......Title................................Short.............................Project Description

The purpose of this project was to provide an opportunity for the leadership team and staff of HIRO to reflect on the extraordinary circumstances everyone had experienced since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. HIRO requested a facilitated reflection that could give participants time to develop a shared understanding of what has happened within HIRO, and tell stories about the incredible actions HIRO staff have taken, and continue to take in caring for clients.

The staff were looking for opportunities to put a quality improvement lens on HIRO’s response to the pandemic. An important part of Quality Improvement was to reflect critically on what has happened, assess what was done, recognize collective strengths, and learn what HIRO could do better in a future ‘wave’ of COVID, or another pandemic; in short, be prepared for ongoing disruptive events in the future.

The actual work included a survey out to all staff, two online focus groups one for staff and one for leadership. The focus groups included an historical scan from Jan 2020 to April 2022 and two Focused Conversations, first focusing on their experience and uncovering stories, and the second developing lessons learned over the entire Covid experience.

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COOPERATION A market research company merged recently from two organizations with strong corporate cultures. ICA was asked to help the senior management create a plan to complete the transition and forge a positive working environment. Over two years working first with the LENS process with the directors followed by executive retreats and departmental breakthrough sessions the organization has emerged as a cohesive unit. The leadership team has been able to move into a much more supportive relationship, ending the seemingly inevitable we-they situations which prevailed before, bringing results and relationship building into balance, helping eliminate wasted energy formerly dissipated in internal competition. The company made its bottom lines without a hitch during the transition of Managing Directors. Currently the organization is realigning departments and leadership in such a way as to build a more cooperative relationship between traditionally competing departments. ICA is in an ongoing mentoring and process design relationship with the M.D. and the departments. ICA Taiwan

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PARTICIPATORY DECISION MAKING The brilliant President of a high-tech, start-up company had come to the point at which he could no longer effectively manage as he had previously. Very bright engineers had their own ideas and resented his seeming domination. The President was reluctant to trust the judgment to others, a situation aggravated by the need for confidentiality because some products have a short advantage before competitors copy. In the planning program, members of the management and scientific group became increasingly open to each others' ideas, were more willing to share their own thoughts and feelings without making demands or offering ultimatums. Currently the group is adapting the planning process to making R&D decisions. ICA will continue with the leadership team, holding follow-up review exercises, teaching participation skills and mentoring individuals as needed for increased responsibility. The company, which has been doubling its revenue annually, has great product potential limited only by its human capacities. ICA Taiwan

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A new hospital board and senior management staff wanted to assure themselves and the community that big changes mandated in the hospital would not affect the same care and compassionate service that had been available in the past. The strategic plan was explicitly about a transformation from being a hospital into becoming a district health centre with added emphasis on prevention, wellness and public education. The stakeholders knew very well from experience how to run a hospital and wanted a strategic plan that would put them on the right course for long term future as a district health centre. They were open to whatever would emerge from the plan. The Situation and Factors at Play This small town hospital was undergoing two major changes at once. The first change was the shift of the hospital from being a Roman Catholic-run organization to becoming a public institution. This was happening because the Roman Catholic religious order that had opened the hospital and served the population over many decades was stepping back after having trained local professionals to take over the administration of the hospital and care of the patients. The second shift was from being a hospital which mainly helps sick and injured people, to becoming a regional health centre with a much larger mandate including wellness, education and even prevention. For many decades the population, which had great trust in the religious order, was able to leave hospital staffing and administration to people whom they knew to be guided by care and compassion. With the shift to becoming a public institution a new set of values, especially financial ones, were added to mix. Hospitals attract loyalty and commitment from the surrounding population because of the intensity of the experience that people have with them. Hospitals have to shift the services they offer as the community changes with age, with growth or decrease in population and from technological changes. Hospitals are generally slow to make changes because of the expensive infrastructure needed, the training and new staff, and the difficulty and expense of attracting staff. Canadian hospitals, due to the nature of their public funding, have even more hurdles because of additional layers of bureaucratic and occasionally political management. The Planning The strategic planning process included 31 people; 12 board members of the hospital, 11 management staff, and 8 people representing partnering organizations. The board members were a very good representation of the small rural area, so there was no need to hold public sessions beyond the thirty involved in strategic planning process itself. The management team had done some data gathering in advance and had given the board members briefing notes about current programs, services and government mandates, so that the whole group could launch straight into the participatory process. The planning process itself was held during a three day session including Friday night, all day Saturday and again on Sunday morning, and included an historical scan, a visioning session, contradictional analysis, a strategies workshop with phasing of strategies, and an action planning workshop. The draft of the documentation was sent to the client within three weeks. The staff took the results and did further implementation planning. Results and impact The plan was created eight years ago and there have been three different CEOs since that time. Fortunately the current Chief Executive Officer was present at the planning session (the new Chief Nursing Officer at that time) and was able to reflect on the results of the plan eight years later. According to him about 70% of the long range practical vision has been realized. A seamless care model for seniors was a large part of the vision and has been largely implemented with expanded community support services, with apartments for assisted living, and many supports for people living in their own homes. Future requirements for senior services is constantly monitored and projected. The transit s

