”  At the end of the day, all group process requires the facilitator to focus on concrete next steps.  For a learning group process, the next steps must also include discussion of what’s next for the social network weaving.  There needs to be the dual focus on both “where is the group going” and “how will they get there together.”

In talking to my potential client, I suggested that, on the surface, the process of moving from information to action looks like the primary task of most facilitation processes. However, if organizational learning is also a goal for the process, the second layer of “movement” is not just about information but the “movement” of social relationships.  The implication for such a facilitation process is that the facilitator should not only understand how to manage a group process but also understand principles of coalition building, adult leading, empowerment and constuctivist learning.  In a day when the processes networking weaving and organizational learning are, in many ways, more important that creating a product, facilitation becomes a higher order practice that simply “running a good meeting.”

As always, your comments are welcome.

Book for your bookshelf

Nancy Dixon: The Organizational Learning Cycle

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At the most basic level, any lengthy group process has built in ergonomic and logistical limitations.  In scheduling a day long retreat, my first advice to clients is to recognize that in a typical 8:30-4:30 retreat schedule, you lose productivity during the first, last and middle hours (in addition to losing a bit more time on the edges of scheduled breaks). In addition, participants coming late, leaving early, as well as texting, phone calls, and checking online for sports scores, also contribute to lower productivity.  I often half-jokingly suggest that good coffee at the beginning of the meeting, good food in the middle, and wine & cheese at the end of the meeting can help manage the lower productivity barrier but the reality is that people need down time during a day long process.  Sitting, thinking and being fully engaged in process, has physiological limitations.  With that said, my personal rule of thumb is that there are typically only 5-6 strategic hours during a day-long retreat.  That doesn’t imply that the less productive time can’t be used meaningfully but simply recognizes that there are limitations to the density of thinking that can be extracted out of meeting participants.

A 5-6 strategic hour planning frame of reference drives the content limitations. It is important to think about what can and cannot be realistically achieved in a 5-6 hour window.  More than once, I have had potential clients hope to complete an entire strategic planning process in a one-day retreat.  Unfortunately, a thoughtful strategic plan requires more than 5-6 hours.  For an organization with a strong strategic plan, it may be realistic to create an operational plan for the next year’s activities in a single day but it is not possible to thoughtfully create a strategic plan in the time span of 5-6 hours.  However, at the risk of sounding like a mere curmudgeon, I would like to shift the conversation to what can be achieved in a day long strategic planning process –as I do believe a dedicated day of strategic planning is critical to a strategic planning process.

In short, I believe the positive use of a strategic planning retreat is to link it with the most appropriate stage of the strategic planning process (see here). Without belaboring the point, strategic planning involves anywhere from 4-8 (or 10) steps depending on the model that being followed.  In essence these steps are organized around the stages of: planning, assessing, designing, and launching the plan.  Any of these primary stages can serve as a rich context for a day long strategic planning retreat.

Planning Retreat:  For an organization just embarking on the strategic planning process,  a day long retreat can be used to create a the plan process, build energy for the process, and begin to dream dreams and build a vision.  One approach to a retreat with a planning focus would be to help the staff to think about the positive aspirations and celebrate where they have come using tools like appreciative inquiry  or open space facilitation.

Assessing Retreat:  During a day long retreat organized around assessment it is the opportunity to engage board members and/or staff in assessing the the strategic planning context.  Such a retreat might be organized around reviewing and synthesizing previously gathered data or could be a structured  scenario planning or future search exercise (more here) or a SWOT or SOAR analysis (more here).  The goal of an “assessing retreat” is to create a meaningful understanding of the internal and external environment to inform the strategic plan direction, goals and activities.

Designing Retreat:  A designing retreat is the midpoint of a strategic planning process where assessments are completed and draft goals and strategies may have been developed.  Such a retreat is the opportunity to engage board, staff and/or stakeholders  is the critical work of synthesizing and narrowing ideas into a concrete strategy.  A designing retreat might be organized around  using visual tools (more here) to structure models such as as a a social impact , logic model (more here) or it may be an action planning retreat where teams translate assessment findings intro broad plans -that can be refined following the retreat.

Launch Retreat:  As artists and musicians celebrate milestones (such as the production of a CD or the opening of an art show) by hosting launch parties,  nonprofit agencies would also do well to consider staging a day long retreat at the end of a strategic planning process as a “launch retreat.”  Such a retreat can help orient and focus the organizations board and staff around the new plan and help build momentum for the work ahead.  A launch retreat is an opportunity to breath life into the words on paper.  It offers an environment to both celebrate and motivate.

