Function Drives Technology: The first and foremost principle of technology is that function drives technology decisions.  In facilitating conversations about technology the starting point is not technology but “technology for what purpose?”  I recently sat through an orientation to the Apple iPad with a team considering adopting the new technology as a way to enhance team productivity.  The person facilitating the orientation began by asking what functionality was being sought by the team.  There was clearly some vagueness to the purposes expressed by the team.  “I’m looking for a document reader” was most common functionality followed by some notions of calendaring and communicating.  Eventually the group discussed editing documents.  The pivotal gestalt of conversation was when the trainer acknowledged that the iPad was a “consumption” tool rather than a “creative” tool.  In essence, the trainer suggested that, at this point, the functionality of the IPad was about media interaction, reading, communicating and less about document creation and sharing. There is no ending to this story, rather, it serves as a useful metaphor for this facilitation principle.  A clearly understanding of function should always drive change and adoption.

Technology is the Media and not the Message:  As long as technology has been used as a tool for improving educational and organizational performance, there had been a debate about technology being the “cause” of improvement.  Many studies have demonstrated that technology rarely (if ever) is the cause of change but rather technology can, at times,  be an efficient (or the most efficient) media/tool to deliver the organizational change. The classic metaphor that is used to describe the relationship between technology and performance change is that of  a farmer growing tomatoes.  A farmer can get tomatoes to the market through u-pick, can deliver the tomatoes to the market by walking, horse and cart or truck.  The point is that while there may be  differences in delivery vehicles, the vehicle does not change the tomatoes.  Likewise, while social media tools like Twitter and Facebook can expand the communication reach of a nonprofit agency and online donations might improve administrative efficiency but  cultivating audiences and helping them become supporters of an agency requires the application of relationship-building principles that have been employed for decades.  Likewise successful online advocacy employs the same principles of community organizing that has always been the foundation advocacy.

Choose Any Two:  The third facilitation principle is to consider the concepts of “fast, cheap, done” correctly process.  There is the old software development saying (at least that is where I first heard it) that goes “fast, cheap, done correctly, choose any two.”  The principle, while a bit snarky sounding has much face validity.  If the anchor is “done correctly” then an organizations investment of resources in technology is proportional to  time.  By implication, the faster you want the change to happen more resources (money & staffing) will need to be invested in the project.

Trend Watching is Imprtant:  The fourth facilitation principle is to ensure that someone involved in your planning process is a “trend watcher” Technology is rapidly proliferating and for nonprofits with limited budgets it is important to consider the larger trends that shape nonprofit use of technology.  A few good resources for trend watching in the nonprofit world include Tech Soup (external link), Groundwire (external link), and the Pew Internet & American Life Project (external link).  As you move into planning, it will be important for your team to consider the trends that will most likely influence your community and stakeholders.  So for example, an agency with a mix of activist volunteers and donors might assess the salient trends as early technology adoption, open-source orientation, participatory use of technology, and heavy social media use. The trends among your clients and supporters should shape your technology platforms for outreach.  Internally,  trends of “cloud computing” or outsourcing back offices functions may also influence your operational technology decisions.

With these four principles a team is prepared to facilitate a technology planning process. Whether it is the development of a social media strategy to augment community outreach or whether it is considering moving from an in-house technology network to “cloud-based” network, the facilitation becomes a four step process.

1.  Get clear about the why:  As suggested earlier, the discussion of what you are trying to accomplish is the first and foremost consideration of technology planning.  Having clear goals and objectives are important to define the technology context.

2.  Inventory what your currently have:  With clear goals and objectives, the next step in the facilitation process is to inventory the what and how of your reality today.  If social media is the strategy being considered to increase your community of supporters, consider how are you currently reaching out to your supporters?  What technology platforms are you currently using to grow and manage your community of supporters?  What additional functionality do you need to help you grow your community?

