An evidence-based approach to enhancing both virtual and in-person workshops
The world of facilitation is fascinating due to the multivariate nature of the process. Focused research on group facilitation emerged in the 2000’s which set the stage to encourage future research to occur. With our evolving landscape and widespread introduction of technology, previous research from before this time may be outdated due to differences in human behavior and a potential for opportunities that did not exist. This series of articles will focus on describing some of this new research as it applies to group facilitation, followed by recommendations to improve upon the process. This article will release in four parts:
- Part 1 – Background
- Part 2 – Physical Recommendations
- Part 3 – Mental Recommendations
- Part 4 – Temporal Strategies
COVID-19 changed the face of facilitation forever, but especially for traditional value workshop facilitation. Before the pandemic, the standard was to hold the value management (VM) job plan—phases two through seven—in person, having the value team co-located in the same room for the duration of the study. This was the golden standard for facilitating workshops. COVID-19 forced the industry to quickly adapt to a virtual model or cease performing workshops until co-location was once again allowed and deemed safe.
The value process involves the execution of activities identified by the SAVE International Job Plan needed to accomplish a value study. Value Management Strategies, Inc. (VMS) follows an enhanced job plan for value workshops to assist clients through the development of high quality, complete, and technically sound and practical value-added solutions that improve the overall project, program, or process.
COVID-19 constrained the entire workshop process; therefore, innovation within the space was adopted to allow these processes to continue. At the beginning, we, as facilitators, tried performing the process through our webcams using large scale post-its while participants directed us as if we were in front of the room. This didn’t work well and instead led to frustration, as the adaptation of an in-person workshop did not translate to the virtual realm.
Next, we tried adapting the idea generation process; with participants submitting ideas electronically, the facilitator no longer had to document by hand. This created some productivity improvements; however, there were still plenty of issues such as participant engagement, redundancy of ideas, and a lack of building upon others’ ideas. Soon, it became obvious that the facilitation process could not be the same as in person when facilitating virtually. So as creative and value experts, we searched for a solution that would improve the value and performance of the virtual workshop.
Online collaborative whiteboards became an incredible tool even before knowing the research to why it works. Competitors in the space of collaborative whiteboards, such as Mural and Miro, dominated the forefront while other competitors slowly realized there was a hole in the market for this type of demand. With collaborative whiteboards as new tools, virtual workshops became less of a frustration and more of a plausible and necessary option for the value process.
Yet we keep returning to this big question: Do virtual workshops perform as well as in-person workshops?
This very question is biased. It assumes we’ve replicated the traditional workshop approach that we were used to leading in-person with a virtual version, mimicking the same facilitation style while simultaneously managing threats to the success of the process.
The better question is Can virtual workshops perform as well as in-person workshops?
With this twist, we seek opportunities to capitalize on this new format for an overall value improvement. Anecdotally, we’ve heard both positive and negative feedback to virtual workshops from our clients, participants, and facilitators. With the frustration of both facilitators and participants at its highest, interest in the subject of virtual workshop efficacy exploded; alongside this newfound experience of virtual creativity, new studies now aim to satisfy our curiosity on this matter.
The emergence of newfound research
“Virtual communication curbs creative idea generation” is a study that was published in Nature by the Cornell Business Program; this study focused on creative idea generation and assesses the difference between generating and evaluating ideas with two participants co-located in the same room vs. separated into different rooms using a virtual program such as Zoom.
The assumption in our industry for virtual workshops is that they curb creative idea generation. While this may be true in dyadic pairs (two participants), this does not hold true for group settings, where group productivity has significant loss during brainstorming; this productivity loss is “relatively small for dyads but increases rapidly with group size” (Mullen et al. 1991).
Therefore, the generalizability* of the Nature study does not translate well to value facilitation as each study necessitates a multi-disciplined team that generally consists of five to 10 or more participants. A dyadic study would never occur.
*Note: Very simply, generalizability is a measure of how useful the results of a study are for broader groups of people or situations. If the results of a study are broadly applicable to many different types of people or situations, the study is said to have good generalizability.
Let’s dig into this and what it means for the value industry. The research shows that there are more similarities between both in-person vs. virtual pairs than there were differences. Connection, mimicry and subconscious connection, trust, and crosstalk all overlap with both forms of facilitation; it even goes so far to say, “[there is] little evidence that communication modality affects social connection,” which is great for “connectedness.”