This list of possibilities is not exhaustive but it makes the point. When considering the use of a facilitator for a strategic planning retreat, be wary of the ones who can promise strategic planning in a day.  While it it possible to run through the steps of a strategic plan in a day, meaningful strategy is the product of a process that requires the thoughtful engagement of a team over time.  There are clear limitations associated with convening a group for a day long strategic planning retreat.  A competent facilitator will help an agency think through the entire strategic planning process and make recommendations that maximize the use of a strategic planning retreat in the context of the overall planning framework.

If we can help you with strategic planning, don’t hesitate to contact us.

On more that once occasion in my consulting practice I have been called into projects somewhere in the middle of the process.  At such times, I feel like the relief pitcher being called in when the arm of the first pitcher is failing.  In these situations,  clients often talking about the first facilitator’s wild pitches, consecutive walks or even the occasion “grand slam” error.  The challenge of walking into a project in mid-process is that the psyche of the team is often shaken and the progress to date ranges from “behind schedule” to “disarray.”   While this post does not present an exhaustive discussion of why facilitation fails, I would like to suggest four facilitator archetypes that can help guide the the hiring of a facilitator and prevent facilitation failure.

At the outset, let us be very clear.  Facilitation is a totally unregulated discipline.  No training, degree or certification is required for a person to consider him/herself a facilitator.  Indeed, of the training and certification programs that do exist, many can be misleading as they often are bought for a price, have a nominal process of vetting of skills and are perpetuated by the mere payment of annual dues and/or training fees.  Further, what actually constitutes strong facilitation skills is not very well defined. As a result, many portray themselves as a facilitator because they have dry erase markers and three books on their shelf.  One book focuses on ice-breaker activities, the second focuses on team-building activities, and the third focuses on running effective meetings.  In this context the due diligence for preventing facilitation failure becomes critical.  One way to think about assessing potential facilitators is to consider the dimensions of Breadth of Skills and Depth of Experience.

Breadth of Skills: When interviewing potential facilitators it is important to ask candidates to describe their breadth of skills.  Be cautious of facilitators who have trouble with this question.  There are many facilitators who get stuck using one or two strategies.  In these cases, the facilitator is like a carpenter who only has  a hammer is in his/her toolbox.  After a while of just carrying a hammer then everything starts looking like a nail.  Facilitators should be able to describe with confidence a broad array of facilitation methods and models and connect their knowledge with actual clients.

Depth of Expertise: The second dimension in the vetting process is to explore the experience and expertise of the facilitator. Not all facilitation is equal. The complexity and the content of a facilitation process should drive the selection of a facilitator.  The conventional wisdom is that facilitation is impartial and agnostic, however, it is my experience, that failure to account for the content expertise and technical knowledge of a facilitator can lead to mediocre outcomes –if not outright facilitation failure.

A useful way to think about these to dimensions is to place on a horizontal axis of low to high the dimension of Breath of Skills and on a vertical axis of low to high the dimension of Depth of Experience & Expertise.  In this way, you create a two by two matrix.  Each of the four matrix quadrants represents a different facilitation archetype that can be defined as follows:

Entrant (Low Expertise – Low Breadth of Skills):  At face value one might ask themselves why they would ever consider hiring a facilitator in this quadrant.  However, when the outcomes of the facilitation process have lower consequence or value and/or the facilitation process is predefined or routine, it might make sense to utilize a facilitator in this quadrant.  For example, for routine team or staff meetings and agency might use inexperienced internal facilitators as a way to build the  facilitation skills of staff or team members.  Or in cases where the “stakes are low” but an impartial/outside facilitator is required to give some neutrality to the process, an agency might be able to hire an entrant at a lower consulting rate.

Generalist (Low Expertise – Higher Breadth of Skills): When meeting process and the accuracy of the proceedings are important outcomes then an agency might consider a generalist facilitator.  A generalist can employ a variety of facilitation methods and tools to ensure a well managed meeting.  Noncontroversial community dialogues, focus group facilitation, and operational planning staff retreats, might be examples of facilitation processes that require strong generalist facilitation skills to ensure process and narrative outcomes that are meaningful. Facilitators in this category should be able to substantiate experience in  a range of facilitation techniques that represent inclusive and participatory facilitation processes as well as strong post facilitation documentation.

