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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.

Using Taxonomies in Facilitation

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If you have been following this blog, you likely already know that my goal is to move beyond “Facilitation 101” and focus on the deeper context of facilitation, which I believe is the ability to connect people, technology, and process in ways that create performance improvement.   It is my belief that the traditional view of facilitators “running good meetings” is wholly inadequate for today’s competitive and rapidly changing social-political and economic environment.  One such “deeper” theme of this blog is the understanding of the facilitator’s role in managing knowledge creation.  I have written before of the process of facilitating knowledge creation and managing the documentation of knowledge.  In this post, I wanted to add another dimension of knowledge management by discussing the importance of using taxonomies as a strategic tool in facilitation.  Knowledge taxonomies are based on the science of classifying words, ideas and concepts, according to natural relationships and should be part of the operating system of a facilitator. There are two ways of thinking about taxonomy development. One use is the use of a taxonomy in “organization of knowledge” and the second is the use of a taxonomy in “organization of people. Ideally a facilitator can use taxonomy in a blended approach taking the best of both orientations.

Taxonomy and Organizing Knowledge:  One of the clearest benefits of creating a taxonomy is that it serves as an organizer.  A few years ago I worked with a team managing three large resource libraries and had the privilege of being mentored by some truly amazing librarians who taught me a tremendous amount about managing knowledge through taxonomies.  While there is a large science of taxonomies, the process of developing a taxonomy boils down to identifying the requirements, conducting a concept mapping exercise, building a draft taxonomy, getting a usability feedback, refining the taxonomy and applying/maintaining the system. The power of proactive knowledge taxonomy is that it gives order to process at the beginning and the dividends are accrued when content multiplies and expands. If a knowledge taxonomy is created up front, then as materials are created they can be labeled, organized and stored effectively.  In the absence of a defined taxonomy, one can spend hours on a shared drive looking for a reference article, only to find it in the “download archive” folder named something like “3089.doc”

Taxonomy and Building Community: Almost polar opposite to creating a structured taxonomy is  a community taxonomy that is iteratively and built from the bottom up by those contributing and using the knowledge.  Sometimes called a folksonomy to contrast it from an informatics approach, a folksonomy is a democratized approach to building a defined taxonomy.  It builds upon the social life of information and lends itself to community building. A common example of a folksonomy can be seen the use of keywords and tags associated with blogs.  If you have ever seen a tag cloud, you begin to get the sense of how folksonomies are developed.  Concepts attract concepts, patterns are recognized and a shared understanding grows out of the mutual use of terms.  Another example of a folksonomy can be found in personal lists Twitter users create to sort content.  Lists are developed, cross-posted, referenced and begin to “trend” as a shared concept.  The power of such folksonomies is found when user tags are combined and refined based on the principle of self-organization.

If a facilitator understands the concept of taxonomies s/he can harness both the power of structure and community organization in creating framework for organization of knowledge.  This brings us to the application of taxonomies in facilitation.  How does understanding the use of taxonomies improve facilitation?

Managing Documents: The obvious, and previously stated, application is in the management of documents.  For those facilitation assignments that require the creation and management of multiple documents, the use of a taxonomy is critical.  Whether a top down informatics approach or a bottom up community approach, defining a taxonomy is essential to managing documents.

Making the Complex Simple: A second use of a taxonomy in facilitation is in taking a large and/or complex topics and breaking down so that it builds a common understanding of the group.  The most common taxonomy exercise is creating a concept map.  Concept mapping is a way off creating an inventory of ideas and vocabulary and creating relationships between the ideas and vocabulary.  While some may argue that creating a concept map differs from creating a taxonomy, in my opinion, the two are at least close cousins.

