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In my consulting business I get calls from people who say, “I found your name through a search for fundraising consultants. Could you tell me your experience with managing a special event, capital campaign, or ________ (fill in the blank).”  At which time I get to distinguish the concept of sustainability planning from the concept of fundraising planning.   With such potential clients, I try to cut to the chase, saying something like “If you are looking for someone to help you tactically pull off a silent auction or help you move 100 “prospects” up the ladder of engagement, let me refer you to one or two of my colleagues.  However, if you are looking for someone to help you think more deeply about organizational sustainability and resource development planning, then let’s talk a little more.”  While I have written a few other posts on this topic, specifically here, here, and arguably here, in this post I want to help nonprofits to think beyond fundraising and to consider sustainability planning as a potentially more powerful management tool.

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As we get started, I want to be up front and provide my working definition of sustainability.  “Sustainability is the systemic and systematic development of program and agency capacity that produces measurable outcomes, successfully navigates change, and demonstrates rational growth over time.” Sustainability planning therefore is based on four cornerstone concepts:

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Systemic and Systematic Development: Sustainability planning is inherently based on a systems view of the nonprofit agency and the local “ecosystem” in which the agency operates.  Most effective when intentional and thematic, sustainability planning must address the development of the whole organizational ecology. In other words, the external ecology (i.e., local economy, grant-maker funding patterns, the political landscape) and the internal ecology (i.e., employee compensation, technology infrastructure and marketing/communications) directly effect an agency’s ability to design strategies that ensure financial resources needed for program success.

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Measurable Outcomes: A basic premise of sustainability is that the agency and its programs must produce outcomes that are documented, quantifiable, and worth continuing.  Social impact matters and impact alone is the basis for sustainability.  If an agency can’t measure and demonstrate the worth of its programs and services, then it is directly or indirectly violating the trust of these investing in your programs and services.

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Navigating Change:  The pace of change in this new economic “normal” demands that nonprofit agencies’ have the agility to navigate change both in response to and in anticipation of the ongoing and rapid realignment of community resources.  “Demand is up and revenues are stretched taunt” will remain the dominate reality for some time to come. Flexibility and adaptation build on the foundation of strategy is a critical component of sustainability.  Rather than “locking down” a static revenue development strategy, an organization needs to strategically understand  its larger funding model and, within that model, invest in rapid cycle testing (external link) of new resource development strategies.

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Demonstrating Rational Growth: Sustainability is only tenable when the pace of growth can be assimilated by the organization.  Growing too fast or conversely too slow can be detrimental to the health of a nonprofit.  Finding a growth pattern that can be managed in the context and culture of the organization is also important to sustainability.

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In other words,  these four principles that define sustainability move an agency beyond mapping out fundraising activities for the coming year. Sustainability planning is the larger strategic conversation that considers not only revenue projections but also the underlying framework and strategy for maintaining and managing organizational growth.    Unfortunately many nonprofit organizations uncouple organizational strategic planning and fundraising planning –facilitating a separate process for each.  However, it is increasingly less tenable to think about revenues apart from strategy.  Nonprofit leaders must excel at systems thinking and integration.  This challenges the traditional thinking that there are three separate but related processes: strategic planning, operational planning and fundraising calendar development.  Strategic, operational and fundraising planning need to fuse into a single hybrid planning process.  This process sets a clear vision that is supported by integrated outcome driven strategies for program and service delivery; capacity development; and revenue development (fundraising).  Such a plan must be intentional about opportunity management and create the necessary degrees of freedom required for adapting to the changing economic and programmatic landscape.

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In the context of sustainability planning, the facilitation and process leadership that is required is led by a strategy focus and is supported and complemented by tactical fundraising skills. Planning for events, building donor databases, and writing grants are important  fundraising strategies but fundraising strategies should not be confused with sustainability planning.  Rather than such formula-driven metrics as donor conversion or event “return on investment,” a facilitation process for sustainability planning is strategy driven and anchored to the longterm success of the agency. Forward thinking nonprofit agencies are increasingly investing their limited time and resources thinking beyond fundraising to models of sustainability.

