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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As always, your comments are welcome.

This week I had the privilege of attending a community lecture for regional Arts organizations by Michael Kaiser, President of the Kennedy Center.  His topic was the economic challenges being faced by arts organizations and framed the lecture as the Arts in Crisis.  I went into the packed theatre expecting to hear the fairly familiar terrain that corporate donations are down, retaining major donors is more important than ever, diversifying your funding base is critical, and board involvement is key.   Some of that familiar ground was covered but Kaiser left the road and rose like a kite into the air. He first caught the gentle breeze and higher up leaped onto the mighty winds.  While he never directly said it, his is message was clear.  The crisis in Arts Organizations is not an economic crisis but it is a “crisis in thinking” and leadership.  He argued that strength and stability during these challenging economic times comes through transformative creativity and not through cutting budgets (For an awesome summary of the entire presentation check out Lisa Radon’s excellent blog).

As a performance improvement facilitator who works with a wide range of nonprofit agencies, I have seen this “crisis in thinking” over and again. Many nonprofit agencies are in their second and third consecutive years of budget cuts. Increasingly stressed staff (who can vaguely remember the concept of pay raises or benefit increases) are being asked to do more and more with the proverbial less and less. The gap between service costs and traditional revenues continues to widen and the compounding effects of sequential years of consecutive 3, 4 or 5% budget cuts are fracturing the integrity of many organizations.  Senior management and Boards of Directors in these organizations are becoming equally fatigued by constantly responding to an anemic resource environment.  So it is understandably challenging to walk into an organization and say, “stop trying to defend the gains you have made and start thinking using transformative creativity.” Yet this is the critical message for the nonprofit sector today.  Trying to reduce your way fiscal health undermines the organizational core and is the equivalent of burning your furniture to keep warm.  Unless you have lots and lots of furniture, in the end, you will be both cold and have nothing to sit on.

At the same time, I am not suggesting that conservative management of expenses is imprudent.  Indeed, I have seen innovative nonprofit agencies, gain efficiencies by renegotiating leases on space and/or equipment, outsourcing back office functions, and redesigning technology expenses at a considerable savings.  However, there comes a time and place where program effectiveness and, more importantly, the larger social impact of an agency is undermined by a myopic and relentless focus on reduction.  A theme that continues to serve my clients well is that success looks beyond the crisis at hand and stakes out ground in the future social impact of the organization. As I have written before, envisioning social impact requires intentional design of the “tomorrow” that an agency wants to create.

Helping nonprofit organizations get beyond the “crisis in thinking” requires a facilitator to work with teams across several domains that include the following:

Focus on Participatory Leadership:  My guess is that is that if I searched the web for the term participatory leadership, I would find that some consulting group has probably trademarked the concept.  However, what I refer to is not something out of a box or training program but is a the commitment to the ongoing study of leadership from the perspectives of vision, equity, culture.  Transformative creativity (or getting beyond the crisis) requires a compact between the layers of an organization where there is cooperative ownership, participatory systems and a learning culture.  I was recently reading a study by McKinsey & Company on successful transformations that described the critical role of balancing top down leadership with a culture of participation, equity and ownership across the staff and board.  Such cultures need to be seeded as a “big idea” and then cultivated by skill development and supporting systems. Indeed, I have facilitated more than one board-staff retreat where the primary outcome was to begin the development of a participatory culture.

Focus on Outcomes:  One of the revolutions within the nonprofit sector and philanthropy is a growing discontent with producing good results.  Philanthropists and leading nonprofit organizations want to make a larger social difference.  The coming wave of change (that will swell to a tsunami) is an increasingly myopic focus on social impact and outcomes rather than program impact.  This week I read a fantastic article by the Board Chair of Venture Philanthropy Partners (this article is the third article in a series he has been writing). In this article he minced no small words as he wrote: “Let me say this as bluntly as I can to nonprofits and funders alike: The challenge of managing to outcomes has little to do with systems, processes, or technology. The real challenge is that organizations cannot hope to manage to outcomes unless they have in place an engaged board; leadership with conviction; clarity of purpose; and a conducive, supportive performance culture.” The organizations of tomorrow are those who are focusing on creating social change that is larger than the results generated by programs.  A focus on outcomes asks, “How can we create a sum that is greater than the total of our parts?”