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The director of a branch of a government department wanted a strategic plan created by his managers. The branch was mandated to roll out new information technology across the entire department and potentially several other government departments and the director wanted the managers to figure out how this would get done and to lead their respective front line staff in all aspects of the rollout. The Situation and Factors at Play In the late 1990s new technology and increased capacity of the internet were leading government departments to envision new e-services in which people could access government information directly rather than having to visit branches and make requests. Up until that time, most government departments purchased their own computers and bought their own programs, and were generally incompatible with each other. Some departments, however, had similar needs and were beginning to form clusters also know as departments with a matrix reporting structure. For instance social services has similar technology needs to education, and agriculture has similar technological needs as environment. Resources. This particular branch was within a large department that had similar technological needs as three other large departments. The plan created by this branch would have repercussions on all four departments. The Planning Event The director and his seven managers allotted two full days to create a strategic plan for the branch. The managers had already done considerable research on the needs of the branch, their department and the three other departments. The planning event included a trend analysis for the past several years, a session to envision their best case technological requirements, an analysis of the blockages they were experiencing in their work, the development of a set of strategies that would set the direction for all the staff, and a timeline of milestones for the next two years, along with key topics to be covered on agenda for the monthly meetings for the next year. They also created a framework of the complete set of stakeholders that would be affected by their plan. Results and Impact The branch director and managers were able to immediately report back to their Assistant Deputy Minister that they had a comprehensive plan of action that would create a set of deliverables that the other branches in the department could depend upon. The Assistant Deputy Minister shared this with the ADMs of the three other departments. One by one, the information technology branches of each of the other three departments requested a similar strategic planning retreat. Within four months all the information technology branches in that cluster of departments had their plans in place. The Chief Information Officer (Deputy Minister Level) of all four departments then requested a similar retreat for the 65 managers of all the departments at once to ensure that the plans all had synergy between them. Within three years the new technology, information architecture, information management, and knowledge management were in place, and the legacy data for the four departments had been consolidated. Help desks were up and running for government staff and for external users, and voice over internet protocol was being used to allow staff across the province to access the system, and create update new systems. Learnings The strategic plan that was created by the 65 managers across the four departments had efficiencies beyond the four separate plans created by each department. While many of the milestones and planned accomplishments of the smaller plans were also included in the larger plan, the larger plan was able to remove some redundancies and duplication of effort that would have occurred in the four smaller plans. Therefore, creating the larger plan together from the beginning would have reduced the need for the four smaller ones. On the other hand, the creation of the four smaller plans first, allowed all staff to condition themselves to the behavioural changes necessary for such a large proje

