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Facilitating Technology-based Collaborative Workspaces Part 1

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In an age of networks and distributed technology the convening and teams located in different offices or even different continents is an increasingly common phenomenon.  Web-based training, email discussion groups and teleconferencing are now commonplace means of conducting training and exchanging information.  Also increasingly common is the use of technology-based collaborative workspaces for the management projects.  For example, I am currently working on a business planning process with colleagues in Seattle.  We work seamlessly through the use of weekly conference calls and an online collaborative platform that has messaging, a calendar, task lists, and a Wiki function.  Together we are conducting a wide array of assessment activities, filing documents in archives, identifying clear revision trails and preparing for the co-creation of a strategic business plan.  In technology mediated work environments, the need for facilitation remains an important component of designing the workflow.  In fact, the “human side” of facilitation allows complex projects to succeed in technology-based collaborative workspaces.

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I have been using technology in program planning and development since the days of DOS-based bulletin boards and half a decade later, when Netscape still ruled the Internet and Google was not yet part of our vocabulary, I went back to school to study the use of technology in the learning and facilitation process.  Over the years I have studied, gleaned, imagined, and learned-the-hard-way, a number of facilitation principles for working collaboratively in a technology-mediated environment.  One technology environment where facilitation is critical is when teams are tasked with the co-creation of written documents. In this post I want to present facilitation concepts.  In Part 2, I will move from concept to application.  So what is important in facilitating technology-based collaborative workspaces?

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Intentional Facilitation:  One essential element of facilitating technology-based collaboration is that facilitation needs to be intentional.  Much like face-to-face collaboration, distributed teams need to designate a facilitator of the process or, in cases where a project has sufficient complexity, seek an outside facilitator. The facilitator needs to have a clear understanding of the task and provide traditional facilitation skills to ensure power equity and voice among team members, track follow through and progress, and problem solve as issues arrive.

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Understanding of the Medium: In a typical organization, the first experiments in using technology in the co-creation of documents are often championed by a technology evangelist, who brings the rest of the team along for the ride.  Unfortunately many teams launch into projects without ensuring that the team has a common understanding of the technology and the appropriate skills to use the technology tools.  Under-skilled team members or unclear understanding of the medium can handicap, if not cripple a process.  Facilitating team-based technology requires a pre-planning stage of assessing and ensuring that the team has the understanding and skills to use the tools to a common level to ensure productivity.

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Managing Assets: A third set facilitation skills are those of managing the project assets.  In this area there needs to be an intentional design of: a) file hierarchy (what folders and sub-folders need to exist), b) agreement on file naming conventions and, c) a thesaurus for tagging files on large projects.  Facilitating the management of document assets is a practice that will support knowledge capture and reuse functions later on.

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Document Control: Facilitating the control of documents is also a critical step. The facilitator needs to oversee the documents as they progress to make sure outdated versions are archived and be able to track the progress of the core document.  The other document control process is to create a clear sequence for document approvals.  Typically, there are three stages, where: a) the development team signs off on the document (often using polling or checking off the approval task list), b) the editor or  editing team signs off on the document to ensure grammar, spelling and corporate style guide tasks are complete, and c) the document owner(s) accept the final product.

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Knowledge Capture:  Much like face-to-face facilitation, the final stage of the technology facilitation is to do a post assignment evaluation to assess the quality of the process and inform the management of the next project.  In addition, some teams might debrief by creating a brief case study to be placed in a knowledge management library for later reference.  In addition the facilitator might inventory those assets that can be reused on future projects (such as graphics, standard contract language, etc.) and ensure their accessibility by future teams.

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There is no way around it, facilitation and process permeates all business practices.  In this day in age the competitive advantage goes not to those who use technology but to those who use it strategically.  The strategic facilitation of a technology-based workspace will benefit the distributed team by increasing efficiency, improving workflow, reducing errors, and shortening future production cycles.

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The next post takes these concepts and translates them into action.

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Technology-Enhanced Facilitation