Specialist (Higher Expertise – Lower Breadth of Skills): While content expertise may not matter in the lower tier of the matrix, there are times when knowledge and content do matter.  For examples, technology planning, executive transitions, implementing a capital campaign are facilitation processes that require more than an impartial facilitator.  Such specialized facilitation requires knowledge and judgment in addition to basic facilitation skills.  Hiring a facilitator in this quadrant values his/her specialized knowledge more than a broad range of facilitation skills.  A highly customized and tailored facilitation process might be sacrificed for the application of knowledge and content to a more generic facilitation process.

Sector Expert (Higher Expertise – Higher Breadth of Skills): The final cell in the matrix is the combination of high expertise coupled with the deep breadth of facilitation skills.  In my view the sector expert differs from the specialist in that the sector expert has cross disciplinary content expertise in addition to a deep range of facilitation skills.   The sector expert has a handle on the facilitation tools and processes required to create a customized and tailored approach to facilitation.  In addition, the sector expert has deep cross-sectional knowledge that can shape the content and knowledge base of the assignment.  A sector expert brings expertise to such complex processes as strategic planning, public policy change, or partnerships and mergers.

These four facilitation archetypes are by no means complete or definitive but rather the the archetypes provide useful heuristics when considering a process of hiring a facilitator.  While the “cost of hiring a facilitator” is a Google search term that drives a lot traffic to a couple of posts that I wrote on that topic (post 1 & post 2), it is my belief that considering the cost of a facilitator as a primary determinant is short-sighted.  More critical to hiring a facilitator is the matching of facilitation skills, process, and content depth to the task at hand.  To this end, considering the four facilitator archetypes is a useful frame for facilitator hiring success.

As always, your comments are welcome.

Function Drives Technology: The first and foremost principle of technology is that function drives technology decisions.  In facilitating conversations about technology the starting point is not technology but “technology for what purpose?”  I recently sat through an orientation to the Apple iPad with a team considering adopting the new technology as a way to enhance team productivity.  The person facilitating the orientation began by asking what functionality was being sought by the team.  There was clearly some vagueness to the purposes expressed by the team.  “I’m looking for a document reader” was most common functionality followed by some notions of calendaring and communicating.  Eventually the group discussed editing documents.  The pivotal gestalt of conversation was when the trainer acknowledged that the iPad was a “consumption” tool rather than a “creative” tool.  In essence, the trainer suggested that, at this point, the functionality of the IPad was about media interaction, reading, communicating and less about document creation and sharing. There is no ending to this story, rather, it serves as a useful metaphor for this facilitation principle.  A clearly understanding of function should always drive change and adoption.

Technology is the Media and not the Message:  As long as technology has been used as a tool for improving educational and organizational performance, there had been a debate about technology being the “cause” of improvement.  Many studies have demonstrated that technology rarely (if ever) is the cause of change but rather technology can, at times,  be an efficient (or the most efficient) media/tool to deliver the organizational change. The classic metaphor that is used to describe the relationship between technology and performance change is that of  a farmer growing tomatoes.  A farmer can get tomatoes to the market through u-pick, can deliver the tomatoes to the market by walking, horse and cart or truck.  The point is that while there may be  differences in delivery vehicles, the vehicle does not change the tomatoes.  Likewise, while social media tools like Twitter and Facebook can expand the communication reach of a nonprofit agency and online donations might improve administrative efficiency but  cultivating audiences and helping them become supporters of an agency requires the application of relationship-building principles that have been employed for decades.  Likewise successful online advocacy employs the same principles of community organizing that has always been the foundation advocacy.

Choose Any Two:  The third facilitation principle is to consider the concepts of “fast, cheap, done” correctly process.  There is the old software development saying (at least that is where I first heard it) that goes “fast, cheap, done correctly, choose any two.”  The principle, while a bit snarky sounding has much face validity.  If the anchor is “done correctly” then an organizations investment of resources in technology is proportional to  time.  By implication, the faster you want the change to happen more resources (money & staffing) will need to be invested in the project.

Trend Watching is Imprtant:  The fourth facilitation principle is to ensure that someone involved in your planning process is a “trend watcher” Technology is rapidly proliferating and for nonprofits with limited budgets it is important to consider the larger trends that shape nonprofit use of technology.  A few good resources for trend watching in the nonprofit world include Tech Soup (external link), Groundwire (external link), and the Pew Internet & American Life Project (external link).  As you move into planning, it will be important for your team to consider the trends that will most likely influence your community and stakeholders.  So for example, an agency with a mix of activist volunteers and donors might assess the salient trends as early technology adoption, open-source orientation, participatory use of technology, and heavy social media use. The trends among your clients and supporters should shape your technology platforms for outreach.  Internally,  trends of “cloud computing” or outsourcing back offices functions may also influence your operational technology decisions.

