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Facilitating Nonprofit Technology Planning

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For the last couple of decades, technology has been advancing at a breakneck speed, with each generation of technology continuing to reinvent, if not make obsolete, the previous generation.  At the personal level we now enjoy expanded communications, near real time sharing of our lives though social media, and digital tools that allow us to be both consumers and producers.  At the organizational level, the dizzying speed of change makes long-term strategic planning and short-term operational planning more complicated.  For nonprofits, who are often constrained by artificially low operating costs, the strategic challenge of technology use is even greater. The proliferation of new media tools expands communication, program and collaboration opportunities that can strengthen donor and volunteer involvement and engagement.  Additionally, new technology tools and platforms can increase organizational efficiency across the areas of financial, human resource, donor and volunteer management. The pressure of operating on razor thin budgets makes challenging for nonprofits to understand how they can capitalize on such tools with fear that the wrong “technology bet” will drain vital resources.  Indeed, the technology advances, “back in the day” of the mid 1990’s led me to pursue a Master’s degree in Educational Technology to help me understand the role of technology in education and nonprofit organizational performance.  My purpose of studying educational technology was to better equip me to help nonprofits navigate the challenges of technology integration.  In this post, I want to outline some facilitation principles and strategies to help teams discuss and manage the process of technology adoption.

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.

Facilitating a SWOT Analysis

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The role of assessing the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT ) in nonprofit strategic planning is often misunderstood and misused. At the most extreme a SWOT analysis is confused with the strategic planning process with an organization believing that a SWOT is the sum total of strategic planning. More common is that a team creates a SWOT matrix, (completing the four quadrants), and then are not sure what to do next or the team gets “stuck” processing results. Often the difficulty of processing a SWOT analysis arises around either a team a)  perseverating over the negative screens of weaknesses and threats or b) putting the SWOT variables in a matrix and then not being sure how to integrate the various “quadrants” of the matrix into a whole. In this post I want to outline a facilitation process designed to assist teams work through a SWOT analysis.

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.

Facilitating for Simplicity and Clarity

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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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Facilitating Event Planning for a Distributed Team

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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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Five Principles of a Solution-Focused Facilitation Process

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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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