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As always, your thoughts are welcome.

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Over the last few months, I have posted a series of articles on strategic planning for  nonprofit and social sector agencies. Not surprising, a number of potential client calls are from folks  looking for facilitation and process support for strategic planning.  Indeed in this anemic economy, many nonprofit agencies find themselves refocusing on strategy.  Many initial conversations with clients fall into one of three groups.  The  first group are those agencies who have been through strategic planning “dutifully” every 3-5 years as “every good nonprofit agency does” and now it that time when the planning cycle has looped around.  The second group are those agencies that have read one or more books on strategic planning or have participated in an onerous planing process and feel daunted by the process.  The third group are agencies who may have been severely impacted by the recent economic downturn and are truly looking for fresh ways to think about how to move forward. While all three groups may have different motivations and perspectives related to  strategic planning, all  share in common a desire to improve the social impact of their organizations.

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Based on literally dozens of conversations with nonprofit leaders, I find that many organizations are looking for a simpler framework for strategic planning.  In this post, I want to outline a strategic planning process that is versatile enough to guide an organization or team as they seek to engage in the thoughtful work of strategy.   In summary, the framework that I most often follow, is the process of 1) establishing the critical social need, 2) creating a compelling vision of how your agency can create a positive social impact by addressing that social need, 3) developing a relevant organizational mission, 4) developing system’s focused program strategies, and 5) creating measures and  outcomes to guide the plan implementation.

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Establishing the Critical Social Need:  Every nonprofit should exist only in response to an unmet critical social need.  Unlike the private sector where the market may support companies selling consumables that may have little value, no value, or even a negative value, the nonprofit sector can only afford to support organizations that are positively impacting compelling social needs.  As a result, strategic planning begins by defining the unmet social need.  Such a community needs assessment can be based on existing data, expert opinion, surveys, a systematic environmental scan, or ideally some combination of these data points.

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Creating a Compelling Vision of Tomorrow:  I have written before about the relationship between vision & mission and critical social needs.  Within the nonprofit sector and the philanthropy community that supports the nonprofit sector, there is an increasing trend towards defining and working towards a compelling social impact.  The focus on social impact makes it  increasingly less tenable for agencies to simply run “good programs” without creating social change. In this context of strategic planning,agencies should ask themselves, “what is the better, more just, and equitable tomorrow we are tying to create?”  A vision, in essence is the BIG WHY that defines the reason for the existence of an organization.

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Developing a Relevant Mission:  An agency’s mission statement should represent a the “tactical  orientation of the organization that is closer to the social need being addressed address.   The questions that get to the heart of an agency mission might include ones such as: What programs and services is our agency trying to excel at?  What qualities of culture and community are we seeking to create?  How do we want to be known in the community? If folks seek us out, what are they seeking us out for?  By creating a clear mission you are answering the fundamental questions of the “What and How”  of the agency.

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Designing System’s Level Strategies:  In between your vision of tomorrow and the mission you declare today is the “white space” of programs and services.  Strategic plans are not intended to the entirely fill the white space by fully designing programs  but rather is the space where an organization declares its commitment to strategies designed to create its vision of tomorrow.   The strategy “challenge” is to think systematically and systemically about the opportunities to foster change at the individual, community, and policy level to create a synergistic effect that magnifies the benefits of each individual program. It is also important for an agency to develop capacity strategies that will grow the organization’s ability to create a larger social impact.  For many organizations that implement “programs” the shift to thinking about community impact and public policy can be an exciting process of discovering new potential.    Indeed, the creative energy of designing solutions to compelling social needs has the potential of giving renewed inspiration and aspiration to an organization.

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Creating Performance and Outcome  Measures:  It is only worth the time and energy to create a strategic plan if an agency is willing to ensure that the document is living, breathing and is used as the organizational compass guiding and anchoring decisions.  Ideally, as program strategies are created, the organization also takes time to establish  corresponding performance and outcome measures.   Answering the question of how an agency will monitor progress toward the objectives should be integral to strategic planning.  Similar to developing program strategies, the purpose at this level is not to create the actual performance measurement system (i.e., dashboard or report card) but to establish the benchmarks that will help provide assurance that the agency activities will stay focused on the strategic design. Later you can fully develop programs and outcome measurement more precisely based on further study and design.