What is different is that virtual pairs, when compared to the in-person pairs, focus more on the screen and looking at their partner. This leads to a slight decrease in creativity and idea generation. It was this attribute that the study’s researchers concluded was the causal link between the number of generated ideas.
Now the question is How much does the data actually affect idea generation within pairs?
This data seems to be statistically significant, but that is different than meaningfully significant. The first study conducted showcases a mean difference of ideas generated being only 2.03 ideas; when accounting for significant different ideas, there is only a difference of 1.19 ideas. It’s important to note that this is with zero efficiency improvements of the virtual pairs—meaning that this seems to be highly resilient and could even be improved in the virtual pairs if different efficiencies are introduced. As expressed earlier, you cannot mimic an in-person process and assume it will directly translate to virtual. In the second study conducted with engineers, they found only a mean difference of 1.24 total ideas and a difference of 0.49 significantly different ideas. The team did a preliminary test on a larger group and found that the dyadic pairs performed better than the group setting; using this they decided no further study was necessary. With this quick dismissal, they critically miss the reasons why group production issues arise in that setting.
This is good news for us facilitators, as we are the missing key to managing these group production issues. “Shin and Zhou (2007) examined the moderating role of transformational leadership on the relationship between educational specialization heterogeneity* and creative outcomes. The correlation between transformational leadership and team creativity was significantly positive (r = .28), and transformational leadership boosted the positive relationship between a team’s educational specialization heterogeneity and creative performance as mediated by team creative efficacy.”
*Note: Educational Specialization Heterogeneity – Generally, this can be described as a diverse group of subject matter experts with different specializations.
Transformational leadership includes intellectual stimulation, individual consideration, idealized influence, and inspirational motivation for all participants involved in the creative process. It is a contributing factor to managing a diverse group of subject matter experts and mediating group production issues. Although an R-value of 0.28 seems to be a weak correlation, it’s a compounding effect along with other factors to boost team creativity. With a highly diverse group of subject matter experts, it stands to reason that a conduit, the facilitator, is needed to bridge the gap between these subject matters to contribute to a common goal which is the group creative output. The circulation of this Nature article also generally excludes the second part of the study in which the virtual pairs performed better than in-person pairs in evaluation with statistical significance. “Virtual pairs selected a significantly higher scoring idea and had a significantly lower decision error score compared with in-person pairs.” This may be due to a difference in psychological safety or social matching which influences participants’ decision making. If we expand this study to brainstorming with groups vs. paired idea generation, then we see an increase in productivity loss.
Large Group Brainstorming:
As noted earlier, Mullen et al. (1991) meta-analysis concluded that “productivity loss in brainstorming groups is highly significant, and of strong magnitude.” The amount of productivity loss is small for pairs, but significantly and rapidly increases with a group’s size. This idea, that group productivity decreases with group size, derives from not just one study or meta-analysis but is a consensus within the field of group creativity.
Understanding why this is the case and how to make improvements to capitalize on opportunities and mitigate negative aspects is vital to both virtual and in-person settings. Afterall, the main goal aims to reduce productivity loss regardless of where it occurs.
Causes of Productivity Loss in Brainstorming Groups
Now our question shifts again. What actually causes groups to decrease in productivity?
Research obtained through the published Personality and Social Psychology Review Article, How the Group Affects the Mind: A Cognitive Model of Idea Generation in Groups (Nijstad and Stroebe, 2006).
- Evaluation Apprehension: Group members feel anxious about sharing ideas, particularly shy individuals. However, this factor has a weak effect on productivity loss.
- Free Riding or Social Loafing: When individuals let others do the work, because they are not individually held accountable. This contributes to a small effect on productivity loss.
- Social Matching: High-performing group members tend to match the rate of production of low-performing members, leading to lower productivity overall.
- Low Performance Standards: Due to evaluation apprehension and other factors, groups may start with a low rate of production and maintain these low standards throughout the session, affecting productivity.
- Production Blocking: When group members have to take turns expressing their ideas, productivity strongly declines. This is the most significant cause of productivity loss in brainstorming groups. To counteract this, whether in a virtual or in-person setting, people should share ideas individually—either on written notes or a virtual whiteboard.
