By Marc Steinlin
Over the past years, we at IPK, have been on our own transition journey from facilitating entirely in the physical space to doing the same in the virtual realm. The same: that’s what our point of departure was, i.e. trying to somehow replicate our practices, methods and experiences in a different realm. We learned over time to be more deliberate and distinctive.
Here is what we learned and what we believe you should know:
The underlying principles of our participatory and systemic approach remain the same, and so does the process design and preparation process. We continue working with important principles of “bringing the whole system into one room” (albeit that becomes a virtual room), applying design patterns such as the mighty Divergence-Emergence-Convergence structure and more.
But here is what changes, and what you should take into careful consideration:
Structure & characteristics of the process:
i. Create a rich, varied environment with different tools for persons to alternate, contribute in different ways (& keep their attention)
ii. Provide work(flow) structures for the entire process and individual sessions/ modules, including detailed choreographies (time plans), scripts and task distributions
iii. Blend synchronous and asynchronous working modalities, tied together by a continuous red thread
Timing, rhythm & duration:
i. Keep a steadier stream of activities with less intensity peaks
ii. Different pace: rather than one very intense moment over several days, have multiple shorter engagements of shorter duration (plus individual & self-managed contributions in own time)
iii. Alternate individual – pairwise – shared – collective sessions
Preparation & design process:
i. Higher structure of process (detailed design, sequencing, scripting of sessions, …)
ii. Provide (set-up & prepare) technological platforms (combining & interweaving different virtual tools)
iii. Produce detailed participant working instructions
iv. Increased design and preparation time to reach the required level of technical process planning, preparation and participant instruction
Practicalities:
i. Scheduling must take different time zones into account (where applicable)
ii. Maintain a technology platform with a variety of virtual tools supporting a rich environment to encourage participant engagement (e.g. web conferencing, discussions, polling, different participant groupings (breakouts) and animation, priority setting, argument assessments, etc.) – for both, real-time and asynchronous activities
iii. Deal with connectivity issues (especially for participants with limited bandwidth)
These are the learnings we drew over the past few years relating to the structure of virtual processes, the required preparation and design process, the specific timing, rhythm, and practicalities of working virtually.
We found that there are many benefits to working virtually, and that the pro’s are such that we can comfortably and convincingly advise using virtual engagements instead of face-to-face meeting formats, especially in these times.
Please contact us on info@i-p-k.co.za if you’d like to find out how virtual engagements could add value to your professional environment and endeavours. We would love to hear from you!