Focus on Mission, Vision and Margin: In my last post, I detailed the concept of mission and vision in strategic planning and in creating social impact models.  The point that I was making in that post was was underscored in an article on the Acumen Fund’s blog that discussed the role of mission, margin and mandate as levers to scale interventions and create social impact.  If you want a much lengthier discussion on the relationships of these concepts, I highly recommend the study of the book Strategic Giving: The Art and Science of Philanthropy by Peter Frumkin.  While I will warn you that Frumkin’s book is over 400 pages, it provides a depth of understanding about social impact and is a must read for any organization serious about transformative creativity. By focusing on the larger vision and placing mission and mandate in the context of a clear vision, organizations will, by default, move into strategic thinking rather than crisis thinking.

Organizations in the social sector face unique challenges in this lackluster economy.  Agencies that are focusing on defending their core also need to make room to think about how to increase capacity and effectiveness.  In seeking to navigate the twin challenges of maintaining and being strategic, facilitators need to realize that leadership, outcomes and the design process (in between the leadership and outcomes) comprise the foundation for transformative creativity.

At the risk of over generalizing, many references and books discussing vision and mission have the tendency to describe the two concepts as if they were distinguishing between goals and objectives.  I have written about the differences between goals and objectives and suggested that a goal is the “upstream activities” necessary to create “change that matters” and that an objective is the work in front of you that gets you to start moving towards your goal. While there is a parallel short-term and long-term thinking associated with the discussion of vision and mission, it would be a mistake to use the paired concepts interchangeably.

There was a time when a vision might have been thought of as nothing more than a lofty goal.  In the business sector such a mission might have been something like, “We want to be the first choice for luxury cars purchased in America,” or in the social service sector such a vision/goal might have been, “We strive to be the preeminent substance abuse treatment provider in the region.”  However, I firmly believe that equating a vision with a lofty goal is inadequate to clearly define the aspirations of an organization today.  In the private sector “vision” is increasingly framed in the language of a triple bottom line, “people, profits and planet.” In the nonprofit and social service sectors, a vision of organizational success must give way to the larger “upstream” thinking that boldly proclaims the deep social impact created by the agency.

As a result, a facilitator needs to assist the organization of today in identifying a clear and compelling vision statement.  Such a vision is the response to the social need and context in which an agency operates.  For example, if an agency is working to decrease the “youth violence” then a vision statement is about more than providing youth diversion activities because the prevention of youth violence inherently is not only about youth “behavior.”  In addition to behavior, youth violence is also about many socio-economic and geopolitical disparities which also need to be within the organization’s “field of vision.” I have written previously about strategies for facilitating the development of a social impact model, but the point applicable here is that  a compelling vision starts with a current and urgent social need and tells the story of how the social need of tomorrow will be different than it is today.

So if the function of an organizational vision is to declare the future social impact of the organization, what purpose is served by the organizational mission?  A mission is also connected to the social need but is the proximal response the changing landscape.  While the core of a strong mission is grounded in the principles and values of the organization, it also references the strategies that are used to confront the compelling social needs. A mission statement is the head and the heart of an organization and serves as the lens through which organizational programs and strategies are viewed.  As such, a mission statement should be closer to the social need rather than the visionary social impact.   A mission statement evolves as the social need evolves while also remaining anchored to the vision. In this context, a facilitator also has a role for helping an organization understand its mission as well as its vision. This need to clearly define and differentiate between the concepts of vision and mission becomes apparent when one introduces program strategies.

In between the mission and vision, is the “white space” where the organization builds its program strategies.  The following illustration creates the linear process:

Social Need ==> Mission ==> Programs/Strategies ==> Vision of Social Impact.

While a bit oversimplified (there are feedback loops and outcomes in the model), the point that I wanted to make is that there is conceptual “distance” between a vision and mission.  For those engaged in strategic and business planning, this spatial relationship is entirely practical.  By situating the mission close to the social need and anchoring the vision to the social impact, a facilitator has the room to help an agency orient its programs and services more strategically. The program strategies become the link between the organizational mission and the organizational vision.  By placing program strategies between mission and vision, the strategies can be more effectively assessed relative to how they well they serve as a the causal link between two. In other words, it is only if you are clear about the social need, the mission and the vision, can one assess the appropriateness of the program strategies.