3.  Build a picture of the gap and evaluate the alternatives:  As a performance improvement process, the next step to to place your goals and objectives on one side of the dry erase board or wall space and the existing inventory on the opposite.  The space between your inventory of “where you are now” and the goals and objectives of “where you want to be” is the gap that you are seeking to fill.  In the white space in between the team then needs to explore alternative strategies to close the gap.  Exploring alternatives requires some homework and likely more than one meeting.  So, for example, if a team is looking to use technology to increase connection with potential donors, alternative strategies might include publishing an enewsletter, building a social media community, hosting conference calls, or webinars, creating a dynamic content blog, or a combination of strategies.  Each strategy carries with it time, staffing and monetary costs that need to be weighed against the potential return and the mission fit.

4.  Create and Opportunity Matrix:  Once potential strategies are developed a team can then use an opportunity matrix to weigh the relative merits of the alternatives. While each team will create unique evaluation criteria to meet their needs, the general process is that a team needs to be able to compare alternatives and make decisions based on the resources and priorities of the agency.  In essence evaluating opportunities answers the questions of which alternative: 1) Is most feasible with your resources (time, money and talent)? and 2) Is most compatible with your mission, vision and values?  Your opportunity matrix should also include how the alternative compares against your trends.

5.  Create your Operational Plan:  Once you have explored opportunities, alternatives and decided on the alternative(s), the next phase of facilitation is to develop and implementation or operational plan.  Describing operational planning is beyond the scope of this post but a simple search on the internet can provide you with dozens of operational planning models and templates.  In the past I outlined in 3 posts to frame the workplan development process that can also be a useful starting place.

Following a facilitation process, a team can move from a universe of options through a thoughtful narrowing process to finally arrive at a strategic decision.  In my experience and practice, I have found that many nonprofit teams are nearly paralyzed by technology planning.  Often with weak (or completely absent) technology support, small to mid-sized nonprofits have reservations about investing in technology despite the potential organizational improvements that can result from such investments.  However, for those nonprofits that start with “function” and work backwards to technology through a thoughtful assessment of alternatives to realize the benefits that technology can bring to the agency operations and program management.

As always, your comments are welcome.

Recently I have been talking to several clients that are seeking facilitation services for the planning of events that are a month or two away and are looking for assistance in convening geographically diverse teams in planning the events.  Having planned many regional and national conferences over my 17 plus year career,  it is clear to me that the facilitation process of planning an event is as important as the facilitation process at the event. While not quite as prophetic as the GIGO mantra of “garbage in garbage out, ” my experience has taught me that there is a direct relationship between the quality of the planning and the quality of the event.  I have also found that he stakes in event planning are increased when planning team is geographically distant and unable to convene face-to-face for the planning process. So in this post, I wanted to outline some of the principles of facilitating an event planning process for a “virtual” planning team.

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Technology Choices:  The first principle is to be thoughtful and intentional about technology choices.  In an ideal world, everyone would have broadband access to the Internet, using state of the art computers with integrated Voice Over Internet capabilities and attached video cameras.  In that ideal world, users would have the technology competencies to understand not only email and basic web browsing but also how to use tools like Skype, WIKIS, Twitter, collaborative workspaces, content management systems.  Unfortunately, while the generation now coming up through the ranks is more technology savvy, a facilitator needs to be able to rapidly assess the competencies of a planning team to find the lowest common denominator of technology tools to manage the planning process.  At the most basic level technology tools need to ensure thee things:  a) communication, b) documentation, c) tracking progress.

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Communication:  Planning teams need to communicate and  three of the most common formats are teleconferencing, webinar and email.   The trade off of teleconferencing or using a webinar platform is primarily one of cost and technology competency.  If a team can afford it and has the competencies, using a webinar format for planning meetings opens up visual as well as audio communications.  I find email is useful only as an adjunct communication tool because of the inherent limitations that asynchrony bring to the communication process, because of the competing noise of 40-50 other emails a day, and fragmentation inherent in multiple email messages.

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Documentation:  The ability to document a planning process using a common technology platform is critical to the planning process.  For example, I have been working with a distributed team on an organizational development process where one of their primary challenges is tracking who on the team has the current version of any given document.  That is not the way to work and we are exploring technology options to solve that problem. However, planning teams need to get documentation correct up front as timelines for event planning don’t reward inefficiency of lost documents. Elsewhere I have written extensively about managing technology-based collaborative workspaces.