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The CEO of a major national bank wanted to involve his management staff across the country in innovative and creative thinking regarding the operations of the bank. Specifically he wanted to ensure that major board decisions had the benefits of the thinking of managers who were the direct link to front line operations. The Situation and Factors at play In the 1990s a Malaysian/Singapore bank hired a new CEO to run a cluster of eighteen branches in Malaysia. That CEO had experienced ToP earlier in a job with another organization and it had impressed him helping him to renew his interest and passion in his occupation as an economist. After becoming the CEO of this national bank, he brought in LENS International to facilitate a number of ToP planning sessions in order to involve a wide spectrum of people in developing strategies for the bank. The Planning Over a seven year period 12 participatory strategic planning sessions were facilitated both with branch managers and with different departments such as trade finance and new business marketing. The CEO opened each session to talk about why the participatory planning was important. A secretariat documented each session, and after reading through the documentation, the CEO gave a closing speech to affirm the participants' work, to let them know what he thought was exciting in their document, and to let them know what the Board was thinking in terms of bank strategies. The ToP work also involved training team leaders who assisted with the planning sessions. Results and Impact Interviews with the client were held over a period of years. The CEO indicated that whatever changes the bank was planning to undertake, it became much easier to make the changes because people had already come to the table to come up with ideas similar to those the board was contemplating. Over time the style of the main branch shifted from primarily a top down to a collaborative, participatory approach and culture. Learning One of the important values in this planning was that it had been blessed by the higher levels and therefore was taken quite seriously throughout the organization. Ann Epps, Malaysia, 2010

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The national board of a health profession made up of twelve people from several different provinces wanted to hold a two and a half day retreat to come up with a plan that would be cohesive across the country and that would allow a potential membership of many thousands of people to row in the same direction. They wanted to revisit the organizations mission because the external global problems and pressures on the members of the profession were never anticipated by the old mission. They were aware that the structure of the organization was not up to the task and that structural adjustments would be needed, even though they did have an administration company that handled membership dues and some communication. They were all aware of their small financial reserves. None of these people had any particular solutions in mind, but just knew that urgent decisions and actions were needed. The Situation and Factors at Play The profession needed to create an important plan for the next four years. The organization had a membership of 1,600 from a potential of 36,000 members, but it was an unincorporated association, under the umbrella of another organization. A series of problems on a global scale and of a life-threatening nature, was taking its toll on the general population and the media was quick to publicize anything that was linked to those problems. The profession had members who were on the front line dealing with some of the issues and therefore was under constant scrutiny by the media. Media seized on unflattering facts and shortfalls of any body that was related to the issues. The profession was being constantly negatively portrayed in media in spite of being on the front line trying to work in the midst of the chaos. In this actual case, the profession was under siege by events in society, professional credibility was shaken, and some among the membership were depressed. The board of directors had all been members for many years, and wanted to get the profession back in good stead in society. They wanted the membership to grow and the association to give quality service to all its members. The problems that were created by the global issue became a rallying point for the board and they decided to seize the moment and make sure that the profession moved ahead in spite of the difficulties and by the media. They decided to strategize deeply and signal that common action was needed by all members, not just a few leaders. The Planning The two and a half day ToP Participatory Strategic Planning session was preceded by five telephone interviews with separate board members. The event process included an historical scan, mission discussions, vision, contradictions and strategy workshops, organizational structure discussion, two year action planning and team assignments. After the event a first draft of documentation of the planning was sent to the board members within two weeks. Impact and Results The organization was registered as a corporation. A new board and committee structure was created that spread the workload and responsibility across the country and the membership. The administration of the organization was shifted from the third party management firm to a full time Administrator. Before the strategic plan, the annual budget was about $10,000. Five years later the organization handled about $500,000 in various project grants and initiatives. The new structure has enabled the organization to handle about twenty major projects over the years. A series of Annual Conferences with high attendance has increased membership, membership interaction and the public profile of the organization. The profession has extended its influence into several other partnering bodies and professional groups through joint task forces, joint research and subsequent collaboration. Executive Directors and high level experts from other professions regularly collaborate and work with the organization. It is now a credible voice for the profession and is sought for advice, for partnerships and to develop funding pr

