About Collaboration

Among the first presidential priorities announced this year is the request for agencies to use more intra and inter organizational collaborative efforts, including knowledge sharing and conversations. in order to achieve more accessible and transparent government. 

Actually, Collaboration can accomplish far more. Collaboration can improve virtually any type of work effort and work group performance -- within and between government agencies, and with private sector partners.

Other applications of collaboration already abound. Success/failure case studies are appearing with increasing regularity. Fortunately, lessons learned and the proliferation and ready availability of enhanced and new work group skills, techniques and tools assures the opportunities for a growing multitude of new and especially more complex applications.

About the Course

This course presents, discusses and critiques current and emerging best fit/best practice concepts, approaches, techniques and tools, plus how to use, combine and integrate them to get the work done and achieve objectives, whether within or across agencies or other organizational units, levels of management, constituencies, locations, cultures, or even languages.

The course includes:

• Overcoming constraints and barriers to successfully getting the work done by learning how to structure collaborative work group and projects;
Successfully completing multiple simultaneous work efforts by learning how to effectively deploy collaborative tools and methods;
Evaluating benefits and challenges of collaborative technologies to determine which supporting technology will work best in your work group/work environment;
Collecting, homogenizing, and sharing current, accurate data, information and knowledge associated with work efforts, when needed and where needed;
Performance measures that demonstrate progress and ultimate success and identify where further improvements are needed;  and
• How, along the way, to have Collaboration yield valuable new uses of current best practices, new best practices, and new lessons learned for use in future work efforts.

Course Faculty

Susan Schwartz  is a noted speaker and author in the areas of virtual collaboration, blended learning solutions, knowledge management, and real-time knowledge transfer strategies. She has many years of experience creating and enabling virtual teams to transform the challenges of intra and inter organizational work efforts and work groups into collaborative performance successes. Her collaborative business solutions also include a focus on customer satisfaction.

Susan's company, The River Birch Group specializes in pioneering new collaborative uses of learning and knowledge transfer, and their associated technologies. Recently, The River Birch Group developed a multi-level Business-Based Learning (BBL) model for transferring knowledge intended for use in performance improvement initiatives and projects.

Susan designed and will present this course. She will be assisted by additional session faculty, if needed, based on conversations with registered attendees prior to the program.

Some of the Benefits of Attending

You will return from this course knowing a lot more about making better decisions and more successfully, e.g.:

• Structure better performing collaborative work efforts and work groups;
• Identify, select and apply best fit, best practice Collaboration techniques and tools to work efforts involving, for example, projects involving organization structure, business process, and systems changes, transitions or migrations;
• Organize a decision-making matrix that compares the collaboration benefits, costs, and challenges and enables more complex resource allocation decisions;.
• Establish more productive personal/electronic and physical/virtual communications networks, i.e., simply stated, more conversational communications networks; and
• Navigate collaboration decision factors and criteria for achieving optimum solutions.

Who Should Attend?

Work Effort/Work Group teams, in general, but especially those working across functional, operational, geographical, and organizational units and management levels:

• Project managers and team members;
• Resource management groups - e.g., HR, Financial, IT/IS;
• Business process reengineering and systems development teams;  
• Program services HQ, regional and field personnel;
• Enterprise services personnel; and
• Private sector enterprises offering, developing or considering Collaboration products and services.

Course Topics:

IIBT courses are updated continuously, right up to the dates of the course, in order to assure inclusion of the latest, most valuable course material. Updates will be posted to this page and by Email.

• Collaboration Terminologies: Concepts & Definitions
• Opportunities for Improved Accessibility and Transparency
• Opportunities for Other Performance Improvements
• Roles of People, Skills and Techniques vs Tools and Technologies
• Decision Model and Matrix
• Application Scenarios and Business Cases
• Opportunity and Challenge Factors Influencing Work Effort Success
• Special Importance of Communications and Conversational Aspects of Collaboration 
• Connecting Intra and Inter Organizational, (De)Centralized, and Distributed Work Forces and Operations
• Collaborating Through Virtual Work Environments
• Solution Migration Paths and Post Implementation Adaptation Requirements and Processes
• Successes and Failures: Case Studies; Lessons Learned -- What Works, What Doesn't
• Proven and Promising Tools and Technologies

Day 1

08:00am - 09:00am  Registration & Continental Breakfast

09:00am -10:30am   Collaboration Terminologies:  Concepts & Definitions

10:30am -11:00am   Refreshment Break

11:00am -12:30am   Current and Potential Application Opportunities (part 1 and 2)

12:30pm - 01:30pm   Lunch

01:30pm - 03:00pm  Roles of People, Skills and Techniques vs Tools and Technologies; Decision Model and Matrix

03:00pm - 03:30pm  Refreshment Break

03:30pm - 05:00pm   Application Scenarios and Business Cases

Day 2

08:00am - 09:00am  Continental Breakfast

09:00am -10:30am   Opportunity and Challenge Factors Influencing Work Effort Success; Special Importance of Communications and Conversation

10:30am - 11:00am  Refreshment Break

11:00am - 12:30pm  Connecting Intra, Inter, (De)Centralized, and Distributed Organizational Work Forces                 

12:30pm - 01:30pm  Lunch

01:30pm - 03:00pm  Collaborating Through Virtual Work Environments; Solution Migration Paths

03:00pm - 03:30pm  Refreshment Break

03:30pm - 05:00pm  Success and Failures: Case Studies; Lessons Learned; Proven and Promising Tools and Technologies

Early registration/payment enjoys benefits in addition to lower tuition cost. It gives us time to contact you to discuss your course objectives and any other questions, comments or suggestions you may have about the course. This will assist in having each day cover the most important content needs of the attendees and heighten the value of discussion and Q&A periods.

Tuition: $950

Team Tuition Discounts: Discounts will be granted for attendee teams registering from the same agency, even if from different organization units and regions:

2 attendees - 10% discount each; 3 or more - 20% discount each.  

Registrations may be reserved by email or fax at the current tuition rate at time of reservation. Payment may be made up to 30 days after completion of the course at that reserved tuition rate.

Cancellation Policy: Substitutions may be made at any time before the program begins upon notification, by email. Cancellations must be received in writing, by email.

Registration and Payments

Confirmation of Payment and Registration is sent to the Registrant and, if payment is made by Card, also to the Name of the Card holder.