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I purposefully presented in this post a simplified strategic planning process. Unfortunately, on more than one occasion, I have seen (and heard from frustrated potential clients) how an overly complex process of strategic planning gets in the way of successful strategic planning.  Too often the textbook approach to strategic planning is cumbersome and emphasizes precise sequential steps, prescribed analysis measures (i.e., SWOT), meaningless revenue projection exercises and other artificial exercises that constrain thinking.

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Don’t get me wrong, I believe that strategic planning is a process that requires intentionality, reflection and analysis –none of which are easy. However, I am a firm believe that social sector strategic planning requires a simpler more aspirational framework as represented by the five slightly imprecise and  iterative steps identified above.  Unlike a standardized corporate strategic planning approach Nonprofit and social sector agencies requires a social impact planning model that can dynamically address a wide range of social needs and accommodate a variety of organizational cultures.

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A strategic plan that reflects the process from need to to vision and offers specific strategies and measures to guide implementation, will establish a framework to help an agency achieve success.  To be useful in creating such a strategic plan, a facilitator needs to, as Simon Sinek (external link), so clearly articulates create a compelling why, a disciplined how and a consistent what.  Applied to a strategic planning framework it suggests that a simplified approach to strategic planning coupled with a systemic facilitation process can assist nonprofit agencies to improve the social impact of their organizations.

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As always, your thoughts are welcome.

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Typically, my posts try to capture original thoughts related to facilitation and process.  This week, however, has been one of rich discovery and learning from the words of others.  In this post, I am lacing together the knowledge of others in a synthesis of ideas to reinforce my practice foundation of process design and facilitation.  I hope you enjoy the related links embedded in this post. –m

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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).

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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?”

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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.

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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.

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As always, your thoughts are welcome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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As always, your thoughts are welcome.

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Once a couple of years ago, I was in a car listening to my sister swear at the voice on her car’s GPS system and I once rented  a car with the sometimes handy device. Until recently, that was the extent of my expertise with car directional GPS systems but in the last month  a series in the Doonesbury comic strip  and a quick Google search has expanded my expertise about car GPS systems.  I now know that many GPS systems work by mixing and matching fewer than 60 snippets of words. Imagine that driving from cost to coast is dependent on two or three minutes worth of voice commands ordered and re-ordered in ways designed to keep you going in the right direction.  Okay, this may sound like trivial pursuit but there is a point to this digression into minutia.

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In my experience, many facilitators are as efficient and effective as GPS systems.  When the goal is to lead a group from point A to point B good facilitators, adept at using a few skills well, can direct a group. When the meeting gets lost, a good facilitator reshuffles his/her directions in order to get the group back on the right road.  Effective meeting management is an essential linear process facilitator skill but unfortunately, facilitation is increasingly less about getting from point A to point B in a linear fashion.  Governance and networking thinking is collaborative and non-linear and, as a result, facilitation is fundamentally changing.

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This month I have been following a theme in my posts about the shift in business practice away from hierarchy and towards governance and network thinking as they relate to the practice of facilitation.  In my last post, I described the role of the theory of empowerment education as a primary influence for facilitators operating in a “governance” or “networked” environment.  In this post I want to further expand on the concept of constructivism  in facilitation.

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First we need to define constructivism in a practical way.  Constructivism is the principle that learning is fostered through putting together the pieces in order to create a whole rather than deconstructing the whole into the parts.  By reflecting on experience, embracing ambiguity and paradox, and learning collectively groups find more meaningful knowledge.  Constructivism is about an iterative process rather than linear thinking and as such, requires new ways of facilitating. In this context, the traditional GPS facilitation tools associated with hierarchical, government thinking are inadequate to address the self-direction that constructivism demands.

