The purpose of this particular conversation was to begin to explore how GFSC might build a virtual version of their very successful one or two day face-to-face workshop. GFSC felt that being able to deliver some or all of the workshop materials in a virtual mode would allow them to extend the reach of their expertise and access to their tools.

In the beginning the group felt out of their comfort zone. A previous web conference had been disappointing. Facilitating a workshop filled with attentive faces and sitting alone looking at a computer screen seemed like two different worlds. Technology was the solution but it also seemed to get in the way.

To explore the possibilities, we decided to follow the eight principles from my firm’s recent white paper, Designing Interactive Webinars.

Principle #1: Start with the interactive learning objectives

 Looking at the existing written F2F agenda we realized that we had a list of topics rather than objectives. It became a useful exercise to revisit the essential elements of the very successful workshop and list them out anew. Questions we asked ourselves included:

• What are the learning objectives/outcomes of the existing F2F workshop?
• What are the intangible objectives that are important to its success?
• What objectives/outcomes do we need to add when doing this virtually?
• What is no longer relevant/necessary in the virtual model?

Principle #2: Divide learning content into three areas

After looking at the overall program we saw that our F2F design consisted of a series of discrete elements, each with its own interactive group process and activities. We realized that we were working from a place of knowledge and experience. We took the material from each element and divided it in to three piles:

(A) individual study, practice or reflection,
(B) expert presentation, storytelling or Q&A,
(C) interactive process in small or large groups.

This started us thinking about different ways we might deliver each element with a distributed group in mind. For example, we discussed an opening exercise that asks participants to think of a crisis experience from their own lives and recall what it felt like two minutes before and two minutes afterwards. People share their stories in small groups and the trusting connection that this sharing helps create is one of the success factors of the workshop. Taking this specific exercise that we all knew well we were quickly able to brainstorm a whole series of “what if” ideas that would be possible in our virtual module while still achieving the trust and bond that came from listening to others’ stories firsthand. We captured our brainstormed ideas but didn’t work them to a conclusion, as we wanted to review the whole program before fixing on specifics.

Principle #3: Use both synchronous and asynchronous learning methods

As we explored each program element we started to come up alternative ways of delivering materials and exercises in virtual settings, which could range from everyone in different places, the facilitator in a different place or several small groups of co-located participants. Principle #3 reminded us that some things could be done at the same time while others could be done offline or in breakout groups.

The original interactive workshop gave us tested activities that we knew worked well. Often they fell into a 60-90 minute time slot that also happens to be an appropriate time for a real time webinar or virtual meeting. Walking ourselves through the flow of an exercise helped us explore different ways in which we might “virtualize” that exercise with some pre-work or follow-up in small groups after a tele or web conference.

Thinking of the overall program as a series of modules with reading, conversations, data gathering, practice and reflection started to make the whole approach seem much more manageable. We also began to realize that giving participants time to think about material or prepare something in advance of an interactive discussion would actually increase the level of learning and deepen the discussions. Many of the asynchronous activities we discussed (call someone, write a journal, reading groups, …) were low tech or no tech solutions.

An hour of working on the first three principles shifted our group’s mindset from “this is hard – I am operating in an area where I don’t have much expertise” to “this is familiar and doable and I am excited about the possibilities.” We left with action steps to divide up and review the remainder of the F2F workshop elements and reconvene to share our initial ideas.

For those who are interested in exploring this further, we have some openings in our December webinars “Designing Interactive Webinars“. Click to find out more and register for this free event.

posted by Julia Young

A new class of worker:  the Collaboration Worker

The authors recast the workforce sector known as Knowledge Workers (a venerable term coined by Peter Drucker in the mid 20th century) in terms of what most non-production or transaction workers do: collaborate to solve problems, nurture ideas, serve customers and engage with partners. Their research reveals that “the performance gap between top and bottom companies in collaboration-intense sectors is nine times that of production- or transaction-intense sectors”.  It follows then that productivity improvements in this sector of the workforce could have a significant impact on the bottom line.  As we have a plethora of collaboration tools available to us today, we’ve got ourselves a real opportunity to nail this one.  Right? Yes (the article describes how Cisco saved more than $100 million in travel and business expenses and increased productivity by 78 percent), and it’s not quite that simple.