Again, as I scanned some of the blogs and websites that discussed the differences between Vision and Mission I was struck by how often the differentiation between the concepts was ignored or oversimplified. I have contended in many of my posts that the highly effective nonprofit organizations think systemically and strategically. Facilitating meaningful differences between Vision and Mission is a critical dimension of a systemic and strategic facilitation process. Mission, supported by strategic programming moves an organization towards their true vision and, in the end, such movement is the core of a strong facilitation process.

As always your feedback is welcome.

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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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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In my last post I asserted that the nonprofit organizations of tomorrow are being born out of the economic crisis of today.  In this current economic turmoil, there are many voices counseling the nonprofit world to increase “collaboration.” Unfortunately, many of these experts are using “collaboration” as euphemism for “merger and acquisition.”  However, unlike the opinions of these non-prophets (pun intended), I believe that the organizational tempering is less about “merger and acquisition” and more about vision, leadership, agility and innovation.  As a new operational model, authentic collaboration  needs to be grounded in sovereignty, aspiration, innovation and brought to life as a concrete operating strategy.  In this post, I wanted to outline what I consider to be the provocative questions that nonprofits (and nonprofit boards) need to consider before pursuing formal collaborations with other agencies.

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What are we trying to achieve through collaboration?  A first question that informs a discussion of collaboration is the fundamental question of outcome.  The expert perspective that “there are too many nonprofits,” may suffice as an efficiency justification for encouraging collaboration but for the individual agency struggling with the question of collaboration, efficiency is but one variable.  A nonprofit must clearly identify the drivers of collaboration.  The heart of the question is twofold.  First is a consideration of where an agency wants to be compared to where it is now.  In other words, what is the performance gap that needs to be closed?  The second question asks if collaboration is among the best ways to close the gap (systems-thinking knows that there is usually more than one “best way”).

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I would like to suggest that the question of outcome requires an agency to explore three dimensions of organization practice including its: Operating, Resource, and Social Impact models.  In the resources listed below,  I link to a couple of business planning documents that all discuss these three dimensions of practice.  Such and exploration ideally includes both inquiry and reflection.

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Resource Model: The current economic crisis sets up the  false dichotomy of a “merge or die” line of thinking.  “Our budget is shrinking, should we merge?” is one way to approach the question.  However, implicit in this approach is a scarcity mentality –namely, that there isn’t enough money to go around.  Illustrating this, I was recently talking to a colleague who made the blanket statement that he would “not encourage any agency to launch ambitious new plans in this economy.”  Scarcity thinking is one way to approach the resource model conversation but such an approach often misses larger conversations.  For example, I know an organization with heavy revenue concentration from stable long-term government grants.  It is also an agency that has a large number of volunteers, whom have never been asked for donations.  In the context of three straight years of government budget cuts, the stability of the organization was incrementally being threatened.  By revisiting the resource model of the agency, the decision was made to a build new revenue stream based on small individual donations. Two years into the plan the organization is on track to reinvent its resource development model.

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Operating Model: A second inquiry and reflection exercise is to consider an organization’s operating model.  Are services delivered effectively?  Can the system of operations be reconceived?  Such a conversation does not question the program strategy of an agency but looks for operating efficiencies. Conversations might focus, for example, on the value of collaboration to create “back office” efficiencies or the value of sharing space.

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Social Impact Model: the third conversation that informs the question of “what do we want to achieve?” is the conversation of social impact.  Here a group examines the heart of the organization through the lens of impact.  I can think of more than one nonprofit agency that has reinvented its programs and services to create a larger impact (or the same impact more efficiently).  Here is the greatest need for inquiry and reflection and, in my opinion, it is from this dimension of organizational practice where the best collaborative decisions are made.

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What are the models of collaboration?  Following inquiry and reflection, an agency needs to explore the various models of collaboration (and inherent philosophies of each).  In another post,  I identified five models of collaboration that serve as a good working outline of models.  (In the resources section below I reference a study documenting eight models). Too often groups think in polar opposites.  Merge and “go it alone” are simply two points on a scale of collaboration.  A thoughtful discussion of other collaborative models will help in articulating a collaboration strategy.

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What is the due diligence process associated with our collaboration? A third component of the strategic conversation around collaboration is to create a roadmap for exploring a specific collaboration model.  Making process a part of the initial conversation can help an organization get a clear picture of the scope of work, timeline and resources required to support the development of collaborative partnerships.  As with most organizational change efforts, developing collaborative relationships is subject to the old adage of: “fast, cheap, done correctly –chose any two.”   Collaboration, done correctly, takes dedicated resources of time and money and generally the faster you want it to happen the larger the costs.