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Back in the mid 1990’s when email listservs were the cutting edge technology and Netscape dominated the web browser market, I was convinced that these new tools would change how we learn both as individuals and as social networks. So I went back to school to pursue a Master’s degree in Educational Technology to learn how, as an educator and system’s change agent, I could leverage technology in my professional life. Now, over a decade later with the staggering advancements in technology, I feel like my masters program was akin to studying the use of slide projectors and rotary dial phones. However, although technology has changed, the basic learning theories that underpin the use of technology have not. What I learned at San Diego State University has not changed. Technology can magnify learning opportunities but the act of learning depends upon content and methodology. Despite all the advances in technology, learning still depends on content, facilitation and process. So considering content and methodology, how can technology can be used to enhance facilitation? I would like to suggest four important technology frameworks that I believe enhance the practice of facilitation.
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Use of Technology in Assessment - Back in the day when email discussion group were still fairly new, I was managing a national project and needed to gather some formative research for the design of a website that we were planning on building. At the time, I was on an email discussion group of likely users of the website so colleague and I decided to conduct a series of email focus groups by email. The qualitative results were so productive, that we detailed the focus-group methodology in an article that appeared in the journal Performance Improvement. Since that time, I have used technology to conduct other focus groups with similar positive results. With the advent stable “webinar” technologies, the opportunity for collecting qualitative information has expanded even more. In addition, Internet technology can also enhance the collection of more quantitative data as part of the assessment process through the use of any one of the many online survey tools readily available for nominal costs. Collectively, these tools contribute to the front-end process and assessments often associated with facilitation. The advantages that technology brings to the assessment phase are that technology: a) can contribute to effective preplanning, b) can increases time efficiency by allowing for asynchronous work to occur, and c) can also be used as a way to increase social distance for the processing of issues that might be controversial or confrontational.
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Use of Shared Technology Workspace – A second way that technology can be used to enhance the facilitation process is by using a shared technology workspace. Online collaboration tools are truly coming of age. A Google search for “hosted collaboration software” or “hosted wiki software” will give a startling array of companies offering low or no-cost online collaborative environments. For any facilitation process that extends over time or has a written end product, utilizing a collaborative workspace is an essential facilitation tool. I once was involved in an advisory workgroup that dragged on and on over the course of a year. Often email attachments were unable to be opened, versions of documents were lost and team members missed important communications. I am convinced that if the paid facilitators understood and used technology as a productivity tool that the arduous and ultimately ineffective process would have been shortened by months and would have had more positive outcomes. But the key is not to simply use a collaborative workspace but to understand the careful planning and active management associated with the use of the collaborative environment. The advantages that technology brings to an extended facilitated process are that technology: a) can better coordinate tasks, activities and communication between meetings, b) can help ensure document version control and real time editing, and c) create knowledge libraries to preserve institutional knowledge.
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Use of Technology in Meetings – While I am not a huge fan to technology-based facilitated meetings, technology can enhance the meeting facilitation process. For example, many teams take real time minutes on laptop that can be reviewed, edited and published at the end of a meeting. Extending this concept, Open Space Technology Conferences, depend on technology to create complex deliverables (like a strategic plan or policy paper) in real time. Smart boards and videoconferencing equipment are other applications of technology to enhance the facilitation process. Even at the lowest end of the technology spectrum, I am no in the habit of using a digital camera to take pictures of dry erase board drawing and notes, before erasing them, and in some cases even taking pictures of chart paper notes as well. Digitizing paper allows for easy storage and retrieval. The advantages that technology brings to meetings are twofold in that technology: a) can enhance the communication process during meetings, and b) can shorten the distance between meeting content and subsequent summaries and deliverables.
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Use of Technology in the Feedback Loop – The final use of technology as an enhancement to the facilitation process is to use technology to close the feedback loop and evaluate the process. Elsewhere I have written more extensively on this topic, but akin to assessment, technology-based surveys and post assessments can be effective in evaluating facilitated processes.
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As a facilitator, I almost always use technology to enhance the facilitation process. Technology is a critical and important tool to help groups and teams achieve greater performance. While having studied the use of technology to improve performance may help me use technology effectively. I don’t believe it is an unfair advantage. I am convinced that the accessibility of online technology tools places within the reach of any team tools that can enhance the delivery of content and methodology.
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Measuring Meeting Performance

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One of the challenges of trying to systematically improve meeting effectiveness is trying to measure how well you are doing. The typical way we gauge meeting effectiveness is by counting how many participants are either: a) nodding off, b) gripping a cup of coffee or c) answering emails on their IPhones or Blackberries and dividing that by the total number of people in the room.  But those teams serious about continuous improvement will want to seek out better ways to measure productivity.  I would like to suggest three ways of measuring meeting effectiveness.
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  1. Satisfaction surveys:  Advances in web-based technology have made the creation of online satisfaction surveys accessible to virtually anyone, Companies like Zoomerang, Survey Monkey and Poll Daddy, to name a few, all enable companies to create anonymous surveys using closed ended, likert scale, multiple choice and open ended questions.  Such a survey might be conducted before embarking on a meeting improvement plan, at the midpoint of the plan and perhaps at one or two additional intervals following the implementation of the plan.  Ideally a team would come up with measurement questions that would be meaningful to their needs.  While a measurement of “fun” might be important to performance for one team another might choose to measure perceptions of punctuality as a variable. Click here for a list of starter questions.

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  2. Dashboard Ratings.  A slightly more geeky way to measure performance is to define a narrow range of indicators that are measured at each meeting.  These might include start time, quality of agenda, participation, progress on action items, communication style, facilitation effectiveness.  By creating numerical ratings from 1-4 or 1-5, each meeting could be reduces to a single number rating metric,  By plotting scores over time one can see patterns in trends and averages begin to emerge.  Click here for a sample dashboard rating tool.

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  3. Videotaping. A third way to measure performance of meetings is to videotape a meeting and review the tape as a group.  By videotaping and reviewing a meeting, it allows each facet of the meeting process can be discussed.  Some teams develop a rubric to help them gauge meeting effectiveness by defining what poor performance, medium performance and high performance looks like.  Doing the video review can also provide opportunity for coaching specific team members and serve as a self-realizing behavioral intervention (“OMG, do I really suck that much air out of the room?”). Click here for a sample Rubric tool.

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Whatever method you choose to use to evaluate and measure your meeting performance, the key is to define an objective process where each team member’s input can be valued and aggregated to help you have confidence in the collective judgment of how your meetings work or don’t work for your team.  By introducing measurement into the meeting process it creates yet another way to help your team operate more effectively.
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