The authors have identified 12 types of knowledge workers based on how they collaborate.  From an implementation standpoint, the advantage to this is two-fold: first, you now have a way of comparing productivity measures apples-to-apples; and second, you have a logical basis for evaluating which types of technology will actually benefit the workflows assigned to a given category of collaboration worker (and hopefully minimize the situations where new tools are given to people because…well…..it seems like they ought to be useful?)

Wasting Time Comes In Many Flavors

We know that it’s challenging to get a handle on productivity measures in the knowledge-based workplace as contrasted with the production or transaction based workplace (where you can speed up transactions or produce more widgets).  What I found interesting is that the authors approached this once again from a granular analysis of the different types of collaboration activity and came up with 10 distinct categories of wasted effort in collaboration. For example, wasted effort involved in hand-offs (Motion) is distinct from effort wasted in interpreting communications or artifacts (Interpretation) or locating information (Searching). As with the collaboration workflows, this differentiation can help us be more precise in our evaluation of which technologies will really have an impact.  An interesting example involves the misuse of technology:  Translation inefficiencies result from having information contained in too many digital media – PowerPoint slides, videos, emails, chats, web pages or document files that then need to be translated or transported to a common place.

The Right Tool Suite for the Job

The authors claim that their research has allowed them to define benchmarks that identify the best way to perform collaboration tasks. The article contains an entertaining interactive exhibit that matches the appropriateness of different web collaboration technologies to the various types of collaboration workers in the format of a “tag cloud” (familiar to all of you who blog).  Each technology tool varies in size depending on how suitable it is to the job at hand. Take a look. http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/flash/collaboration/

Conspicuous in its absence, however, is the technology known as EMS (electronic meeting software) or GDSS (Group Decision Support Systems).  This type of web-based tool looks to support collaboration workers in the decision making process itself, i.e., the generation, capture, evaluation, prioritization and selection of ideas.  Not only do these tools mitigate many areas of waste, but they increase the quality of interactions and the output of ideas.

If I were to add GDSS/EMS to the interactive tool clouds for each of these workers, it would look like this: 

Here’s what the authors seem to suggest as a path forward:
Step 1. Classify your workers in terms of their collaboration profiles, not their job titles.  Understand which collaboration workflows are the value-add ones.
Step 2. Within these high value workflows, identify areas of collaboration inefficiency that represent the low-hanging opportunities to increase productivity.
Step 3.  Implement a portfolio of appropriate collaboration tools.  Provide organizational support and incentives to workers to adopt those tools that make sense for them.  Arguably, some technologies should become corporate standards, but others should remain discretionary.

posted by Danuta McCall

In a recent Wall St Journal article, author Mark Bauerlein argues that the dominance of social networking puts younger people at a face-to-face disadvantage. He offers some startling stats: On average, teenagers with cellphones send and receive more than 2,200 text messages per month. They spend an average of nine hours a week on social networking, not including email, blogging, IM, texting and tweeting. Many have eschewed phones altogether in favor of text-based communications methods, none of which provides an opportunity to hear voice tone or see body language. (And no, pasting an emoticon to represent your mood does not count as “face-time!”)

So what’s the real harm here? Absent constant opportunities to decode expressive forms of communications, we simply will not learn how to react or respond to others’ nonverbal cues. The ability to impart meaning from one’s facial expression, tone of voice, choice of words, or cadence is a nuanced affair that takes years of experience to get right even most of the time.

Knowing how to accurately interpret nonverbal communication is something that can’t be taught explicitly or learned quickly. In fact, much of the time we don’t even know how to describe how we have learned that someone is mad or disappointed in us. We just know. But what if we no longer had frequent opportunities to really study a face or posture, or to listen to the tone in someone’s voice? Or suppose we did have the opportunity, but we were so busy tapping into our Smartphones  that we failed to look up and listen? 