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At the same time we need to recognize that a constructivist shift in facilitation is not an either/or proposition.  Clear meeting facilitation skills are fundamental to any facilitation process. Constructivism simply expands the facilitator’s skills and demands that s/he approach groups with constructivist tasks such as: creating, deciding, predicting, designing and analyzing.   For a facilitator such action verbs suggest more than running a good meeting.  Facilitating in a constructivist environment suggests three overarching frames:

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Facilitate in Ambiguity:  Often, constructivist approaches require a facilitator to be comfortable with ambiguity.  The mantra that “chaos is okay” runs counter to the command and control style of good meeting process.  But for constructivism to work, it often takes a process of several iterative cycles from broad to narrow and from disorder to order.  Hanging out in the space of ambiguity needs to be okay. Unfortunately, typical facilitation doesn’t make such space but rather moves rapidly from a brainstorm list to a priority list.  In a typical process, speed and order are valued over process and synthesis but in a constructivist environment the opposite is true.  In constructivism, efficiency takes a back row to process and understanding.

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Facilitate for Construction:  Often facilitators bring to a group process a tool bag full of deconstruction tools.  How do we take this problem apart, break it into manageable tasks and fix it. Facilitating in a constructivist environment requires construction tools, as constructivism is a systems-thinking skill.  The tools of construction require space where participants can learn and build. Scenario planning, storyboarding, open space technology, video narrative, and concept mapping, are examples of constructivist tools that might be used to facilitate a constructivist environment.

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Facilitate from Authenticity:  The third overarching frame for the facilitator in a constructivist environment is to be authentic.  I have seen a facilitator manage a group claiming that the process would be a blank slate in which the participants could create, design and decide.  However, as the process unfolded it was clear that the agenda was not a “tabula rasa” but was, in reality, largely predetermined.  In the end, participants in the process felt that it was disingenuous and, “yet one more reason not to trust the hierarchy.”  Constructivism decentralizes power and should only be used when equity and empowerment are the transparent goals.

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Constructivism can be a powerful construct in facilitation, especially in the new reality of facilitating in the context of a network and where the process matters as much, if not more than the outcome.  Old school facilitation where chart paper is inked up and participants are taken from start to finish as if on an amusement park ride are less and less relevant in today’s challenging economic times.  The new breed of facilitation is thinking more deeply about theory and frameworks across several academic disciplines. In this context, constructivism and empowerment are emerging foundation stones of a new facilitation practice.

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As always your comments are welcome.

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Further Study:

I want to thank Bernie Dodge, faculty at SDSU’s EDTec program, whose generous knowledge sharing has over the years continues to influence my practice and thinking. http://www.slideshare.net/bdodge

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Over the course of my career I have studied with many talented facilitation mentors from both the organizational development world and the world of community organization.  Studying and, more importantly, practicing in both worlds has helped me develop an understanding that there are two facilitation disciplines that require different sets of skills.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Again, your comments are always welcome.

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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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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.

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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”

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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As always your comments are welcome.

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References

(1) Taxonomy Development for Knowledge Management

(2) Taxonomy and Folksonomy Cookbook

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I will confess that I am a visual learner.  I like to not only see the big picture but to be able to draw it as well.  This inclination towards a visual process has served me well in facilitation.  In fact, I have staked out the position that visual learning is a critical facilitation skill.  Recently, I have been thinking about the use of visuals to convey Social Impact. If asked, how many agencies could draw a clear relationship between  the programs and services they offer  and the social impact that is created as a result of what they do? While visualizing social impact may seem like a fairly simple concept it is under-utilized as a tool to communicate the core social change embedded in the mission, vision, programs and services of organizations.

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Recently, I have been working on several projects that involve helping agencies articulate a plan for growth and sustainability.  None of these groups have visual models of impact and it becomes a powerful exercise to help these teams create a visual representation of their social impact. While there are likely many paths to creating a visual social impact model, I would like to outline four models to introduce the concept.