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The 100 VALLEYS Project is designed to facilitate the self-development of all the communities of the valleys of Peru. Today we have hundreds of organizations working with the rural communities in the valleys of the Coast and Sierra creating an urgent necessity to integrate the resources of these many entities to secure greater results. There is a great opportunity now to create agreement between organizations in order to deliver superior services to the communities at no additional cost. The principal actions of the 100 VALLEYS Project are: Facilitate the collaboration of the agencies that are serving the rural communities in order to permit the self-development approach to development Initiate demonstration projects that highlight best practices of sustainable production Implement self-development Demonstration Communities in the Sierra Regions, followed by others in the climate zones of each valley Initiate Voluntary Leaders Associations in each climate zone to guide the process of self-development for the long term Promote long-term large scale development projects that are beyond the vision of the government The role of ICA-Peru as the coordinator of this Project is to: Facilitate the coordination of the collaborating agencies Guide the demonstrations to assure that they are replicable. Share effective methods to support self-development and avoid dependency Promote practices that assure a substantial participation of the local people in all of the communities of the valleys Monitor and document the coverage and consistency of the services delivered Constantly facilitate a new consensus when new challenges arise. location -

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PO EHIO s Farhang va Tarakkiyot is the founder of Agricultural Association Agrodonish. The National Association of Agricultural Advisory Services AgroDonish is a non-profit, independent and non-political organization. The decision to establish the Association was made at the beginning of 2009 and that year it was officially registered by the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Tajikistan. AgroDonish is a national network of advisory services that promotes innovative and high quality agro extension activities to increase farmers incomes in Tajikistan. It should be mentioned that AgroDonish is the only public organization (representative of civil society) in Tajikistan, being a member of the Governmental working group on, Establishment of effective information and advisory systems for farms and the creation of an operative information network for the timely informing of society on the agrarian reform implementation. The goal of this Group is to develop a sustainable National agricultural extension system in Tajikistan.

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Connect in the North (CITN citn.org.uk) brings together people with learning difficulties and not-for-profit organisations to improve services and opportunities for people with learning difficulties. CITN Director Cathy Wintersgill has attended a number of ICA:UKs public Technology of Participation (ToP) facilitation training courses since 2003, and has used elements of the approach in her work within CITN and with client organisations as well. After attending our ToP Participatory Strategic Planning course in May, Cathy expressed an interest in contracting me to apply elements of this method to CITNs upcoming Big Meeting, an annual event for the organisation to listen to the views of people with learning difficulties and update its business plan. She had not before attempted to facilitate a full ToP Consensus Workshop1 with a group of people with learning difficulties, however, and was concerned that some of those attending the Big Meeting might find the clustering of ideas and naming of clusters difficult and boring, and so disengage. Although I did not have prior experience of facilitating groups of people with learning difficulties, my experience generally has been that the methodology is sufficiently robust but flexible to be applied successfully with virtually any group. So, to help to assess what sort of approach would be appropriate, I offered to do a little research to explore the experience of other facilitators who have facilitated such groups, using both ToP methods and other approaches. I emailed a brief query to four online facilitation discussion groups, and within 10 days had received 22 responses totalling 17 pages and a wealth of experience and insight (full document available on request). The four groups were ICA:UK, ToP Associates network, the global ICA ToP trainers network, the Group Facilitation discussion group of the International Association of Facilitators (iaf-world.org) and the UK Community Participation Network2. My request was for respondents to share any experience of facilitating groups with people with learning difficulties that might point to any potential issues, and to share any particular hints & tips for success. The six key insights that I was able to discern from the responses received follow here, each illustrated by a few extracts edited from the words of some of the respondents themselves: 1. 2. 3. 4. collaborate with members of the group (and others with experience of working with them) to design & facilitate a process that will work for them _ Jim Wiegel - ask some of the participants what will make it go well - I bet they know a lot about how they participate most effectively. Hildy Gottlieb3 - I'm glad you mentioned this, Jim. We were recently working with a group for whom we were going to be doing a 3-day planning session - very intense. My contact in the group told me relatively early in the process that he has Attention Deficit Disorder and to please factor that into the facilitation plans. My response to him was that he and I would design the process together, that he should tell me what worked for him, what didn't. I told him that even during the actual facilitation, if I was losing him, to let me know and we would make it work, because his input was invaluable in getting the work done. The result was nothing I could codify and say, Heres the answer for when you are designing around someone with Attention Deficit Disorder . but I do know he had 3 of the best days of his life - the work was energizing he was participating and attentive. and truly it was 3 very inspired days. adapt/slow the pace _ Loretta Donovan - keep in mind that the attention span of a fully-abled adult is about 20 minutes. If you pace the various activities into 15 minute chunks and allow for frequent short breaks. it will help you as facilitator to know that your meeting is moving forward and help the participants to maintain their energy and attention. Marion Conway4 - The discussion may be more round about and sometimes seem off topic. Don't be too anxious to get to the point