Depoliticizing Words: A final application of taxonomy thinking in facilitation is as a tool to depoliticize language.  For example, I have been in many discussions about affordable rental housing where group members used interchangeably words like: low-income housing, public housing, undercapitalized housing, substandard housing and predatory housing.  Each of these terms can be loaded with a political agenda.  A facilitator could easily remove the politics by starting with the higher order concept of housing and creating a taxonomy.  In that process, the politics are uncoupled from the concepts and common ground is more likely to be created as a platform for productive rather than polarized discussions.

As I suggested earlier, facilitating the development of a knowledge taxonomy is likely the result of a blended structure that is in part designed but also allows for the iterative co-creation and improvement of how processes are organized.  The point of this blog is not to teach informatics but is to describe the intentional clarity that a facilitator needs to bring to language, words and concepts. Facilitation has as a core foundation principle the ability to bring order to diversity. In the past, such facilitation might have been achieved by charisma, felt-tipped markers, and easel paper. However, the increasing complexity of process demands more than simple facilitation skills.  Markers and easel paper are still required but the facilitator needs to understand how to think and design in terms of systems, organization and knowledge management.  Such facilitation requires the theory and application of taxonomies as part of the facilitation toolbox.  With taxonomy skills facilitation meets the need of times, when there is more at stake than running a good meeting.

References

(1) Taxonomy Development for Knowledge Management

(2) Taxonomy and Folksonomy Cookbook


Managing Documentation: A Key Facilitation Skill

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I once served on an advisory group process that spanned a number of months and consisted of a steering committee, a workgroup, three subcommittees and a couple of ad hoc committees.  I was not the facilitator but a participant and as the weeks unfolded, I found myself increasingly frustrated by the lack of process for facilitating the management of documents.  That lack, meant that meeting minutes arrived in various inconsistent formats.  Worse, minutes were consistently presented as sketchy and random notes rather than an effective process/decision summary.  There was no accessible centralized file archive of documents presented at meetings nor were there version controlled copies of the recommendation papers being developed by the subcommittees.  The bottom line is the lack of document organization negatively impacted the productivity of the group.

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I compare a document management plan to the “operating system” of a computer.  The user of a computer doesn’t turn on his/her computer and think “hmmm is my OS X or Windows XP working today?” –okay maybe you question your Windows operating system- but in general one does not often think about the operating system even though it is what makes the computer work. While we word process or email, or work with databases and spreadsheets the operating system makes the experience seamless.  In the same way document management should be something operates in the background as a critical operating platform that supports the facilitation process. Effectively managing documents needs to be part of the facilitator’s “operating system” because it is essential to the facilitation process.

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In this day of age, I cannot imagine a facilitation consultant working with a client without creating a shared electronic workspace for the effective management of documents.  In fact, I have presented a two-part overview (Part 1 & Part 2) of facilitating in a shared electronic workspace.  In this post I would like to focus on the facilitation skill of developing a document management plan for creating, storing, editing and distributing of written materials.  I believe that the facilitation skills associated with managing documents requires three distinct planning phases that include: 1) defining and mapping data, 2) creating people networks, and, 3) creating connections between people and data.

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Defining & Mapping Data:  At the start of every project, the facilitator needs to be clear about the expectations relating to documents being developed and the associated documentation process.  In general, a larger facilitation process will include: a) progress documentation b) reference documentation; and c) production documents.  Process documentation includes such things as meeting agendas, minutes, process summaries, and workplans. Reference documentation, might be reports, articles, manuals, slide presentations that collectively comprise the project-based information library. Production documents are those documents that become part of the project deliverables.  For example, facilitating a proposal development process, the production documents would include the narrative, budget, forms and appendices.

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Once the documentation requirements are defined, they then need to be mapped in order to be accessible. Specifically mapping includes: a) using a defined hierarchy of folders, b) standardizing naming conventions for files, and c) for really complex projects defining the knowledge taxonomy or folksomony (the subject of another post to be written). Finally decisions need to be made as to how the documents will be accessible.  Ideally, electronic documents need to be centralized on shared drive or collaborative workspace.  If there is a print document file system then it is the facilitator’s role to provide access to the document files.  Going back to my opening advisory committee example, every advisory committee member was given a 3” binder with tabs. Possibly a good start but then again, not all materials were distributed in a print format; rarely were the agendas or handouts three-hole punched; and none of the documents had clear version control (i.e., creation date headers or footers).