With these four principles a team is prepared to facilitate a technology planning process. Whether it is the development of a social media strategy to augment community outreach or whether it is considering moving from an in-house technology network to “cloud-based” network, the facilitation becomes a four step process.

1.  Get clear about the why:  As suggested earlier, the discussion of what you are trying to accomplish is the first and foremost consideration of technology planning.  Having clear goals and objectives are important to define the technology context.

2.  Inventory what your currently have:  With clear goals and objectives, the next step in the facilitation process is to inventory the what and how of your reality today.  If social media is the strategy being considered to increase your community of supporters, consider how are you currently reaching out to your supporters?  What technology platforms are you currently using to grow and manage your community of supporters?  What additional functionality do you need to help you grow your community?

3.  Build a picture of the gap and evaluate the alternatives:  As a performance improvement process, the next step to to place your goals and objectives on one side of the dry erase board or wall space and the existing inventory on the opposite.  The space between your inventory of “where you are now” and the goals and objectives of “where you want to be” is the gap that you are seeking to fill.  In the white space in between the team then needs to explore alternative strategies to close the gap.  Exploring alternatives requires some homework and likely more than one meeting.  So, for example, if a team is looking to use technology to increase connection with potential donors, alternative strategies might include publishing an enewsletter, building a social media community, hosting conference calls, or webinars, creating a dynamic content blog, or a combination of strategies.  Each strategy carries with it time, staffing and monetary costs that need to be weighed against the potential return and the mission fit.

4.  Create and Opportunity Matrix:  Once potential strategies are developed a team can then use an opportunity matrix to weigh the relative merits of the alternatives. While each team will create unique evaluation criteria to meet their needs, the general process is that a team needs to be able to compare alternatives and make decisions based on the resources and priorities of the agency.  In essence evaluating opportunities answers the questions of which alternative: 1) Is most feasible with your resources (time, money and talent)? and 2) Is most compatible with your mission, vision and values?  Your opportunity matrix should also include how the alternative compares against your trends.

5.  Create your Operational Plan:  Once you have explored opportunities, alternatives and decided on the alternative(s), the next phase of facilitation is to develop and implementation or operational plan.  Describing operational planning is beyond the scope of this post but a simple search on the internet can provide you with dozens of operational planning models and templates.  In the past I outlined in 3 posts to frame the workplan development process that can also be a useful starting place.

Following a facilitation process, a team can move from a universe of options through a thoughtful narrowing process to finally arrive at a strategic decision.  In my experience and practice, I have found that many nonprofit teams are nearly paralyzed by technology planning.  Often with weak (or completely absent) technology support, small to mid-sized nonprofits have reservations about investing in technology despite the potential organizational improvements that can result from such investments.  However, for those nonprofits that start with “function” and work backwards to technology through a thoughtful assessment of alternatives to realize the benefits that technology can bring to the agency operations and program management.

As always, your comments are welcome.

Acknowledge but don’t feed the Weaknesses and Threats: In my experience, one risk of a SWOT analysis is that a team that is processing weaknesses and threats can inadvertently pull the conversation down towards pessimism and defensiveness. The resulting strategies from such conversations can focus on “defending the gains” rather then “expanding opportunities.” One way to avoid “planning from deficits” is to rethink the framework. Elsewhere I have written about appreciative inquiry as a facilitation process and I have often used a related framework of Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results (SOAR) as an alternative to a SWOT. A good contrast between SWOT and SOAR can be found here – (external link).

However, if a team is committed to a SWOT analysis, it is critical that there is a shared understanding of the purpose in looking the variables, especially, the Weaknesses and Threats. The assessment of weaknesses is the chance to a team to identify and reflect on internal operations and capacity that are the “rate limiters” in moving forward. The assessment of threats is looking at the external environment that could negatively effect the organizations success. Often, the threatening forces that can impact and agency but might be beyond the control of the organization. Combined, the purpose of looking at weaknesses and threats is to give an organization a realistic understanding context in which they are operating. However, strategic plans should rarely be developed in relationship to weaknesses and threats.