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Pathway Model:  One of the more generic processes of creating a social impact model is to describe the pathway between the current reality and the future vision. For example, if an agency envisioned a community where 80% of children are reading at grade level in 5^th grade and the current statistic was that only 66% of students met that benchmark a pathway approach would anchor 66% of kids at one end and 80% of kids at the other end.  The facilitator would then lead the group through an open-ended conversation to describe what happens between those anchor points as the pathway steps that would close the gap.  If facilitated well, creating such a pathway would reveal if there is capacity in the agency to create the desired social impact. The weakness of a generic pathway model is that it is open-ended and prone to subjectivity because it does not lock groups into thinking in a structured cause-to-effect process.

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Logic Model: While somewhat academic, developing a logic model is an excellent way to visualize social impact. One of the reasons a logic model works well is that it offers a framework for working sequentially from resources to impact.  Here is a link to an excellent guide on creating logic models developed by the WK Kellogg Foundation. Developing a logic model starts with creating the linear categories of: Input, Activities, Outputs, Outcomes, and Impact.  The facilitation process can start with either end of the continuum and moving either forward or backwards.  So if your Impact vision is that 80% of 5^th grade children reading at grade level, then the first backward question is “What Outcomes do you need to see as milestones towards that Impact?” Outcomes that support the impact might include improved test scores, policies changed, number of school institutionalizing programs.  Moving one more step back to Outputs, the group would then describe the service delivery indicators that could cause the Impact. Output indicators might be such things as the number of children participating in programs, number of parents being engaged in the process, etc.  Further back, Activities describe what the organization does to cause the Outputs and, further back still, the Resources describe the assets that the agency has to dedicate to the task.  Conversely drawing a logic model can start with Resources and move forward to Impact.  Logic models work as a visual orientation because it forces a team or an agency to consider the relationship between resources and impact.  Are the resources adequate to produce the activities, outputs and outcomes that create the desired impact?  If not then the choices are to either scale back the impact or increase the resources dedicated to the change effort.

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Outcome Mapping:  Another model for visualizing social impact is an outcome map. Similar to a logic model an outcome map sequentially considers the organizational process from strategies to impact.  A useful guide on creating an Outcome map comes out of Organizational Research Services’ experiences evaluating an Annie E. Casey Foundation projects. One difference between using outcome mapping and a logic model is that outcome mapping has been used extensively to describe social impact in the context of community driven processes. Outcome mapping is better tailored to encourage full participation of stakeholders and the community.  An excellent in-depth exploration of a community and participatory approach to outcome mapping can be found at the International Development Research Centre.

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Social Impact Model™ A fourth visual representation of Social Impact can be found in the trademarked model of describing social impact that was developed by Root Cause.  The Root Cause model, bridges the gap between problem and solution through the clear representation of the Strategies and underlying Operational Model iteratively informed by clear Social and Economic Indicators and Organizational and Performance Indicators.  A full description of the Social Impact Model is found at the Root Cause website.

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The point of outlining four models for describing social impact is not to suggest one approach over another or to prescribe how visualizing social impact “must” be done.  The purpose is to introduce several models that can frame the concept of making explicit the connection between the mission, vision, and program structure of an organization and the Social Impact of the organization.  In an age of accountability and the focus on outcomes and change, organizations need to be able to clearly articulate what social impact they influence or cause.  Finally, while describing social impact may appear to be a “nonprofit” concern, the increasing focus of private sector companies on a “double” or “triple” bottom line suggests that describing social impact is a model for any social enterprise.

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It is my belief that the effective organizations of the future are those who are clear about their purpose and their social impact and can draw the picture to illustrate the connection.  As a result, facilitators need to be skilled in the process and visualization required to help organizations create a social impact model.

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As always, your feedback is welcome.

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At the most basic level all facilitated group processes can and should be measured across the two dimensions of process and outcomes.  Process examines the road you took to get to where you wanted to end up, and outcomes measure whether or not you got to your destiny.  In one of my early posts to this blog I described some tools for measuring meeting performance that focused on the process.  In this post I want to continue to discuss the concept of facilitating community engagement that I began in my last post and specifically discuss the dimension of measuring networks in a community engagement process.