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Creating People Networks:  The second consideration in creating a document system is to determine the people need access to what information and how is the best way to keep them informed?  Going back to the advisory board example, we could be confident that randomly someone who should have received the communication would be left off the distribution list. The facilitator’s response would inevitably be, “I did not know s/he needed the information.”  In good document design practice, at the beginning of the process, information users need to be defined clearly and given appropriate access to materials. For example, are there decision makers or stakeholders external to the process that need to be informed as the process unfolds? Part of facilitation planning needs to include creating a clear picture of the people network involved with the process.

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Creating Connections Between People & Data: The final consideration for creating a document management plan is to create the appropriate connections between the documents and people network.  How the participants will use the documents in a facilitation process requires some thought.  If data and documents are categorized into process, reference and production, it suggests connecting the team with documents in different ways.  Process documents, such as meeting minutes and workplans, may be filed in an online repository or distributed (three-hole punched) for filing into binders.  However, within minutes and workplans are often tasks that should be called out to make the information useful.  Many web-based shared workspaces have functionality for document storage as well as the creation and assignment of tasks (yet another argument for supporting facilitation with technology).  However, even if meeting minutes are distributed by email as an attachment, good facilitation will “call out” in the text of the email message the action steps and tasks, responsible person(s) and due dates.  For reference documents, it is useful to associate the name of contributor to the document itself (either as a tag, or as part of the file name). If this connection is made explicitly then team members with questions about a resource can go to the document owner  for clarification and/or expansion.  Finally, team members accessing production documents need to have permissions assigned, such as “read only,” “read and edit,” or  “approve or delete” and, of course, the facilitator must ensure version control.

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Taken together, the process of thinking about documentation, documentation use, and how the two interface is key to the facilitation processes. 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.  For facilitators, understanding document management is essential when there is more at stake than running a good meeting.

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Again, you comments are welcome.

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Facilitating Knowledge Creation & Management