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What does the collaboration process look like?  The final component of the collaboration conversation is to be visually clear about what the entire collaboration process looks like.    I have also written before about describing process from the perspective of visual learning.  In mapping out a process of collaboration, creating a visual understanding can assist an organization build a shared image of the change ahead. However, even if an organization chooses not to visually represent the plan, there needs to be a written workplan developed with clear milestones and markers of success along the way.

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Collaboration exists on many levels in organizations.  As this post is a  follow up to my last post, it is important to recognize that I am referencing collaboration that can fundamentally change the fabric of an organization.  Change that can lead to sharing space, affiliation or even merger is a deep process and is not the equivalent of collaborating with other agencies on a community event.  Embarking on the process of inter-agency collaboration is a major undertaking for any organization and carries with it the weight of seismic organizational change.  Facilitating collaboration requires more than simply running a good meeting and requires the thoughtful attention to inquiry, reflection, and process.

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As always, your thoughts are welcome.

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Resources:

The Process of Social Entrepreneurship: creating opportunities worthy of serious pursuit

Business Planning for Enduring Social Impact

Models of Collaboration Nonprofit Organizations Working Together

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I recently read, yet one more so-called expert advice column promoting the ultimatum of “merge” or “die” as the pathway for many nonprofits. In this iteration, the ultimatum arises out of the knee jerk reaction caused by the recent economic downturn. Citing duplication of service and competition for scarce resources, some foundations, philanthropists and many in the nonprofit consulting industry are becoming almost evangelical about the merger and acquisition strategy for social sector organizations.  For example, the leader of one organization that provides training and support to Oregon nonprofits made the statement that perhaps their agency “should serve as birth control for nonprofits,” adding that there are so many nonprofits and that money is scarce.  I agree that there are a fair number of nonprofits with bad business models and that even many stronger nonprofits have been severely damaged by the economic chaos of the last couple of years.  As I have posted elsewhere, I also agree that collaboration, at some level, is appropriate an appropriate strategic conversation for many nonprofit organizations.   However, having external funding agencies, philanthropists and a consulting industry pressuring nonprofits to either merge or acquire as “birth control” is, at best, narrow and unimaginative and, at worse, self-serving and bullying behavior. We would never think of being as paternalistic to “for profit” companies as we are towards social service agencies.

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While economic concerns among nonprofits are real and there are duplicative agencies competing for scarce resources, the driver for collaboration can’t be reduced to economics alone.  Economic solvency is a lazy marker for effectiveness or impact and to impose collaboration based on economics alone is misguided. Just as in the private sector, success for social sector agencies is determined by a combination of products or services, leadership, agility and capital.  Designing a facilitation process with nonprofit agencies facing financial challenges should not begin with the condescending assertion that merger is the assumed pathway. Rather, catalytic facilitation includes a multi-dimensional exploration of capital in the context of products or services, leadership, and agility.  I would like to suggest several guiding principles for facilitating such a process.

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Sovereignty:  In working with any organization, the spirit of sovereignty must be respected and embraced in the change process. Organizations in the midst of fiscal challenges need to be empowered from the strength of their sovereignty. While I believe that empowerment is a foundation of my consulting practice, empowerment becomes the dominant frame in a process might include as an outcome a collaboration that alters an agency’s autonomy.

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Aspiration: During times of fiscal challenge many organizations default to a “circle the wagon strategy ” where decisions are made from the framework of enduring the financial assault.  Unfortunately, this is precisely when the message of “merge or die” is often introduced from some “sage” consultant. In reality, the most helpful process to an agency is not an ultimatum to merge but is a process that  that focuses on aspirations. Economic challenges should cause an organization to refocus on mission and vision.  Considering the question of “why were we called to exist” can re-energize an organization to positively rethink the foundations of strategy and social impact.  Spending time on the aspirational question of “why” is critical as a precursor to considering any pathway to cope with economic challenges.

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Catalytic Innovation: I have been doing a fair amount of reading on the concept of “catalytic change” for social service organizations (see a couple resources below).  A key question of this emerging body of literature is “how can we create a strategy that achieves measurable impact?”  Implied in that question is looking for the second and third right answer and thinking bigger. The challenges imposed by economics are really opportunities to rethink “how” the “why” is implemented.  Spending time in the space of “how we get to the why” breeds innovation. The interests of convention, power and assumption that are united to say, “merge or die”  chokes the possibility of  innovation.