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The Co-operative Foundation is the grant- making body of the Co-operative Group. Following a recent merger and subsequent governance reviews, fund integration and member/employee elections, the Co-operative Foundation had decided it was time to develop a new focus and grant-making strategy. The Trustees had agreed to focus the Foundations grant-making strategy on: Supporting the positive contribution of children and young people in our local communities . This was in line with the member consultation that had taken place in autumn 2008, and the new community investment plan approved by the Co-operative Group Boards Values and Principles Committee. However, the Trustees were aware that this focus needed to be narrowed down even further to allow the Foundation to develop a series of objectives which would allow for a more measurable benefit for the funds available and also reduce the number of applications that were declined. ICA:UK was approached in January 2009 to design and facilitate a session during the Away Day in which Trustees and other invited participants could define, more specifically what was meant by positive contribution . Process The process drew heavily on the two foundational methods of ICAs Technology of Participation (ToP). After setting the context, an in depth opening Focused Conversation lasted over 30 minutes. This conversation encouraged participants to share projects involving children and young people that they had been involved in, were proud of, or would like to be involved in and to clarify the positive contributions that these projects had enabled the young people to make. The intent was to move away from specific projects to the more generic positive contributions. The key element of the process was the Consensus Workshop. When a number of positive contributions had been identified, the Focus Question for the workshop was introduced: What are the practical ways that children and young people can make a positive contribution to their local community? Participants were invited to spend individual time, jotting down the positive contributions they could think of. They were then asked to draw a line under these and write a least two more contributions that were innovative, different and/or creative. Participants were then allocated into named groups (to ensure a mixture of experience, time as a trustee etc. in each group). Group members shared their ideas and wrote a number of cards answering the Focus Question. This activity generated enthusiastic and thoughtful conversations as participants built on each others ideas. The facilitator then led the clustering of the cards, and naming of the clusters. Outputs & feedback During the closing conversation of the workshop, participants realised that, as a group, they had come up with 5 generic positive contributions and three ways in which these contributions could be made, including embracing new thinking . The Foundation Manager was then tasked to research how this information could be used to develop a series of objectives to define the Co- operative Foundations unique grant-making activity. She was to take the results of this research to the next meeting of the Foundation later in the year. Sarah Robinson, Foundation Manager wrote of the day: Thanks again for last week. Your contribution was absolutely crucial to the success of the day and we couldn't have done it without you. Ive already started working on the grant-making model based on the themes.

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The City of Detroit has two mottoes: Speramus Meliora, and, Resurget Cineribus, Latin for: We Hope For Better Things, and, It Shall Rise From the Ashes. A year after filing the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history, Detroit's communities are "rising from the ashes" from the bottom up, and Technology of Participation (ToP) is playing a role in promoting community ownership of renewal initiatives.
Earlier this year, the Skillman Foundation engaged Chicago ToP trainers, Dennis Jennings and Judy Weddle, to customize a ToP Facilitation Methods training for a group of partners and stakeholders working on a community renewal project in Southwest Detroit.
The group, Vista Partnership, seeks to address long-term disinvestment and economic decline in three neighborhoods spanning a 20-block area.  Recognizing residents as the key drivers of change in their own neighborhoods, the project is bringing them together and creating spaces where they can turn their hopes for their neighborhoods into reality.
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