Tag Archives: strategy

A view from the Board – from the new Chair of a renewed IAF Board

the International Association of FacilitatorsThis article ‘from the archive’ was first published IAF’s monthly newsletter the Global Flipchart, January 2011. See also Reflections on a term as IAF Chair, first published in the Global Flipchart, January 2013.

Happy New Year, and welcome to this New Year issue of the Global Flipchart, from the new Chair of a renewed IAF Board. I feel proud and privileged to have the opportunity to serve our Association and our profession as Chair of the IAF Board for 2011 & 2012, and I would like to take this opportunity to introduce the new Board and myself, and to share something of how I am viewing my role as Chair.

First, let me thank my predecessor as Chair, Gary Rush, and those other members who have just retired from the Board as of the end of December – Mark Edmead, Tony Nash, David Spann & Michael Spivey. They have all contributed greatly to IAF and its development during their terms on the Board. Their volunteer commitment to take this responsibility and devote their time and energy over recent years is much appreciated.

I would also like to thank, and welcome to the Board, those members who have been prepared to make such a new commitment, and who have been newly elected to the Board as of the beginning of January – Daphne Cant, Jerry Mings, Cynthia Pace, Ephraim Osunde, Bill Reid, Sheryl Smail and Linda Starodub. Thanks are also due to those Board members who are continuing to serves their terms (Sharon Almerigi, Kimberly Bain, Jackie Chang & Carol Sherriff) and those who stood and were re-elected to second terms (Pamela Lupton-Bowers, Rhonda Tranks & Simon Wilson).

I thank also Chair Julie Larsen and the other members of the Board Nominations & Elections committee, who led us through the recent election process that has enabled us to start the New Year with every one of the 15 Board positions now filled, and with renewed clarity and commitment of Board members to their roles. Thank you also to you, the members, for turning out to vote – and to the many members who volunteer their time and expertise for IAF in so many ways, year round. For details of the IAF Board, its members and their roles, please visit the ‘About IAF’ pages at www.iaf-world.org.

I have been a member of IAF since 2007, but have attended I think 10 IAF conferences (in Europe and North America to date) since my first in London in 1997. In 2008 I earned the IAF Certified Professional Facilitator designation, and also in 2008 I was appointed to the IAF Board. I served first as Regional Representative for Europe, and then was appointed as Vice Chair for 2010.

My background in facilitation is in the international community & organisational development work of the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) – a global network of autonomous non-profit organisations in 30 countries, out of which IAF itself originated in the early 1990s.   I was first trained in ICA’s ToP facilitation methods (the Technology of Participation) as part of my international volunteer induction training with ICA in 1986. Following a year volunteering with ICA India, and then six years working with ICA in Egypt, I have worked with ICA:UK since 1997 – supporting the grassroots community development work of our sister and partner organisations in Africa and elsewhere, training & orientating international volunteers, and applying ICA’s participatory approach to the youth work sector and to local public service delivery in the UK – see www.ica-uk.org.uk. As Chief Executive, the focus of my day job is the management and governance of ICA:UK as a charity and a social enterprise. A good deal of my time is also spent delivering services, however, which in this case means providing facilitation, training and consulting to develop capacity for participation and partnership working, largely with public and voluntary sector clients nationally in the UK.

I think of my professional interests and goals in terms of facilitative leadership, where facilitation, management and governance intersect – so I have sought volunteer roles as well that have allowed me to explore and develop in that area. These have included serving as Board member and Treasurer of ICA International from 1998-2006, more recently as Trustee of UK youth development charity FOCUS and committee member of the UK Quaker Congo Partnership, and now most recently as a member of the Board of IAF.