“We live in a culture where young people..are ever less likely to develop the ’silent fluency’ that comes from face-to-face interaction. It is a skill that we all must learn, in actual social settings, from people who are adept in the idiom…The digital natives improve their adroitness at the keyboard, but when it comes to their capacity to read the behavior of others, they are all thumbs.” Mark Baulein, Why Generation-Y Can’t Read Non-Verbal Cues, WSJ 9-24-09

How can organizations help the young and not-so-young work together amidst constant communication disconnects? Fostering reverse mentoring is one possible solution, where digital natives with technology smarts teach older workers, who in turn impart “social” wisdom to their younger colleagues.

Another solution may be to encourage people to express how they feel and why in order to sensitize each other to the differences in communication styles. For example, when a colleague won’t stop multi-tasking in the middle of every conversation, say “I feel like you’re dismissing my opinion when I try to say something to you. Can you be listening to me when you’re in the middle of other conversations?”  In turn, the multi-tasker can provide his or her perspective: “I don’t need to be looking into your eyes to listen to you. I have no problem focusing on two things at once.” (This brings to mind that there is much recent research to indicate pretty conclusively that no matter how high your IQ or how long you’ve been multitasking, the human brain simply cannot competently process more than one intellectual activity at once. But that’s gist for another post, perhaps!)

A lesson for all of us regardless of generation: If we pay more attention to peoples’ voices when we’re on conference calls instead of texting, typing or otherwise multitasking, we will better preserve our ability to read vital nonverbal cues.

posted by Nancy Settle-Murphy

We were oversubscribed within 24 hours of posting our invitation to sign up for our free one hour webinar that demonstrates eight principles for designing interactive webinars by engagingYOU as participants!

Based on this response, we’ve added a second webinar! The additional date is Tuesday, November 10th at 8:00 AM PDT (11:00 AM EDT, GMT 4:00 PM) .

Below we’ve repeated the information about the webinar. We hope to see you there!

Click here to enroll now.

Be. honest: How many of the webinars that you attend (or deliver) are boring? The one-way nature of most webinars and web conferences misses an opportunity to engage an audience and draw on the wisdom of the group.

The opportunity presented by a more interactive and collaborative approach to webinars is to reclaim the many learning methods used in face-to-face workshops and adapt them for a virtual environment. The promise of interactive webinars is to increase learning, shorten meetings, promote greater participation with less multi-tasking and foster on-going collaboration. Ready to enroll? Click here.

As the use of web conferencing extends to management training and leadership development and virtual workshops and decision making meetings, the requirements of webinars shift from pushing information out to pulling ideas and knowledge in through many-to-many collaboration and interaction. This requires a new look at the design and facilitation of webinars and the technology tools used to deliver them.

In this one hour webinar – with required pre-work – we will discuss and demonstrate eight principles for designing interactive webinars that prepare and engage participants. This webinar is particularly suited for facilitators and trainers who are looking to transition an existing face-to-face workshop to a virtual environment or to include some virtual elements in a blended design. If this topic interests you, click here to download our white paper.

Now, if you would like to engage in an interactive discussion about this material, please join us on Tuesday, November 10th at 8:00 AM PDT (11:00 PM EDT). Registration for this session is limited to 20 participants – other dates will be offered if the session is oversubscribed. Completing the pre-work for the session is required; if you feel you can’t accomplish this in time, no worries: we will bump you to a future session and allow someone else to participate in your place.

Click here to enroll. Feel free to add questions or comments here. We look forward to having you join us on November 10th.

Please join us Thursday November 5th as we demonstrate eight principles for designing interactive webinars by engaging you as participants!

Be honest: How many of the webinars that you attend (or deliver) are boring?  The one-way nature of most webinars and web conferences misses an opportunity to engage an audience and draw on the wisdom of the group.

The opportunity presented by a more interactive and collaborative approach to webinars is to reclaim the many learning methods used in face-to-face workshops and adapt them for a virtual environment. The promise of interactive webinars is to increase learning, shorten meetings, promote greater participation with less multi-tasking and foster on-going collaboration. Ready to enroll? Click here.

As the use of web conferencing extends to management training and leadership development and virtual workshops and decision making meetings, the requirements of webinars shift from pushing information out to pulling ideas and knowledge in through many-to-many collaboration and interaction. This requires a new look at the design and facilitation of webinars and the technology tools used to deliver them.