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Alternative Reality: I started out this post lamenting the over-simplistic “merge or die” advice being metered out nonprofits and suggest that agencies in the midst of economic turmoil need to take the opportunity to go deep within their core competencies to find their own solution.  However, in community organizing there is the old saying that “the price of success is a constructive alternative” and so the final step of the reflection and planning process is the creation of a thoughtful alternative plan.  Intentional planning for how an organization will move forward while under economic siege requires leadership, vision and boldness as well as tactical and measurable action plans.

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The organizations of tomorrow are being born out of the economic challenges of today.  The dominant voices argue that the organizations of tomorrow are those who are merging and acquiring today. I would argue that successful organizations of tomorrow are already visioning tomorrow and allowing the economic challengesof today to temper their core competencies of leadership, agility and innovation as they create their own future.  In this context there is a need for catalytic facilitation and process to help social sector organizations, thoughtfully reflect, plan and move confidently forward to create a more civil society.

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Resources:

Disruptive Social Change

Catalytic Philanthropy

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Raise you hand if in the last three months you have sat in a meeting that was dominated by process model of information presentation ==> discussion ==> and decision; followed by information presentation ==> discussion ==> and decision, in a pattern that was repeated until the end of the meeting?  Unfortunately hierarchical meeting structures are still all too common in meetings today.  You can put your hand down.  In my last post I discussed the shift of group interaction away from hierarchical, government thinking towards governance as a dominant facilitation model.  In this new facilitation environment the old framework where the facilitator imparts and the group members receive, memorize, and repeat is wholly inadequate in meeting the challenges of facilitating for governance. My contention is that governance thinking requires the re-discovery of community organizing tools and methodologies and constructivist learning theories.  One place where the theories of community organizing and constructivism meet is in the framework of empowerment education.

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The father of empowerment education is Paulo Freire and I encourage all facilitators to read deeply of his work.  There are a three  principles that I would like to briefly discuss as touchstones of Freire’s work. These three principles, in my view, are integral to informing the skill-set of any contemporary facilitator.

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Conscientization: The first touchstone is that Freire’s believed that all learning is political. Conscientization, as he described the concept, was that education had the function of developing a critical awareness about the social, political, and economic contradictions and realities so that individuals would take action against the oppressive elements of reality.  Transferring this concept to facilitation, it forces the facilitator to see that facilitation is not simply the process of information presentation ==> discussion ==> and decision.  Facilitation becomes the process of making the connections between the internal context and external context to not only create change but also open the possibility for sea change.  In another post I wrote extensively about facilitating for community engagement, which serves as the basic process for a conscientization approach to facilitation.

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Constructivism: The second touchstone of Freire’s pedagogy is that learning is not a process of transmitting of information and imposing decision-making from the top-down.  In the hierarchical model, the experts are on top and the majority of the group (below) are passive receptacles in the process. Constructivism purports that learning is an active process of construction on the part of all learners that involves making meaning out of a multiple perspectives and data.  Constructivism requires a facilitator to move beyond simple brainstorming, sorting and prioritizing exercises and engages groups in such authentic tasks as creating, designing, analyzing and deciding (a topic for further exploration in  a follow-up post).

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Praxis: A third touchstone of Freire’s thinking is the concept of praxis. Freire believed that local transformation is the product of praxis at the collective level.  Together, groups need to move from theory to practice.  In application, praxis becomes an iterative process of theory, application, evaluation, reflection, and then back to theory.   Learner driven experimentation is the basis for true system’s change and performance improvement and the facilitator’s role is to create the dynamics of iteration.  One approach to engage learners in iterative learning is to use strategies of rapid cycle testing (such as the Plan, Do, Study, Act model). Additionally, the concept of praxis also implies learning over time and that creates for a facilitator the need to think in terms of the long view.

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Empowerment education is a critical theory that serves well as one of the foundation stones of facilitation.  A facilitator needs to understand the experiences and worldviews of the group in order to successfully foster change and further the learning process. Moreover, strong facilitation uses empowerment and critical reflection to not only solve the pressing and immediate need but also seeks to equip groups to applying such thinking to future problems.

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As always your thoughts are welcome.

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References

Freire, P. (1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Freire, P. (1995) Pedagogy of Hope. Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Continuum.