My bias has been a source of many conversations with clients over the meaning and power of words. In suggesting that weaknesses and threats are not the foundation of strategy, I am not suggesting that an an organization deny the reality of either. Weaknesses and threats exist and need to be accommodated in the planning process, however, in the planning process, they equally  should not be “fed” by giving them inordinate power.  In the end, all strategy should reflect an understanding of the environment but be focused and be framed in the context of the opportunities ahead.

Collapse the Quadrants: It is my belief that a SWOT analysis is most useful to a team as a broad surveillance tool rather than a planning tool. A completed SWOT matrix allows a team to view the scope of possibilities. As weaknesses and threats are identified a team should then turn them upside-down. Weaknesses and threats are the flip side of opportunities and should be viewed as such. In other words, as a SWOT analysis is completed, the traditional four quadrants of the SWOT matrix should be collapsed into opportunities. If a team is clear on this point, then it will prevent them from getting lost in simply “defending gains” rather than engaging in strategic planning. Again, Strategic planning occurs when a team distills the SWOT data into opportunities. So, for example, the threat of “pending budget cuts” becomes the opportunity of thinking differently about revenue diversification or the opportunity to advocate for policy change around funding. A facilitator working with a team on a SWOT analysis should help the team move towards the opportunity quadrant. Again, the purpose if not to ignore weaknesses and threats but to help a team channel the potential and energy into creating aspirational strategies and goals.

Create Scenario Screens: A third way to assist a planning team move through a SWOT analysis is to help the team create “scenario screens.” In short a scenario screen acknowledges that the variables identified in a SWOT are not static and often only partially understood in the planning process. To help a team plan for the changing landscape (incompletely captured in a SWOT) a scenario screen creates a way to teams to measure opportunities in the context of the organizational mission and vision. Others have referred to the scenario screen process as an “opportunity matrix” or “strategy screen.”  A simple web search of any of these concepts will yield a number of relevant example of such tools.

A scenario screen is a way to evaluate and prioritize opportunities. Typically a scenario screen lists criteria that need to be met as an opportunity is assessed. For example, some potential criteria might be that the opportunity is a) compatible with the organizational mission, b) meets one or more strategic priority, c) has a reasonable timeframe, d) has acceptable costs, and e) there is capacity to execute. A scenario screen may also “rank” or “weigh” variables (such as low fit, medium fit, or high fit) to create a a more multidimensional assessment of the opportunity.

Again, while some conflate a SWOT exercise with strategic planning, it is important to recognize that a SWOT analysis is only one tool or exercise in the strategic planning process. However, when facilitating a SWOT exercise as part of the strategic planning process, it is useful to connect the three steps as a process. This facilitation process includes: 1) the broad study and recognition of the SWOT forces internal and external to the organization, 2) the narrower focusing of the conversation around the “unpacked” implicit and explicit strategies and opportunities that emerge from the SWOT, and 3) the creation of scenario screens that help the team manages the shifting dynamics of the SWOT variables, strategies, and opportunities over time.

I believe that strategic planning in the nonprofit setting does not lend itself to the direct application of corporate for-profit strategic planning models. Nonprofit business models are more complex than defending or advancing market share. A SWOT analysis for nonprofits run the twin dangers of either oversimplifying strategy or narrowing strategy into the four unnaturally parsed quadrants. To create a robust strategic plan, facilitating a nonprofit SWOT analysis needs to move beyond the four quadrants and provide an organization with a strategic understanding of the environment, its opportunities, and more importantly the tools to manage the opportunities of the environment over time. Facilitated well, a SWOT exercise can strengthens a nonprofit strategic planning process.

I have been using Twitter in my practice for about six months now.  My account @facilitationpro is primarily a place where I promote and cultivate the practice of information scanning and knowledge management. To stay current in the fields of performance improvement, nonprofit management and trends in philanthropy, I scan numerous websites and other online resources and as I encounter useful tools and documents, I post them  as “resources of the day.”  I also use the tool to keep abreast of the local nonprofit community (at least those using Twitter).  As virtually everyone knows by now, Twitter (and similar services) are communication platforms that limit messages to 140 characters. Of course, in trying to micro-abbreviate words, there is a hazard that the meaning of the message can be obscured or even lost entirely. However, done correctly, measuring communication to 140 characters forces one to parse down words to simplicity and clarity.   The transference of this concept to facilitation is important.  Indeed, next to creating movement, simplicity and clarity are the co-equal meta-competencies of facilitation.  While I have written before about core competencies of facilitation, I thought it might be useful to discuss the concepts of clarity and simplicity as a facilitation skill.