I am viewing my role as Chair primarily as providing facilitative leadership to the Board – in order that we may best, collectively, provide facilitative leadership to the Association as a whole, and in order that IAF may best provide facilitative leadership to our profession and indeed to the world at large. With reference to IAF’s six Core Facilitation Competencies, I would describe this facilitative leadership role in terms of:

Developing and promoting collaborative relationships through clarity, transparency and accountability – within the Board, within the IAF as a whole, and between IAF and its external partners and stakeholders

  1. Adopting, communicating and applying appropriate group processes, notably IAF policies and procedures, and also structures
  2. Sustaining and enhancing a participatory environment that is inclusive of diversity, encourages creativity and innovation, and manages conflict
  3. Ensuring appropriate and useful outcomes through development and implementation of effective strategy
  4. Building and maintaining professional knowledge, around association management and governance as well as facilitation
  5. Modelling a professional, facilitative leadership approach at all levels

I am excited to be starting my term as Chair with a strong and committed new team of Board members to work with, and to see them energetically acquainting themselves with their new roles, with the active support of their predecessors and of continuing Board members. I am keen to enable the new Board to form, and indeed to perform, as quickly as possible; so I am delighted that we will be meeting face-to-face this year in January, in London to minimise costs, rather than in conjunction with a conference later in the year as has been recent practice. I do however look forward to attending IAF conferences as well, as we all will, in my case starting with the North America conference in Denver in April.

At our January Board meeting we will articulate our work plan and budget for the year ahead, and during the year we will use the Global Flipchart and other means to communicate and engage with you, the members of IAF, on progress, challenges and opportunities for involvement. I expect key challenges and priorities for the Board to include (in no particular order, and very much inter-related): membership retention and growth, chapter development, successful delivery of annual conferences in the regions, strengthened financial management and financial security, the upcoming new website and our online presence, and the development and growth of the certification programme. I think that one key to success, in all of these, will be articulating, communicating and delivering the demonstrable value that IAF can add to its members, to the profession and to the wider world. I think that another key to success will be applying our own expertise as facilitators to do all of this collaboratively, together.

Please get in touch with me, or any of your Board members, to share your questions, feedback or suggestions; now and throughout the year. You can email me at iafchair@iaf-world.org, skype me at martingilbraith, and connect with me at http://uk.linkedin.com/in/martingilbraith. You can find contact details for all IAF Board members at www.iaf-world.org.

On the Road

This article was first written for and published in the IAF Europe MENA newsletter, May 2014.

Moscow facilitators planning ‘What can we do over the next 3 years to promote a culture of participation in our organisations?’Moscow facilitators learned the ToP Participatory Strategic Planning process last month by planning ‘What can we do over the next 3 years to promote a culture of participation in our organisations?’

When Julia Goga-Cooke invited me to contribute to this new ‘On The Road’ section of the newsletter, I think she may have known what sort of month I have been having. As well as visiting some interesting places, I have been able to meet and work with some wonderful IAF colleagues.

I began writing this from Marrakech, where I was facilitating last week for the first Arab Regional Forum on Youth Volunteering. This was convened by UN Volunteers, and brought together over 100 stakeholders from across the region and beyond to share, learn and plan together. On exchanging business cards with one delegate from Jordan, he told me that he had just emailed with IAF about joining or setting up a local chapter. So I was happy to share what I knew about the IAF membership in the region, and IAF’s chapter approach, and to learn from his experience of facilitation and facilitators in Jordan.

Prior to this I was in Turin with IAF member Michael Ambjorn of AlignYourOrg , in preparation for facilitating an event there together this week with the 120 staff of the European Training Foundation to celebrate its 20th anniversary this year. It was in designing this event, including a ToP ‘Wall of Wonder’ historical scanning process, that I had the idea for the rather more elaborate process to contribute to IAF’s 20th anniversary year celebration that became ‘Celebrating the development of facilitation – world-wide and history long’. This was launched in April, online and at the IAF North America conference in Orlando. Please do join in, online and at future conferences and chapter events between now and International Facilitation Week in October.

Prior to that, I was in Moscow at the start of April for the 5th annual Moscow Facilitators’ conference. It was great to be back, having attended for my first time last year and contributing a keynote and pre-conference ToP Group Facilitation Methods training. This year I presented a case study of the ToP Participatory Strategic Planning process with an international humanitarian agency in Geneva, ‘Transformational Strategy: from trepidation to ‘unlocked’’, and post-conference ToP Participatory Strategic Planning training (see photo above). The 100 or so participants came from the regions of Russia and Ukraine and Finland as well as from Moscow and the UK.