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Tracking Progress: Tracking progress across a distributed team can also be managed using online collaborative workspaces or can be as simple as using a running task list that is reviewed at each planning call. Ideally tracking progress integrates a dates (calendar), tasks, milestones and responsibilities.

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Agendas & Ground Rules: I have written elsewhere on agenda development and when working with a virtual planning team, the importance of using an effective agenda in facilitating a planning process needs to be underscored.  When a meeting is being conducted by a teleconference there is an absence of visual interaction and having a clear agenda is one tool to help participants track progress of the conversation.   The other tool that is important to facilitating teleconferences is a discussion of “ground rules.”  While many facilitators rigorously define ground rules at the beginning of a facilitation process, I am much more lax in this processes, often omitting consideration of ground rules, unless a client feels that the step is important. However, for conference calls, I do believe that it is important to establish some working ground rules.  Some rules are related to professional courtesy while others are intended to improve productivity. Specifically, I feel that it is important to create agreements around a) multi-tasking (answer emails and web surf in addition to participating in the call), b) muting phones except when talking, c) identifying oneself before speaking, d) restating agreements in the summary.

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Facilitation Tasks:  When facilitating a virtual group I believe that the facilitator has five tasks including 1) preparation, 2) movement, 3) understanding, 4) inclusion, and 5) decisions.

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Preparation:  There are two dimensions of preparation.  The first dimension is creating the clear understanding of meeting outcomes and make sure that the virtual team has in advance to the meeting, the agenda and background materials needed to make them successful in achieving the meeting outcomes. There is both art and science in using technology effectively and that surfaces the second dimension of preparation. A facilitator needs a deep understanding of the technology media being used.

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Movement:  As with all facilitation, the role of the facilitator is to design and implement a process that moves participants from the beginning of the process to the end.  In a technology-mediated environment, without visual cues, such facilitation will rely more on more procedural skills to specifically engage participants and create action.  Polling, sequential talking, motion – discussion & vote, are examples or process tools that are needed to compensate for the lack of visual cues.

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Understanding: As a third process, checking for understanding becomes important in a technology-mediated environment. The facilitator may need to check in on understanding using processes like, asking for paraphrasing or verbal affirmations of understanding.

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Inclusion:  Ensuring inclusion is a facilitator task in any setting. In facilitating virtual groups the task of inclusion has the dimension of ensuring equity of voice and the occasional dimension of re-engaging those who wander off into multi-taking land.

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Decisions: The final facilitator task is to ensure that decisions are made and documented.  I have also posted on decision-making previously and it goes without saying that decisions made are the markers of progress in the event planning process.

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Documentation: The final principle to discuss is documentation and version control. The success of team-based event planning is the ability to manage the documentation process.  Again, as a subject worthy of more in-depth consideration, I had posted extended thoughts on documentation previously.   As I stated in that post, “developing a documentation plan as part of facilitation should be standard practice, although I have encountered few facilitators who are so intentional about this process.  To be successful in this area, a facilitator needs to be familiar with concepts of information ecology and knowledge management in addition to having strong technology competencies. The benefits of investing the time and energy in document planning are seen in greater productivity, efficiency of the process.”

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Successful event planning by virtual teams not only requires facilitation but a well-managed facilitation process.  Investing in the event planning design as well as the event design will often be the difference between an event and an outcome.  Events can be planned but events that achieve outcomes require distributed planning teams to the carefully design a process that use of technology, meeting process, and document management to ensure planning success.

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As always, your thoughts are welcome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Taken together, the process of thinking about documentation, documentation use, and how the two interface is key to the facilitation processes. Developing a documentation plan as part of facilitation should be standard practice, although I have encountered few facilitators who are so intentional about this process.  To be successful in this area, a facilitator needs to be familiar with concepts of information ecology and knowledge management in addition to having strong technology competencies. The benefits of investing the time and energy in document planning are seen in greater productivity, efficiency of the process.  For facilitators, understanding document management is essential when there is more at stake than running a good meeting.

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Again, you comments are welcome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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As always, your feedback is welcome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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