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In thinking about this topic, I was reminded of a time when I was called in following one of a series of meetings being conducted by a board/staff subcommittee of a mid-sized nonprofit organization.  The team had been meeting intensely for several weeks trying to create a board proposal.  I was asked, as a favor, to come in to a meeting to help assess and troubleshoot the development process of the board proposal.  The words of a frustrated staffer were something like, “The document has gone back-and-forth and round-and-round so many times that I think we are completely lost.”  Given that the team spent little time creating a facilitation process for the proposal development, such an outcome could have been predicted.  During this meeting, I spent a good hour asking simple, open-ended questions and listening a lot.  As I jotted down notes (in categories) it became clear that there was an underlying framework that the team had been developing but failed to name it and bring it to the surface.  As I sketched the framework and labeled the “moving parts” it was easily to see the layers of confusion being peeled away.  While the end of the meeting did not clarify everything, it did set the team in the right direction and when I was looped back into the conversation a while later, the proposal had much more clarity and simplicity.  So what are the principles of clarity and simplicity?

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Think about the System: Simplicity and clarity happen when a team can identify the system operating around the content at hand.  The team, referenced above, were intently focused on the concepts and words of the proposal before them.  By helping the group to step back and identifying the system, I, as the facilitator, was able to help the team rediscover not only the system but also the central core of that system.  This central core was critical because it served as the organizing “gravitational pull” of the proposal, around which all of the other pieces of the proposal orbited. In this way, the core of the system held the proposal in place and became the unifying, simple, and clear theme.

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Cut Twice then Measure Once. A second principle in finding clarity and simplicity is to take the Twitter model of 140 characters, cut it in half and then in half again. Then fit the concept to that micro space.  Going back to my illustration above, I spent most of my time with the team in listening mode.  As I listened I strained to hear the recurring words that became category headers. When words like leverage, impact, and scale became the most relevant “35 characters” of the conversation, the gravitational center became a clearer discussion of social impact.

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Think Visually: Clarity and simplicity can also come by changing the medium.  When three of four pages of dense text create complexity, it is helpful to abandon words and think visually.  Elsewhere I have written in more detail about the use of visuals in facilitation and here it is suffice to say that when used well, tools like concept mapping, metaphors and even visual sorting exercises can all help be powerful simplifiers.  Note the emphasis on “used well” as I have seen more than once, visual tools be used as magnifiers of complexity. Visual thinking should be about simplicity and clarity.

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Think Like a Designer:  While facilitators do not need to be pretend “graphic designers” it is helpful for the facilitator to explore concepts of design and design thinking as an adjunctive tool in the clarity and simplicity process.  Concepts like alignment; proximity; contrast; and white space can all be used to help move a process from complexity to simplicity.  Coming back to the nonprofit presenting their board proposal, the challenge was that the final proposal remained four pages in length and the team needed the consent of the board to move forward.  As a result, the board presentation had to become graphic, emphasizing powerful words, visuals and story to serve as a translation of the document.

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As I premised at the outset, clarity and simplicity are meta-facilitation skills that are not optional to a facilitation process.  A facilitator needs to have in his or her toolbox a range methods to help group get to the core of clarity and simplicity.  Gone are the days when agencies could use complex schematics and service delivery models to explain business operations.  The task of organizations seeking to improve performance and accelerate growth is to reduce the “noise” in order to create clarity and simplicity.  The task of facilitation is to create a process that brings clarity and simplicity to help organizations achieve success.

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As always, your thoughts are welcome.

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Recently I have been talking to several clients that are seeking facilitation services for the planning of events that are a month or two away and are looking for assistance in convening geographically diverse teams in planning the events.  Having planned many regional and national conferences over my 17 plus year career,  it is clear to me that the facilitation process of planning an event is as important as the facilitation process at the event. While not quite as prophetic as the GIGO mantra of “garbage in garbage out, ” my experience has taught me that there is a direct relationship between the quality of the planning and the quality of the event.  I have also found that he stakes in event planning are increased when planning team is geographically distant and unable to convene face-to-face for the planning process. So in this post, I wanted to outline some of the principles of facilitating an event planning process for a “virtual” planning team.

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Technology Choices:  The first principle is to be thoughtful and intentional about technology choices.  In an ideal world, everyone would have broadband access to the Internet, using state of the art computers with integrated Voice Over Internet capabilities and attached video cameras.  In that ideal world, users would have the technology competencies to understand not only email and basic web browsing but also how to use tools like Skype, WIKIS, Twitter, collaborative workspaces, content management systems.  Unfortunately, while the generation now coming up through the ranks is more technology savvy, a facilitator needs to be able to rapidly assess the competencies of a planning team to find the lowest common denominator of technology tools to manage the planning process.  At the most basic level technology tools need to ensure thee things:  a) communication, b) documentation, c) tracking progress.

