Professional Facilitation Services     Fifteen to twenty million collaborative meetings are conducted every business day in the U.S. These represent either a major "time robber" or a significant contributor to a company's or team's culture, morale, and effectiveness. Many organizations strive to eliminate meetings. In doing so, they lose valuable opportunities for professionals to collaborate on business issues, identify and resolve business problems, and make consensus-driven decisions. They also risk losing the positive energy and reinforcement offered by team interactions. The use of electronic Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) in conjunction with professional facilitation improves the output and effectiveness of meetings while reducing or eliminating the barriers that prevent professionals from communicating with each other in a direct and straightforward manner. The simultaneous input of information eliminates the time-consuming "one-voice-at-a-time" process of documenting participants' ideas. The anonymous input of ideas and suggestions reduces the impact of departmental, hierarchical and interpersonal barriers. The ability to quickly vote on issues with one of 6 voting processes allows participants to evaluate alternative strategies and gain consensus on high priority issues. Finally, the self-documenting of meeting proceedings in both printed and electronic form provides for strong buy-in and immediate follow-up on action items decided by the group. All of the above results in more and better thought-out decisions with a higher degree of participant buy-in to the group's decisions leading to energetic follow-through and implementation. Specifically, we use GDSS software and processes to facilitate diverse meeting types: Client Satisfaction Workshops, Organization Planning, Creative Brainstorming of issues, Process Improvement Teams, Product and Project status Reviews and Planning, Personnel Selection and Ranking, Strategic Planning, Executive Board Meetings, Group Visioning and Team building and many more. Additional benefits of using this process are the preplanning of the agenda, the full participation of all attendees and the full analysis of issues that inhibit progress. Web-Based Surveys - Development & Implementation     The current business climate is characterized by several phenomena: focusing on customer relationship management, telecommuting, remote management of organizations, and forging relationships between diverse organizations. In this environment, gathering input on issues, opinions and attitudes from within and outside is a significant challenge. Paper-based surveys do not meet the needs for quick, anonymous and copious input that can be analyzed in a variety of ways. Certainly, the use of the Internet presents an opportunity to connect with clients, employees, community constituencies, business partners, vendors and suppliers. Team Dynamics Associates extends the use of the Internet by offering services supporting the Design of complex surveys, implementing them in electronic form on the World Wide Web, and capturing and analyzing the results in both detailed and summary form. We use a GDSS Survey tool that can be distributed and used on a locally networked configuration of laptops, on a Kiosk based Computer, e-mailed to a participant or directly on the Internet. The advantages to this approach are: The ability to gather many diverse responses in one survey instrument; The ability to created filtered, customized reports by any one or several demographic traits; The ability to gather both quantitative and qualitative responses. Examples of this offering are as follows: Employee Attitude Surveys; Usability assessments, community environmental scans, Corporate Culture assessments and many more. Team Development and Support Services In our work with organizations in varied industries and environments, we have observed that support for and reliance on cross-functionality and teamwork is a major factor in organizational health. High quality team interactions and productivity can only be achieved when the mission, goals, values, and the actual work of the team are congruent with the team members skills and environmental needs. Team Dynamics Associates, Inc. uses the Birkman Method of team development to gain perspective on both individual and team characteristics. We help organizations in supporting healthy team behaviors. Through the use of the Birkman questionnaire and a variety of reporting and feedback processes, individuals and teams gain insight into how to deliver results while appreciating their own and each other's unique traits. Some examples of optimal situations for Birkman team activities are: Executive team assessment and development; Assessment of dysfunctional project teams; As part of an overall organizational culture assessment within the framework of the Strategic Planning cycle; Team Formation support through the insights into team members and development of rules of engagement for team success; Support for intelligent and strategic hiring decisions which will support on-going team effectiveness. Group Decision Support Systems Training and Implementation           |             For those clients desiring to develop their own in-house Group Decision Support Systems capability, we offer a range of training and support services, including licensing of the Group Systems Inc.'s "WGE" and "Think Tank" Electronic Meeting Tools, class room training for technographers and meeting facilitators, face to face meeting planning, design and implementation as well as support for WEB meeting and survey design. Our technicians will assist you in the implementation of your Group Decision Support Systems Laboratory using the latest LAN software. We are prepared to do the following: Consulting on-site for GDSS, "WGE" and "Think Tank" implementation, including deployment planning, internal marketing strategies, demand generation within the organization (demos, calls, presentations) facility design and furnishing (if appropriate), facilitation support and evaluation metrics development; Provide customized education for your company's facilitators engaged in meeting management, interpersonal communications, intermixing electronic and verbal dialogue and when to use each. This would include role playing, agenda development advice and time management; Session Leadership - Professional Facilitation of your Group Systems On-Line and Face to Face meetings as well as providing "mentoring" for client professionals (includes pre-session planning, agenda design and preparation, and post session follow-up, on-site); Evaluate client's current methodologies and processes and recommend possible changes and productivity improvements using selected Group Systems' WGE or Think Tank tools throughout the client organization; Meeting facilitation for those sessions that are viewed as better addressed by a "neutral process facilitator" given either the sensitivity of the topics or the level of experience required to manage the session. Even when self-sufficiency is achieved at some level, it may occasionally be advisable to use an outside facilitator who is not in any way a stakeholder in the meeting's outcome. These services could be provided on a longer-term, more open-ended basis, by signing a separate contract after implementation is completed.

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