In this one hour webinar – with required pre-work – we will discuss and demonstrate eight principles for designing interactive webinars that prepare and engage participants. This webinar is particularly suited for facilitators and trainers who are looking to transition an existing face-to-face workshop to a virtual environment or to include some virtual elements in a blended design. If this topic interests you, click here to download our white paper.

Now, if you would like to engage in an interactive discussion about this material, please join us on Thursday, November 5th at 10:00 AM PDT (1:00 PM EDT). Registration for this session is limited to 20 participants – other dates will be offered if the session is oversubscribed. Completing the pre-work for the session is required; if you feel you can’t accomplish this in time, no worries: we will bump you to a future session and allow someone else to participate in your place.

Click here to enroll. Feel free to add questions or comments here.  We look forward to having you join us on November 5th.

For the past seven years, I have been conducting a long-term comprehensive study on the effectiveness of several meeting venues on scientifically validated group effectiveness factors. The ultimate goal of this project is to design meeting models that work effectively across time, space, and diverse cultures.

This study component focused on the effect of six meeting venues on validated bottom line and organizational factors. The study involved 737 participants who represented facilitators, participants and meeting observers trained to critically assess group effectiveness factors.

The bottom line effectiveness factors were grouped around 6 constructs: Problem solving/decision making, group process, leadership/commitment, bottom line issues (eg: reducing labor costs), situational factors (eg: multi-cultural support) and organization issues (eg: alignment of individual motivation with group objectives).

The meeting venues included face to face without collaborative systems (CS), face to face with CS; audio with CS; audio and video with CS; asynchronous text with CS and synchronous text with CS. A Collaborative System is a software application that is specifically designed to address the group processes in problem solving and decision making. Other terms for CS include electronic meeting systems, groupware, and group decision support systems. These studies used FacilitatePro from Facilitate.com as the collaborative system.

When the goal of a meeting is to achieve bottom line advantages, the most effective venue choice, according to facilitators and participants, is face to face with a collaborative system. This face to face venue trades off increased costs to achieve high participant satisfaction, high quality ideas and effective meeting results. Facilitators and participants reported web conferencing with audio and video capability and CS to be an effective second choice to achieve bottom line results. Although asynchronous text messaging with CS was rated to be the most effective to reduce labor costs, it was rated significantly less effective than the other venues to achieve quality meeting results and high participant satisfaction. Asynchronous text messaging can overcome time differences, but is not perceived as effective to achieve bottom line and organizational effectiveness.

The results suggested that when the goal of a meeting is to achieve effectiveness at geographically dispersed sites, audio and video (a simple web cam) with a rich CS system was perceived by participants and facilitators as the most effective meeting mode. Based on the factors studied, all CS-enhanced venues were perceived as effective in global environments; however, meeting observers perceived audio with CS and audio and video with CS as the most effective venues across time zones. It was interesting to note that with enhanced video quality of more recent web cams, the effectiveness of this mode has increased over time. This research also assessed the effectiveness of face to face meetings without CS: these were significantly less effective to achieve bottom line factors.

So, if you want to conduct an effective meeting across the globe, save wear and tear on your employees, and reduce travel costs, consider supplementing your meeting with a collaborative system and web cams. But if you can afford to conduct the meeting face to face, this is the most effective overall approach.

Click on the link to read a more detailed (but still concise) summary of this study.

I will post additional results of these long-term comprehensive studies to this blog to help those who facilitate meetings make informed decisions about how to conduct effective meetings using technology. I welcome anyone reading this to give me feedback based on your professional and practical experiences.
Posted by Donna McAlister Kizzier

It’s pretty clear why we should be interested in what this research is turning up. We work in a global and unstable economy where the rules are constantly changing.  Our workforce is culturally diverse and often separated by barriers of time and distance.  We have an overabundance of technologies to help us collaborate that work well when used appropriately.

In order to succeed in this challenging environment, managers and team leaders must understand the fundamentals of how groups communicate, innovate, and make decisions.  Then we can create the right environment, norms and processes to help groups function optimally. If we don’t understand the core forces behind team effectiveness, we might make unfortunate choices in our communication systems (both technological and human) and management systems.