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Communication:  Planning teams need to communicate and  three of the most common formats are teleconferencing, webinar and email.   The trade off of teleconferencing or using a webinar platform is primarily one of cost and technology competency.  If a team can afford it and has the competencies, using a webinar format for planning meetings opens up visual as well as audio communications.  I find email is useful only as an adjunct communication tool because of the inherent limitations that asynchrony bring to the communication process, because of the competing noise of 40-50 other emails a day, and fragmentation inherent in multiple email messages.

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Documentation:  The ability to document a planning process using a common technology platform is critical to the planning process.  For example, I have been working with a distributed team on an organizational development process where one of their primary challenges is tracking who on the team has the current version of any given document.  That is not the way to work and we are exploring technology options to solve that problem. However, planning teams need to get documentation correct up front as timelines for event planning don’t reward inefficiency of lost documents. Elsewhere I have written extensively about managing technology-based collaborative workspaces.

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Tracking Progress: Tracking progress across a distributed team can also be managed using online collaborative workspaces or can be as simple as using a running task list that is reviewed at each planning call. Ideally tracking progress integrates a dates (calendar), tasks, milestones and responsibilities.

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Agendas & Ground Rules: I have written elsewhere on agenda development and when working with a virtual planning team, the importance of using an effective agenda in facilitating a planning process needs to be underscored.  When a meeting is being conducted by a teleconference there is an absence of visual interaction and having a clear agenda is one tool to help participants track progress of the conversation.   The other tool that is important to facilitating teleconferences is a discussion of “ground rules.”  While many facilitators rigorously define ground rules at the beginning of a facilitation process, I am much more lax in this processes, often omitting consideration of ground rules, unless a client feels that the step is important. However, for conference calls, I do believe that it is important to establish some working ground rules.  Some rules are related to professional courtesy while others are intended to improve productivity. Specifically, I feel that it is important to create agreements around a) multi-tasking (answer emails and web surf in addition to participating in the call), b) muting phones except when talking, c) identifying oneself before speaking, d) restating agreements in the summary.

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Facilitation Tasks:  When facilitating a virtual group I believe that the facilitator has five tasks including 1) preparation, 2) movement, 3) understanding, 4) inclusion, and 5) decisions.

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Preparation:  There are two dimensions of preparation.  The first dimension is creating the clear understanding of meeting outcomes and make sure that the virtual team has in advance to the meeting, the agenda and background materials needed to make them successful in achieving the meeting outcomes. There is both art and science in using technology effectively and that surfaces the second dimension of preparation. A facilitator needs a deep understanding of the technology media being used.

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Movement:  As with all facilitation, the role of the facilitator is to design and implement a process that moves participants from the beginning of the process to the end.  In a technology-mediated environment, without visual cues, such facilitation will rely more on more procedural skills to specifically engage participants and create action.  Polling, sequential talking, motion – discussion & vote, are examples or process tools that are needed to compensate for the lack of visual cues.

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Understanding: As a third process, checking for understanding becomes important in a technology-mediated environment. The facilitator may need to check in on understanding using processes like, asking for paraphrasing or verbal affirmations of understanding.

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Inclusion:  Ensuring inclusion is a facilitator task in any setting. In facilitating virtual groups the task of inclusion has the dimension of ensuring equity of voice and the occasional dimension of re-engaging those who wander off into multi-taking land.

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Decisions: The final facilitator task is to ensure that decisions are made and documented.  I have also posted on decision-making previously and it goes without saying that decisions made are the markers of progress in the event planning process.

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Documentation: The final principle to discuss is documentation and version control. The success of team-based event planning is the ability to manage the documentation process.  Again, as a subject worthy of more in-depth consideration, I had posted extended thoughts on documentation previously.   As I stated in that post, “developing a documentation plan as part of facilitation should be standard practice, although I have encountered few facilitators who are so intentional about this process.  To be successful in this area, a facilitator needs to be familiar with concepts of information ecology and knowledge management in addition to having strong technology competencies. The benefits of investing the time and energy in document planning are seen in greater productivity, efficiency of the process.”