I have been privileged these last few weeks as well to serve as a mentor to one of ICA Ukraine’s ToP facilitation trainers, and to learn something of how she and ICA are working to network diverse actors in Ukraine and to re-envisage and rebuild their country’s future together. It was a privilege also (and fun!) to help to network ICA Ukraine’s facilitators with Russian facilitators attending the Moscow Facilitators conference by exchanging real-time Facebook updates between my post-conference ToP strategic planning course in Moscow and Natasha’s simultaneous ToP strategic planning course in Lviv.

It is a great disappointment to me to learn that this year’s IAF Europe MENA conference Facilitation Reloaded will no longer be held in Moscow, although recent events have made it increasingly self-evident that it would not be able to go ahead as planned. It seems to me that there is a need, now more than ever, for facilitation to grow and make a valuable impact in the region. I am delighted to know that the conference will be relocated rather than cancelled, and that the Moscow team will remain involved, and I shall be delighted for the opportunity to visit Copenhagen instead in October. I hope to see you there, and I hope that colleagues from Russia and Ukraine will be able to attend.

In the midst of all this I was also able to squeeze in a day of facilitation training with ICA:UK, for an international firm of sustainability consultants in London – happily, and rather appropriately, I was able to travel to that on foot!

ICAI Winds and Waves – Networking

ICAI Winds and Waves, April 2014 - coverThis article was written for ICAI Winds and Waves, April 2014.

Welcome to this latest issue of Winds & Waves, the online magazine of ICA International.

While many international NGOs have shifted from a more centralised to a more networked approach to their operations in recent years, ICA has operated globally as a network of autonomous and independent national NGOs for over half of its 50 years. Many member ICAs themselves operate as networks, both nationally and internationally, and many individuals around the world remain connected and involved with ICA in various ways long after they have moved on from a formal role within an ICA organisation. Such loose and diverse structures with such ‘leaky boundaries’ can be challenging in some respects, not least in terms of governance. However, they can also enable greater local relevance, responsiveness and self-reliance in conjunction with greater global connectedness, learning and mutual support. Networking is one of the ways by which these advantages can be realised, and so supporting networking among ICAs and ICA colleagues is central to the role of ICA International and networking makes a fitting theme for this issue.

Within these pages you will find stories and reports from individual ICA colleagues and from national ICAs, on their work of research, training and demonstration to advance human development worldwide. Networking and a networked approach feature strongly in many of them.

Terry Bergdall in Chicago reports on the Sustainability Leaders Network of ICA USA’s Accelerate 77 programme, empowering community leaders from across the city by supporting them to ‘connect, align and produce’ together. Lorraine Margherita in Paris reflects on the role that networking has played for her as she has established herself as a professional facilitator within the emerging ICA network there. Larry Philbrook in Taipei reveals the findings of a recent research initiative conducted through ICA networks, online and face to face. Gerald Gomani in Harare reports on ICA Zimbabwe’s work helping communities fight HIV/AIDS – this work has been supported over many years by ICAI network partners in the USA, Canada and the UK among others, and networks people living with HIV with each other and with local health and social service resources. Charles Jago in Australia writes of an online networked approach to holding government and politicians accountable by ‘asking real questions’. Ishu Subha in Kathmandu writes of the network power of a local women’s group that grew to a leading financial institution. Teresa Sosa in Caracas writes of how principles and values she has learned from ICA have enabled her to gain strength from networks to strive re-create a country in times in chaos.

The global network of ICA International now comprises member ICAs and related groups and organisations in 40 countries worldwide. We welcomed ICA Ukraine as our newest statutory member at our ICAI online General Assembly in December. I have been privileged these last few weeks to serve as a mentor to one of ICA Ukraine’s ToP facilitation trainers, Natasha Karpova, and to learn something of how she and ICA are working to network diverse actors in Ukraine, another country in a time of some chaos, to re-envisage and rebuild their country’s future together.  It was a privilege also (and fun!) to help to network ICA Ukraine’s facilitators with Russian facilitators attending the Moscow Facilitators conference this month, by exchanging real-time Facebook updates between my post-conference ToP strategic planning course in Moscow and Natasha’s simultaneous ToP strategic planning course in Lviv.

Moscow facilitators study the ToP Participatory Strategic Planning by planning ‘What can we do over the next 3 years to promote a culture of participation in our organisations?’

Moscow facilitators learned the ToP Participatory Strategic Planning process this month by planning ‘What can we do over the next 3 years to promote a culture of participation in our organisations?’