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A community engagement process such as developing a community coalition or an advisory group  typically has the dual purposes of achieving a specific program outcome (such as advocating for funding or policy change) and attempts to build social networks between participants.  Coalitions or advisory groups are convened typically because each participant comes with very different perspectives, assets and power with the goal of achieving through collective effort what individuals cannot achieve on their own.  By fostering collaboration, it is the classic systems view of the “whole being more than the sum of the parts.”  So when a facilitator tracks the progress of the group, in addition to measuring process and outcome, s/he needs to measure the strength of the network. So what does measuring a network look like?  I would like to offer three frames that might serve as network measurement.

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Measuring Social Networks:  The concept of measuring social networks basically identifies the extent and intensity of social relationships among the individuals and organizations in the community engagement process.  Using qualitative tools to take “snap shots” of individual and organizational practices over time, this evaluation approach can be used to describe the size and structure of networks, positions, roles and communication and interaction patterns among members. Measuring social networks is a way to estimate the “effect” of the coalition with the assumption that when a network is growing in scope and depth then there is likely a positive network effect being created by the engagement process.  There are software tools that can help in measuring social networks and there is a large literature base describing social network measurement.  A case study that I have found very useful in illustrating this methodology is a report of the Reclaiming Futures National Program Office (disclaimer: I do development work for this organization but had nothing to do with this evaluation).

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Measuring Social Capital:  There are many ways of looking at the concept of social capital some of which overlap social network measurement.  In this context, I would like to suggest that social capital measurement differs from social network measurement in that social capital is not only interested in the breadth and depth of networks but also considers the power distribution in that network.  Some of the best resources on measuring social capital come from the international community and, from all places, the World Bank.  Using works like trust, solidarity, collective action, and inclusion, a social capital approach suggests greater attention to the power dynamics of a coalition or advisory group.  It asks not only if groups are working together but also asks if there is equity and balance in the power and relationships.

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Measuring Entrepreneurial Actions:  Back in 1978 I cam across a paper that discussed the concept of measuring entrepreneurial behavior in nonprofit agencies.  A scanned copy of this paper is contained as the second article in a Novelli Award Papers document. This paper influenced how I thought about capacity in nonprofit agencies by offering a way to think about measuring the creative force of an organization.  I have pondered if there are implications for coalition measurement.  In other words, could we use entrepreneurial intent as a marker for measuring coalition strength?  Zooming ahead a decade, there is increasing discussion of the concept of “industry clusters” as a regional economic engine (I introduced clusters as a collaboration model in another post).  Associated with this economic development theory are emerging models for measuring “regional entrepreneurship capital.” Such measures look at physical capital, cooperation, human capital, knowledge capital and social capital.  For coalitions, a measurement framework might identify a collection of indicators related to these “capital” domains, aggregate the indicators for all coalition members, and track those indicators over time.  Growth in these indicators would indicate that the coalition “market sector” is growing by leveraging joint actions of members or by expanding the network.

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As I stated in the beginning of this post, measuring progress as one facilitates community engagement needs to include an assessment of process and outcomes.  Those twin measures are the basis of ethical facilitation practice.  However coalitions and advisory groups convened for interdependent long-term action also requires measuring the social network and capital effects of the convening.  Unfortunately, network measurements takes additional time, resources and are often beyond a project scope.  However, there is a deeper point than lecturing about the need to do an evaluation that often cannot be afforded.  The point underscores the premise of the first post, which is that facilitating community engagement requires more than group facilitation skills. In designing community engagement processes, facilitators need to consider the power of convening community partners. That power is inherent in the relationships that can be cultivated by the facilitation process and measured (formally or informally) over time.  If this power is ignored or underutilized it can result in a coalition that is weak and ineffective.  Conversely, if capitalized on, nurtured and measured, the collective power of the network can expand capacity in ways that no one agency could achieve alone.  If a formal network evaluation cannot be an “action,” due to budget or scope constraints, it still must remain a frame of reference for the facilitator. Having a network measurement focus going into a community engagement process distinguishes a community engagement process from mere meeting facilitation.