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Successful event planning by virtual teams not only requires facilitation but a well-managed facilitation process.  Investing in the event planning design as well as the event design will often be the difference between an event and an outcome.  Events can be planned but events that achieve outcomes require distributed planning teams to the carefully design a process that use of technology, meeting process, and document management to ensure planning success.

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As always, your thoughts are welcome.

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In my consulting I have made it a practice to discuss with clients my philosophical approach and the foundational theories that I use to in facilitation.  I find this is often time well spent because it helps to create a shared space for our working relationship. One “shared space” discussion that is important to have with clients is whether the facilitation process is problem-based or solution-based.  In general, I approach performance consulting and facilitation from a solution perspective.    In practice, what that means is that the amount of time needed to define the current situation is way less important than the time spent thinking and acting in the direction of where a client wants to be.  So as a proportion of the overall consulting process, I believe that the time spent in problem identification should be no more than the time required to develop a clear and succinct assessment of the point from which the group or team is starting.  How the group or team got to the starting point rarely matters.  What does matter in the facilitation process is that a group or team is at point A and wants to move forward to point B and a focus on solutions moves the group forward and not backwards.  In this post, I wanted to outline five principles of a solution-focused facilitation process.

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Start with the solution:  The first step in solution-focused process is, intuitively, to start by defining the solution or range of solutions that need to be considered.  In essence, the solution is the goal that goes far enough upstream to create the performance improvement or change that matters.  For an extensive exploration of a solutions, this step could require a sophisticated process like scenario planning or conversely, it could be as simple as structuring a sequence of inquiry questions. From an appreciative inquiry approach, solutions might be “three wishes” or aspirations of a team and from a performance improvement perspective, the solutions would answer the question of what is the “optimal performance.” Whatever process is used, the point is that when you start from the solution perspective, the group is less likely to get bogged down trying to reverse engineer why the problem exists (a backwards focus)  and instead the group moves forward –and remember that facilitation is first and foremost about forward movement.

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Create objectives that move you towards the solution:  Once the solution is identified the next step is to identify interim objectives that tell you that you are moving towards the solution. Elsewhere I have written about goals and objectives and in this context it suffices to say that objectives become the  mile-markers that help you know that you are moving towards the solution.

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Build upon existing practice and experience: The next step in the solution process is to create a shared understanding of how progress is already being made towards the solution. All groups have existing practices and skills that support solutions.  Occasionally, however, I have encountered groups that practice a “collective amnesia” about their practices and experiences.  In these cases, it is important to prompt the group and draw out their existing practices and experiences that support the achievement of the solution.  Simply asking the question, “what is happening within this team and organization that supports the solution?” can change a facilitation process by getting folks to think about their strengths.

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Resource the Solution:  The fourth step in facilitating from a solution perspective is to spend time developing a resource plan to make sure that the solution can be achieved.  For example, if performance improvement is the solution, then the resources required to help create the performance improvement might include such things as job design, organizational development, staff development, or program support. As with any journey towards a new destination, a team needs both a plan and the resources to carry to plan forward.

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Document and Monitor the Plan: The fifth step in a solution process is to document and monitor the plan.  While I have written elsewhere about creating workplans and monitoring the progress towards achieving the plan, it never hurts to reinforce the point that that teams and organizations need clear expectations and a roadmap for success.  Further, teams need to be able to network with each other, have access to coaching and mentoring along the way, and have mechanisms for accountability if new solutions are to be achieved.

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As I reflect on this five-point outline, I think it reads a bit like a “Mechanix Illustrated” for facilitators.  But underneath this step-by-step approach is an underlying philosophy that needs to be attended to.  Often time, facilitators enter an agency as an outside “expert” with a toolbox (or worse –a magician’s hat) to solve the client’s “problems.”  This mechanic’s approach basically says “I can come into your agency and fix your problem in five steps.” Unfortunately, such a facilitation approach is all too common and in the hands of such a mechanic, a solution-focused approach is just a tool.  In reality, solution-focused facilitation is more than a tool and is really about pedagogy.  True solution-focused facilitation is born out of empowerment education and constructivism with both of these foundations asserting that the facilitator is a co-equal learner. Far from a mechanic’s “expert approach”, solution-focused facilitation is about co-creation. So, coming back to the opening line of this post, I want to underscore  that philosophy matters and the facilitator and client need to create a shared space around philosophy.

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I carry around in my head many truisms from the radical, innovator and philosopher Henry David Thoreau and one statement he penned is, “though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed.  Convince me that you have a seed in there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.” To me, this is the heart and soul of solution-focused facilitation.

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As always, your comments are welcome.

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