Here at Facilitate Proceedings, we’d like to help make the connection between this academic research and the community of practitioners who could benefit from it.  So we have added a new topic to our blog called Research Briefs.  These are summaries of research studies written by the primary researcher for the purpose of informing and inviting commentary from practicing facilitators and team leaders.

I’d like to introduce you to Dr. Donna McAllister Kizzier from Morehead State University, who will be a contributing blogger over the next few months.  For the last 7 years, Dr. McAllister Kizzier has been conducting a comprehensive study to guide decision making regarding the effective use of Collaborative Systems (CS).  Click on the link to download a more detailed description of the study written by Dr. Kizzier.

Look for Dr. McCallister Kizzier’s first brief in this month’s edition and please consider sharing your insights as real-world practitioners.

As a virtual meeting facilitator I know better, but this is a common occurence in many virtual meetings, webinars and teleconferences. I did a mini-intervention on myself by writing out ten ground rules for being an effective virtual meeting participant. I pinned them up next to my computer and saved a copy to send out with my next virtual meeting agenda.

Here are my top ten ground rules. They’re simple but easy to ignore, to the detriment of the meeting. Too often we take shortcuts with virtual meetings that we wouldn’t dare do if we were sitting down with others face-to-face. I wonder what others have to add…

Ten Ground Rules for being an Effective Virtual Meeting Participant

1. Only attend when I am willing and able to fully show up. Being a bystander is a waste of everyone’s time.
2. Come prepared. Ask for an agenda and handouts ahead of time. Schedule 15 minutes to prepare for the meeting/webinar – if I don’t need it I can have the time back. Do the pre-work. Make notes and be ready with questions.
3. Test the technology ahead of time. Log in the day before to ensure full access to whatever online technology is being used. Check my headset.
4. Turn up early. Put the web address and teleconference details in my calendar. Set the reminder 15 minutes ahead of the call.
5. Remove distractions. Schedule a quiet place to participate from. Clear my desk and computer desktop. Turn off email & instant messaging. Put my cell phone aside. Put a note on my office door.
6. Take responsibility for my own participation. Don’t plan to do any “catch up” activities during the call. If I catch myself multi-tasking, close my eyes and listen. Avoid side conversations whether in the room with colleagues or in an online chat space.
7. Be aware of air time. Fully participate while allowing others to do the same. Speak my name before making a comment.
8. Be aware of who else is on the call. Make a note of those asking interesting questions or contributing provocative comments. Who do I want to connect with again after the call?
9. Support the facilitator. Laugh at jokes, acknowledge questions, pay attention. Keep off mute when possible.
10. Have high expectations. Do a mental evaluation at the end of the session. Send off a quick email to the facilitator – thank them for what worked well; make constructive requests for future events as needed.

posted by Julia Young

Today, smart phones are front-line devices for collaborative work. With their growing sophistication we’re starting to see more interest in using them effectively to make meetings more productive.

I’m currently working with a company that is organizing a large conference for their customers.  They’d like to use smart phones to conduct simple voting, brainstorming and soliciting feedback on presentations.  They did a quick poll to find out which were the top 5 smart phones in use by their clients and came up with the following:

•  RIM Blackberry 8100 (Blackberry OS)
•  Apple iPhone (Apple iPhone OS)
•  Palm Centro (Palm OS)
•  Samsung Instinct (Proprietary Samsung/Sprint OS)
•  Nokia E71

They then asked me to consider the technical considerations of using this wide variety of phones.  I determined that there are two possible hurdles to overcome.

Web Access
It’s finally becoming mainstream to have folks bring their own laptops to a meeting and hook them up to a network.  Only a few years ago this could be a nightmare, as you had to reconfigure the network settings for each computer for the meeting, only to have the computers no longer work when people returned to their offices.  DHCP and Wi-Fi networks have made this networking task much easier.

Smart phones introduce a new issue:  whether there will be decent reception in the meeting room or whether everyone will end up huddling in the one corner with adequate reception.  Even worse, because different phones have different providers, some might be able to get reception and others may not.  As my client was happy to learn, more and more phones now allow for Wi-Fi connectivity to the Internet/Intranet. This means that rooms without cell phone reception are no longer a problem.  If no existing Wi-Fi connection exists, you can set up a wireless Wi-Fi hub with relative ease that will connect to Intranet or Internet applications.