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As groups and teams work together on planning or performance improvement initiatives there is often a secondary agenda of creating and capturing knowledge. So, for example a healthcare team wanting to improve patient services might meet to develop a series of rapid cycle tests using the Plan, Do, Study, Act (PSDA) model. While the primary purpose of the group process is to improve the quality of services, a secondary agenda might be to document the PDSA experiments in the form of case studies to be used as  learning tools and to inform future quality improvement projects. Capturing knowledge even at this level requires more than simply writing things down. There is discussion, synthesis, observation, and conjecture that is based on both explicit and tacit knowledge coming out of the PDSA cycles.
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Facilitating a team such as this, not only requires facilitation skills but also the ability to create, share and manage knowledge. Knowledge management is the larger discipline that informs these facilitation skills. At the risk of oversimplification, knowledge management roughly falls into two categories –the technology process used to filter, create, sort, store, and share knowledge and the people process related to these same functions. So when facilitating a group process that involves knowledge creation and management, the facilitator needs a strong understanding of knowledge management. In this post, I want to discuss the facilitation skill for managing the “people” side of knowledge management and in a follow up post I will hazard a discussion about the technology side of knowledge management (although I outlined some principles two other posts).
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It goes without saying that one of the critical competencies of a facilitator is to help foster interpersonal communication and relationships among group members. It is assumed that facilitators have competencies in group dynamics, communication process, mediation and negotiation. However, as I have worked with “knowledge management” teams over the years I believe that there are four unique aspects of the facilitation process that fosters knowledge creation. These include the following dimensions:
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Understanding of knowledge management theory: Facilitators of knowledge management need some understanding knowledge management theory. One theory (that I adapted) comes from a text on knowledge creation (1) and maps knowledge in a 2 x 2 matrix created by two axes. The horizontal axis ranges from individual knowledge to shared knowledge and the vertical axis ranges from low to high on interpersonal relationships. The theory is to envision each quadrant of the box and predict the result of knowledge management. So, when there are low interpersonal relationships and a tendency to value individual knowledge, the each team member hordes the knowledge they have. If there are low relationships and a recognition that the information needs to be shared, then knowledge is exchanged. In the upper quadrants, when there are high relationships then knowledge starts to be imparted in a teaching or mentoring context and in the high functioning quadrant, information becomes communal where interactions support a knowledge culture across the team. Understanding this simple frame helps a facilitator design a process that heightens both relationships and a shared ownership of knowledge.
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Understanding a community of practice approach: While the concept of communities of practice can be traced back to the days of artisans and guilds, the proliferation of technology has spawned a new field of research in organizational development specific to how professional communities of practice are developed and sustained (2-3). Facilitators of knowledge initiatives need to understand mechanics of developing a community even if they are only capturing knowledge as a secondary objective of the facilitation process. The study of communities of practice highlights such ideas as the process of sharing knowledge in the context of high relationships, communal ownership, membership and participation, boundary spanning, networking and managing the public and private space between meetings. Understanding these concepts are critical to the facilitation process.
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Understanding the Strategic Intent: A  third facet that enables an effective knowledge management process is to be intentional and strategic in the process design. How is the knowledge that is captured to be used? Is the knowledge going to be used in training and coaching other employees? Will it be used to define best practice or quality standards? Will it be used as the engine for innovation? To be an effective facilitator, the strategic intention needs to be clear.
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Understanding the context of Social Media: One cannot consider the facilitation of a knowledge oriented group process without considering the democratizing influence of the social media culture and its impact on knowledge creation. Technology has erased the concept of binding knowledge creation to a geographic time and space. In this social media environment, knowledge creation has been amplified and informed by the medium rich environment. Coming back to our opening illustration of the quality improvement process and subsequent knowledge capture. a facilitator assigned to this task needs to understand the influence of social media and connectivity.  In this example, in addition to what happens in the formal group process, the quality team members are also likely subscribed to quality management listserv discussion groups, dropping in on webinars about quality improvement, streaming quality improvement blogs using RSS readers, Linking in and following Twitter feeds. Facilitating for knowledge creation needs to incorporate the external environment in which team members operate because these social circles influence the knowledge creation and in some cases such external influences can become proxy members of the group process.
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Once contention of my consulting practice is that facilitation is no longer a generic skill-set that people can learn from a book or gain by attending a workshop. Rather, the dimensions of facilitation demand a broad understanding of multiple disciplines and the ability to think and act in ways that are consistent with project management, business process design and performance improvement. It also requires the ability to understand the dimensions of the facilitation assignment. Near gone are the days when the facilitator can show up with a markers and an easel pack, write down a bunch of stuff and “type-up” the notes as a deliverable. Knowledge development and management is increasingly being connected to facilitation. Facilitation is no longer simply running a good meeting but is a discipline and practice grounded and anchored to the process of performance improvement.
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As always your comments are welcome.
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References:
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(1) Enabling Knowledge Creation: How to Unlock the Mystery of Tacit Knowledge and Release the Power of Innovation
(2) Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge
(3) In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work

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Facilitating Technology-based Collaborative Workspaces Part 2

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In Part 1 of this post I discussed the roles of a facilitator in helping teams function in a technology-based workspace that was specific to document co-creation (as opposed to web-based training).  The basic message is that all projects need to lead with a consideration of facilitation followed by the process development. When a team takes thinks from facilitation to process, the facilitation tasks will inform the technologies chosen and used for any given project.  In summary, the facilitation tools for technology-based collaborative working include 1) a place to organized and store documents, electronically,  2) a word-processing tool for creating and editing documents, 3) communication tools to ensure that the co-creators can keep each other informed and discuss ideas, 4) a calendar, task-list, and possibly a spreadsheet to track progress.  The process design challenge is to apply the appropriate tools to ensure strong facilitation.  There are three basic frameworks for using technology to manage facilitated co-creation of documents.

