Using Collaborative Technology in OD
By Soren Kaplan and Lindsey Godwin 

 

The Internet, email, and Web conferencing tools have created the capacity for collaborating across time and space both within and between organizations. Just as technology has transformed the organizational environment, it’s also transforming the field of OD.

 

Currently, there are three widely recognized applications of technology in OD:

·         quantitative, data-based assessment tools, such as employee surveys and 360-degree feedback

·         communications and teamwork, including document management and information sharing

·         management and employee development, including online training.

 

OD practitioners increasingly use technology in their work every day.  But, whereas most technologies applied to OD are used for one-way communication, data collection, or individual mentoring or training, we are now on the cusp of a new generation of interventions that use technology to facilitate “whole system” collaboration and organizational change.


Engaging the whole system

 

Currently, technologies are available that extend beyond dyadic correspondence and simple data collection to facilitate online collaboration, community building, collaborative learning, and the sharing of best practices on a global scale. New uses for these emerging technologies by OD practitioners hold the promise of becoming an integral part of the dynamic organizational change process itself.

 

Here’s a case in point. In early 2004, World Vision (www.wvi.org) embarked on a strategic planning process to identify organization-wide priorities and goals that will guide the organization into the future. With more than 20,000 employees and offices in 100 countries, World Vision is one of the world’s largest non-profit organizations, and is currently the world’s largest distributor of food, feeding over four million children every day.

 

An important part of World Vision’s planning process occurred last June, when 150 of its leaders from offices around the world met in Bangkok for a summit. Using a large-group facilitation methodology called Appreciative Inquiry (AI) (http://ai.cwru.edu) to guide the summit, World Vision not only involved its top leaders in the process, but it engaged 4,000 employees in an unprecedented and highly successful parallel summit process through an online collaborative community conferencing platform provided by iCohere.

 

Technology played an essential role in the success of this unique summit process. First, before the summit even began, 20,000 employees and other stakeholders from World Vision were asked to logon to the virtual community and create an individual profile, introducing themselves to their fellow World Vision colleagues around the globe. Some 4,500 participants ultimately accessed and contributed to the online community in English, Spanish, and French, depending on their preferred language. Additional online pre-work included the sharing of best practices from across the globally dispersed organization. These stories became an online resource of examples of World Vision at its best, upon which the Bangkok summit participants could build and learn from.

 

Virtual participation continued even once the summit began in Bangkok, with the online community space continuing to serve as a link through which the entire organization could connect during the summit process. With the help of a round-the-clock support staff, highlights from the face-to-face meeting in Bangkok were summarized, translated (from English into Spanish and French), and posted on the community site. Then, overnight, the rest of the organization around the world was invited to read, react to, and vote on issues and ideas that emerged from the face-to-face summit. These entries were translated back into English and summarized into a report for the face-to-face summit participants. Online participation included 4,000 virtual voices each day representing 60 countries.

 

The World Vision summit is an illustration of how virtual and face-to-face processes can inform one another. This groundbreaking summit created an event that wove together an entire system, merging virtual and face-to-face collaboration in ways that tapped the collective wisdom of the organization. (For a streaming presentation that provides additional detail about World Vision’s approach and process, click

http://www.icohere.com/presentations/worldvisioncase/player.html).

 

Benefits of whole system strategic change

 

OD approaches that embrace technology as an integrated component of the strategic change process itself can

 

  • enable whole system participation. With hurdles like travel costs and time zone issues greatly lessened through technology, bringing the whole organizational system into the room--employees, partners, customers, and so forth--is made possible. Ideas, opinions and issues from all stakeholder groups can be shared and considered in a collective forum virtually and in connection with face-to-face meetings.
  • rapidly align dispersed stakeholders. Creating alignment between stakeholders who are located across the country or the globe can take months or years. By blending face-to-face participation with an inclusive virtual participation process, stakeholders can be brought together in productive ways that decrease the time it takes to reach an agreement.
  • accelerate organizational readiness. Inviting the whole system to participate in the change process enhances communication, fosters buy-in and establishes a level of readiness for change that traditional communications plans cannot easily achieve.
  • produce higher quality strategies and plans.  Through obtaining direct input from both a horizontal and vertical slice of the organization, as well as partners, customers, and other stakeholder groups, more robust ideas and work products can be produced.
  • foster collaborative learning and knowledge sharing. By linking together stakeholders that would not otherwise connect and communicate, it becomes possible to harness learning and knowledge in ways that surface and diffuse best practices, which leads to a greater capacity for innovation and organizational agility.

Getting started

 

Integrating collaborative technology into OD interventions can open the door to new opportunities for engaging teams, workgroups, organizations, partners, and customers in collaborative change processes.  But where do you start?  Here are some tips that may help.

 

Assess the need. Determine if the needed intervention would be advanced through engaging stakeholders that cannot be in the room."

 

Determine readiness. To be successful, an organization must embrace the potential value of using technology to support the process. Determine the readiness of the client system to explore new ways of working.

 

Gauge the fit. Select technologies that fit the desired intervention. Know when you’re looking for divergent vs. convergent thinking, qualitative vs. quantitative input, individual vs. group contributions, and so on, and choose the tools that support the lifecycle stage of the process.

 

Make the business case. While there are costs associated with applying technology, using technology can also reduce travel costs, save time, and accelerate the change process. Defining the ROI (return-on-investment) of using technology helps garner support for new approaches.

 

Define integration points. OD interventions that involve technology also typically include face-to-face meetings. Look for ways to use technology prior to, during, and after meetings to support group and organizational goals.

 

Engage the early adopters. Identify individuals who are predisposed to embrace technology as part of the process in order to create early wins that create proof points for the new approach.

 

Tell success stories. Even small successes can be used as stories to energize the organization and inspire others to participate through the new tools and approaches.

 

Technology in OD is here to stay. More and more, OD interventions will include collaborative technology as a core enabler of the change process. As OD practitioners apply these tools to their work, especially when they enable whole system change, new expectations within organizations are established. Once people experience the possibilities associated with incorporating the voices of a larger collective in ways that increase participation, accelerate change, and deliver higher quality results, the value of process-focused collaborative technologies are established and the organization’s desired future draws nearer.

 

Published: October 2004

 

Soren Kaplan, Ph.D., is with iCohere; soren@icohere.com. Lindsey Godwin is with Case Western Reserve University.


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