- Larger Groups: Productivity loss is exacerbated in larger groups due to increased production blocking, resulting in larger productivity drops compared to smaller groups.
- Overhearing Others’ Ideas: Even without communication among group members, turn-taking alone can lead to productivity losses, indicating that it’s not due to distractions caused by overhearing others.
- Speaking Time Restrictions: The overall speaking time is not the primary factor; rather, the blocking effect occurs when people cannot express their ideas at the time they choose.
Reducing Production Blocking
Production blocking is the most significant cause of productivity loss within a group. But you might be thinking, if we can’t go person-to-person to share ideas, how do we effectively and collaboratively ensure everyone’s idea is considered and people can iterate off that idea?
You’re in luck; There are multiple researchers such as Paulus and Nijstad that have a recommendation for reducing or eliminating production blocking. Using procedures like Electronic Brainstorming (EBS)—where group members work on interconnected computers—allows simultaneous typing and reduces production blocking, leading to increased productivity in interactive groups whether in person or virtually. This gives the facilitator and participants the ability to share information and imagery instantaneously with each other.
Tools to Use
Personally, here at VMS, we leverage the use of virtual technology and collaboration tools, such as Miro, to engage and motivate participants to collaborate and innovate both in a virtual environment and in person. However, it is noted that when production blocking is introduced in electronic groups (e.g., by having turn-taking), a similar productivity loss occurs.
When participants are unable to get into a creative flow and fully search their long-term memory recall (LTM)*, the diversity of ideas decreases. As noted by Kohn & Smith (in press) and supported by the findings of Larey & Paulus (1999) and Ziegler, Diehl, & Zijlstra (2000), “[…] there may be a tendency of group brainstormers to converge to similar topics or categories of ideas, limiting the range of ideas that are generated.”
*Note: The concept of LTM and best practices will be discussed in a future article as it is an important topic that deserves its own spotlight.
But this isn’t the only approach available for you to break out of production blocking. We’ve read the studies, checked the data, and compiled a working list of approaches and styles to help guide all facilitators to finding the most effective and seamless form of facilitation that works for you. That’s what this series is all about: the research, the tools, and results.
Getting into the golden creativity phase effectively can be hard; so, come back next week to read about the physical, mental, and temporal strategies we personally use here at VMS.
Read Part 2 – Physical Recommendations
Read Part 3 – Mental Recommendations
About the Author:
Jonathan Canada, CVS, PMP
Jon is a Certified Value Specialist and Project Management Professional who has facilitated value engineering/value analysis studies for transportation and infrastructure projects for clients. He actively seeks to improve our clients’ overall value programs through innovative measures, such as the development of a value database to support the creativity and brainstorming phase and increase idea generation for the entire study team.
Research:
Brucks, M.S., Levav, J. Virtual communication curbs creative idea generation. Nature 605, 108–112 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04643-y
Paulus, Dzindolet, Kohn. (2012). Collaborative Creativity – Group Creativity and Team Innovation. Handbook of Organizational Creativity, 2012, pp. 327-357
Hoever, van Knippenberg, van Ginkel, & Barkema, 2012; Hu & Randel, 2014
Mullen, Johnson, & Salas. (1991). Productivity Loss in Brainstorming Groups: A Meta-Analytic Integration. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, vol. 12 no. 1, 1991, pp. 3-23
Nijstad and Stroebe. (2006). How the Group Affects the Mind: A Cognitive Model of Idea Generation in Groups. Personality and Social Psychology Review, vol. 10 no. 3, 2006, pp. 186-213
Kohn & Smith, in press; Larey & Paulus, 1999; Ziegler, Diehl, & Zijlstra, 2000
Gallupe, R. B., Cooper, W. H., Grisé, M.-L., & Bastianutti, L. M. (1994). Blocking electronic brainstorms. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79(1), 77–86. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.79.1.77
Nijstad B. A., Berger-Selman F., De Dreu C. K. W. (2014). Innovation in top management teams: Minority dissent, transformational leadership, and radical innovations. European Journal of Work & Organizational Psychology, 23, 310-322.
Shin, S. J., & Zhou, J. (2007). When is educational specialization heterogeneity related to creativity in research and development teams? Transformational leadership as a moderator. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(6), 1709–1721. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.6.1709))