Meanwhile ICA Ukraine’s initiative connecting mentor ToP facilitators from ICA’s global network with mentees in Ukraine prompted Larry Philbrook of ICA Taiwan to adapt and apply the model globally, attracting so far 25 mentors and 36 mentees – just the sort of peer-to-peer initiative within the ICA network that ICAI seeks to support.

The ICAI Board updated its Business Plan for 2014 in the last month, in light of the experience of 2013 and discussions and decisions at the December General Assembly, and supporting peer-to-peer networking for mutual support and collaboration remains at the heart of our approach. Whatever the extent and nature of your relationship to ICA or ICAI, if you share our collective concern with ‘the human factor in world development’ then please join in networking with us.

Please share this issue of Winds & Waves and consider contributing to the next, please connect and share with us online via ICAI on Facebook and @ICAI on twitter, and please connect directly with whichever national ICA of the ICAI global network is closest to you in your geography or in your passion.

Enjoy this issue!

Transformational Strategy: from trepidation to ‘unlocked’

I am pleased to share here [pусская версия ниже] a case study I presented at today’s 5th annual Moscow Facilitators conference, on ToP Participatory Strategic Planning with an international humanitarian agency in Geneva. Click on the hyperlinked images to go to other pages and sites with further information.

I am grateful to all at IDMC for allowing me to share the example of my work with them in Geneva, and to Edventure:Frome whose smaller-scale strategic planning exercise in Somerset I mention as well for contrast.

Many thanks also to Liudmila Dudorov and Mikhail Rossus, and all at GoTraining & IAF Russia, for hosting me so well again for my second year in Moscow (for a review of my first, see the Jazz of faclitation is magnificent in Moscow); and to all who attended the conference presentation and my post-conference course, ToP Participatory Strategic Planning.

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ICA International Board update, February 2014

Global BuzzThis post was first published in ICAI’s monthly bulletin the Global Buzz.

In January the ICAI Board began to develop its Business Plan for 2014, based on the strategic framework and budget included in the 2013 plan that were re-affirmed by the General Assembly in December. We aim to finalise this and circulate it to members for information in February.

We are grateful to 40 respondents so far who have offered their feedback by our online survey on the December online regional gatherings and GA, and particularly the 21 who had not participated in those meetings. This was designed to help the ICAI Board to make this year’s gatherings and GA more inclusive and more effective. Our conclusion at the January Board meeting is to keep doing the Adobe Connect meetings this year, because those who attend appreciate them and are increasingly familiar with the technology. We will try to make them more inclusive by looking into free-phone audio options and by supporting people to improve their internet access or to attend the meeting from somewhere where access is better. However we will do this format of adobe meetings only twice in June and twice in December, instead of three times in each of March, July & December, to allow extra time to support the regions to experiment with other approaches such as google hangout, Skype or simple tele-conferencing.  For the GA we will use adobe for the meeting but do the voting by surveymonkey over 10 days to allow everyone to vote.

The Board has announced a special General Assembly meeting to be held 1-2pm UK time on Wednesday 26 February.  This special meeting will be to discuss and vote on a resolution to revise the ICAI Bylaws, as discussed at the GA in December.  Some minor revisions are needed in order to comply with new requirements under Canadian law  for all Canadian-registered non-profits such as ICAI to obtain a ‘Continuance” in order to continue. The one hour meeting will be held online using Adobe Connect, to allow for questions and discussion as needed, and representatives of statutory ICAs in particular are encouraged to attend.  For the voting we will use surveymonkey, and allow 10 days for responses from the time of the meeting, so that all statutory ICAs are able to vote even if they cannot attend the meeting. Please ask for details if you are interested and have not received them.

I was in New York last week attending a conference, and was able to take the opportunity to collect a UN grounds pass and attend a briefing session on behalf of ICAI for NGOs with consultative status. Also I was glad to meet with Larry Philbrook and Seva Gandhi on Monday, as they were there also to deliver a course.

We have been shocked and saddened by the sudden and unexpected death last week of Wayne Nelson of ICA Associates in Canada. Our thoughts are with Jo and his family, and also his close ICA colleagues in Canada.  Wayne has been greatly involved and supportive of ICAI over his long years with ICA globally and in Canada, and will be sorely missed.