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As always, your thoughts are welcome.

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I have been fortunate enough through my career to have sat as a member of community coalitions and advisory groups that were highly effective.  In my Master’s degree program I studied community engagement processes and been mentored by some very skilled community leaders.  I have also had the fortune of managing successful coalitions and advisory committees.  Through these experiences, I have come to understand that the skills required to facilitate a community-based group process are different than simply facilitating a group.

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There is a large body of literature supporting the “how and why” of the coalition development process, community engagement and community organizing (a few of which are listed below) so providing “coalition development 101″ is not my intent..  Instead, the focus in this post is  to provoke thought around the unique skills required to facilitate a community engagement process like a coalition or community advisory group.

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I once had a conversation with a distant colleague and we were reminiscing about a mediocre community engagement processes that we both served on.  We were discussing the quality of the facilitators who led the process and we agreed that, while the facilitators ran productive meetings, that meeting facilitation skills were not enough to sustain what was a complex community collaboration process.  As we brainstormed together, we created a list of competencies that the paid facilitators lacked in managing the process.  Taken together the list suggests the requisite skills needed to meaningfully facilitate community engagement processes.

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Meeting Facilitation:  Not wanting to throw the proverbial “baby out with the bathwater,” the obvious fact needs to be stated. Having strong meeting process skills comprises the first competency of managing community engagement.  Being able to develop a meaningful vision, mission, goals, objectives, group process, documentation and communication cycle are the foundational skills of any facilitated process.

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Consensus Building and Dispute Resolution:  A second skill area required for community engagement involves understanding mediation and interest-based problem-solving.  Facilitation is not the same as mediation, despite the fact that many confluent the two concepts. The ability to separate interests, needs and impartially structure a process that mediates differences is very different than a facilitation skill of ensuring equal voice and participation. Consensus building and dispute resolution lay the foundation for building structures of trust.

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Systems-thinking:  I consider systems thinking to be a core facilitation competency in general.  However, in the context of a community engagement processes systems-thinking takes on critical importance.  Specifically, when one is facilitating a community engagement process, it is imperative that the facilitator understands both the “bricks and mortar” infrastructure of the community (i.e., organizations, policy, and governance) but also understands the social infrastructure of the community.  Without an understanding of how systems work, a facilitator engages the community with a truncated depth perception especially when it comes to the critical processes of stakeholder analysis and power analysis.

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Empowerment Theory: Community engagement also requires more than a cursory understanding of empowerment educational theories.  Based on the application of the theories of Paulo Freire facilitation becomes the act of empowering the community. True facilitation designs a respectful process that allows individuals to co-create solutions and in the process develop mutual trust, respect and a sense of community.

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Participatory Evaluation and Outcome Mapping:  Finally community engagement requires an innate understanding of participatory evaluation theories.  The process of facilitating community engagement is just that — Engagement.  When community engagement is not going well, the root cause is often traced back to a reliance on meeting facilitation skills and focusing on the means and not the end. Understanding participatory evaluation theories give a facilitator a deep appreciation and understanding of the ends-planning rather than means-planning.  Ends-planning influences the process design and often necessitates a re-thinking of traditional facilitation tools.

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As I reflect on the list of skills and competencies required to effectively facilitate a community engagement process I realize that the goals of this list are high and it is a rare moment when the task, resources and group allow all of these skills converge.  However, what it is clear that the overriding theme of facilitating community engagement is the paradoxical challenge of giving away control and power in order to accrue back trust, collaboration and process ownership.  Facilitating community empowerment requires not only an understanding of group process but, in the words of a mentor of mine, “group process squared.”  Community engagement takes basic facilitation skills and requires them to be lengthened, deepened and expanded by a social theory multiplier.

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Part two of this post will discuss measuring progress in a community engagement process.

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Coalition Development Resources

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Web Resource (PDF):  Developing Effective Coalitions

Web Resource (PDF): EPA’s Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem-Solving Model

Book: The Spirit of the Coalition

Book: Coalitions and Partnerships in Community Health

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Again, you comments are always welcome.

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