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Existing Infrastructure: Many teams co-create documents with little thought to facilitation and simply try to maximize the agency’s existing infrastructure.  Typically this includes email, folders on the computer server and perhaps a shared calendar or task list.  These tools enable communication, central storage and perhaps even centralized facilitation but this scenario is rudimentary at best and requires careful design considerations for a team to function effectively in this process.  The weakness of this toolset is that work flow is linear and sequential where documents move from one team member to the next and hopefully all changes along the way are properly captured.  Further stressing this system is when all team members don’t share the same use of the tools.  Invariably distributed teams have at lead one team member who “defects” from using the standard software tools in favor of another. In one of my recent jobs we had different team members using Microsoft Outlook, iGoogle tools, and Thunderbird coupled with an open source calendar.  In this scenario facilitation almost becomes command and control with a single person owning and driving rather that facilitating the process.

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Free Distributed Tools: Some groups that are split between geographic offices have adopted the use of a mix of online tools that offer free versions.  For example, I know of one group that combines free versions of online document sharing, a free version of an online Wiki, and a free version of a survey tool.  While such a mixing of tools might support distributed collaboration, having multiple technologies, each hosted by different companies, requires significantly more thought to ensure coordination and synchronization of the tools.

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Third-Party Paid Services: There are a number of technology vendors that offer an integrated suite of tools that include Wiki’s calendars, forums, blogs, task-lists and spreadsheets.  Some of these suites are enterprise-based (you host on your server) or web-based and available on a subscription model.  The upside to a third-party service approach is the integration that creates a seamless working environment.  The obvious limitation of using third party tools are that technologies that are proprietary offer more constraints because you are “locked in” to a single service and, secondarily, you  are dependent upon the economic viability of the company.  Backing up data becomes critical when using third party tools.

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Hopefully it is obvious that I am over-simplifying what is a much more intensive assessment the available technologies.  While I am not a huge fan of Wikipedia there is a pretty good discussion of online collaboration alternatives.  My point is to create a backdrop for how an agency might approach the conversation of marrying facilitation with technology in document creation.  So how does an agency approach the creation of a technology-based workspace that supports facilitation?

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Assess Your Needs: The first step in the process is to assess you needs.  This assessment includes: a) mapping your current work process (a diagramming exercise is a great tool), b) assessing the technology skills of team members, c) honestly reflecting on your internal technology capacity and budget, and d) exploring new opportunities for technology integration.  Based on this assessment you will then be prepared to map your work process to technology options.

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Develop Collaboration Standards: Once you have created a plan for how you will design a functional technology-based collaborative work environment, the next step is to develop collaboration standard to ensure a consistent practice.  These standards should be based on core facilitation functions previously outlined and address: a) the general roles and responsibilities of the facilitator and team members, b) the specific performance expectations associated with the use of the technology standards, and c) tactical facilitation guidelines related to managing assets, document control and knowledge capture.

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Train and Implement a Pilot: The third stage in the process is to train staff members on the use of the technologies and standards.  Ideally this is followed by the implementation of a pilot project to test the functionality of your new work process.  Based on the evaluation of the pilot implementation your process and collaboration standards can be refined.  One note of caution, when conducting your pilot, you want to choose a low stakes project. Don’t bet the development of a competitive bid for substantial new revenues on the pilot implementation of your new technologies and standards

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In closing, I would reiterate that facilitation and process is core to your business practices.  Using technology strategically is no longer optional. The strategic facilitation of a technology-based development processes will benefit the distributed team and increase organizational effectiveness.  While technology tools may proliferate it is important that organizations employ systems thinking to keep a technology strategy married to facilitation and process

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As always, your feedback is welcome.

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