Now that smart phones can communicate with each other through common servers over the Internet or an Intranet, social apps like Twitter or more specialized meeting collaboration tools like FacilitatePro can run on phones rather than laptops, using either their provider’s cell network or Wi-Fi.  If internet connectivity is not possible or not desirable for security reasons, you can host your collaborative tool on a local laptop server and provide a wireless Wi-Fi hub.

Device Independence
When using laptops with collaborative meeting tools there is the issue that some require specific hardware and software configurations for the application to work. It’s important to assess device compatibility ahead of time so that there won’t be any nasty surprises as the meeting starts. 

The same issue exists for smart phones.  Make sure that you pick applications that aren’t device dependent.  An iPhone may have a great application or interface that would be ideal for your meeting but if the tool doesn’t also work with a Blackberry or Palm or Instinct then the meeting may be a bust.  The solution you choose must not only work on most or all smart phones but also have a simple enough interface to look good regardless of the different screen resolutions of the devices.

Rule of thumb: select tools that are simple, easy to use and rely on basic smart phone browser capabilities.  That ensures the greatest likelihood that your smart phone enhanced meeting will be a success.

Please Turn on Your Smart Phone
Two technical issues should be considered when using smart phones with web collaboration tools:  1) the ability to communicate with each other over a reliable network and 2) selecting tools that behave with smart phones from a variety of manufacturers.  Today solutions for both of these issues exist.  As meeting organizers, we are no longer required to start a meeting by asking everyone to “please turn off your cell phones.” Instead we can ask everyone to “Please turn on your smart phone, open your browser and go to the following site. Let’s collaborate!”

Posted by  Mike McCall, Facilitate.com

When starting up telecommuting programs, some of my clients start with a pilot program where a group of new telecommuters will pave the way for others to come. The first step: Making sure the people who are selected are likely to succeed in a virtual workplace. My clients ask me: Is there some sort of test or tool that we can put people through to make sure they’re the right candidates?

Here are some qualities and attributes that, taken together, can be pretty good indicators of a person who will thrive in the virtual world. In the interest of writing without bias, I alternate genders in the points below:

1. Wants to work virtually: Is this person looking forward to working remotely? Does he see benefits to working from home? Does he see this opportunity as positive?
2. Self-motivated: Can this person work without a lot of direction or guidance on a day-to-day basis? Can she work in the absence of frequent feedback? Does she feel confident enough about her work that she can operate independently for periods of time?
3. Tolerates ambiguity: Can this person make progress without having all of the needed details or answers? Can he withstand the absence of certain information as he moves forward on some of his own work, and then circle back to fill in the blanks when answers are known?
4. Desires social contact: Is this person likely to reach out to team members to make frequent connections, whether by phone, email, social networking or face-to-face? Is she a natural collaborator who thrives on sharing information, brainstorming with others, or simply checking in from time to time?
5. Communicates thoughtfully: Is this person aware of how different types of communications can best be applied to reach a different objective? Is he a clear, concise writer who respects others’ time? Is he sensitive to different communications preferences and aware of how his own style might be received by others?
6. Manages time: Has this person demonstrated a solid track record in setting priorities and completing work on time? Does he seem to value a reasonable work-life balance? Does he have a good sense for how long things will take before making commitments? Is he aware of how his own ability to fulfill commitments affects others on the team?
7. Self-organized: Does this person seem to have a good sense as to where important information can be found? Does she usually have the information she or her team needs at her fingertips? Does she organize files logically, especially those shared by other team members?
8. Comfortable using technology to connect and collaborate: Does this person know how to use the different meeting technologies available to him and his team? Is he willing to accept others’ preferences for using technology tools in certain ways, even if it’s outside of his comfort zone?

While this is just a short list of qualities and characteristics of people who are suited to working in a remote environment, it’s a good place to start when evaluating which employees are likely to thrive in a virtual world. And when employees don’t have a choice, this can be a helpful list for managers who want to make sure their new telecommuters have the competencies they need to work successfully.

posted by Nancy Settle-Murphy