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A traditional organizational development approach to facilitation takes the perspective of “government” thinking.  Government thinking has been used to describe the hierarchical business approach with all that it implies. Government thinking is dominated concepts like hierarchy, centralized decision making, sole authority, dependent relationship, uniform policy, outputs and vertical relationships.  Facilitation, in this context, employs a range of meeting process tools like brainstorming, decision-making, group dynamic, negotiation and mediation.  Often parochial in nature, the primary objective of government thinking is to solicit advice, convince those that work “down-stream,” and ensure negotiated progress toward centralized plans.

At the other end of the spectrum is “governance” thinking that has historically been the domain of community collaboration and community organization.  I started my professional career working in the community tasked with developing coalitions and partnerships. Over the years I have participated in the development of numerous working collaboratives.  In governance thinking the characteristics are almost antithetical to government thinking.  In governance there are multiple “authorities,” decentralized decision-making, negotiation and persuasion, participatory relationships, localized policies and community level outcomes.  The goal of governance is collective and democratic action.

Many facilitators coming through the ranks of corporate human resource, training or organizational development departments who “cut their teeth” on traditional meeting facilitation, planning and/or in labor-management negotiations are likely well versed in government thinking and are masters at operating in this environment.  However it is increasingly important for facilitators to possess the complimenting governance-oriented skills and experience.  Indeed, the sea change that is occurring across all economic sectors (both public and private) is that governance thinking is now no longer the sole domain of community organizers. Government agencies and private sector organizations are embracing governance thinking. More and more companies are interested in the whole, are creating networks, and are operating in a triple bottom line environment –all earmarks of governance thinking. It is my belief that the correlation between the rapid proliferation of networking technologies and the acceleration in governance thinking is no accident.  Technology tools have fundamentally redefined organizational hierarchy.  This shift has also redefined facilitation skills required to be effective in this new systems-environment.

Given the shift to governance thinking, facilitators need to go back to the roots of community-based organizing and immerse themselves in systems-thinking, empowerment education, collaborative technology and adult leaning theory.  In is only with a blended understanding drawing from the principles of governance that facilitators can make significant contributions to performance.  Recently I came across a list of skills in an academic journal related to social work (1) that I adapted as a list of governance-related facilitation skills.  In addition to meeting process skills, governance facilitation requires:

Activation/Enabling Skills: First and foremost strong facilitation understands how to convene (and hold together) stakeholders to address community issues.  In public involvement this might include bringing together government, nonprofit, advocacy groups, faith-based communities, and unaffiliated citizens.  In the private sector this might include bringing not only those up and down the supply chain but external influencers like regulators and consumers.

Framing Skills:  A facilitator must be able to create a focusing frame and values around the issue(s) and facilitate agreements related to roles and responsibilities of players that, when coordinated, move the group towards values-based solutions.   Core to the process of framing both focus and agreement is the ability to think and act from a systems perspective, fostering a whole that is more than the sum of the parts.

Orchestrating/Mobilizing Skills:  This is the skill set that demonstrates the facilitator’s ability to manage the movement towards the milestones, objectives and outcomes.  Facilitation as movement requires expertise in community engagement.

Social Networking Skills: I have written elsewhere of the facilitators need to be able to manage connections and relationships for the process of knowledge creation.  This point is underscored in a governance model where the network is core to success.  This truism is familiar to any facilitator who has come up through the community-side of facilitation.  Making and supporting connections between people and  managing the collective wisdom are often what makes the difference between success and failure.

Synthesizing & Editing  skills:  All facilitation requires the facilitator to have a deep toolbox of strategies that enables him/her to effectively synthesize, edit and transform the process as it unfolds. Such tools supporting this work include such things as mediation, interest-based problem solving, and possibly even strategies that create incentive for progress.

Some have suggested that the shift from government to governance is a revolution.  Others, like me, believe that governance thinking is simply the process of re-imagining and re-discovering our roots in community organizing.  Whether this shift is evolution, revolution or rediscovery matters less than how governance thinking impacts facilitation.  Governance thinking is about creating networks of democratic action.  It is about increasing leverage and effectiveness.  Fundamentally governance is about thinking and working in new ways and is about re-imagining social impact whether it is in the public or private sector and fostering this impact is the heart and soul of facilitation.

References

(1) Frahm, K. A. & Martin, L. L. (2009). From Government to Governance: Implications for Social Work Administration.Administration in Social Work, 33(4), 407-422. doi:10.1080/03643100903173016

(2) Working Wikily

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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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