are what facilitation professionals offer by enabling effective real-time collaboration between experts, stakeholders, and decision makers.

When organizations use facilitators, consultants, and project professionals to conduct their key meetings and workshops, they clearly are calling on the best to tap into tacit knowledge and leverage the heuristics of groups. However, some would claim that, historically, even the best have faced limitations: Because of non-disclosure and bias, important facts and ideas have often not been shared and key information has frequently fallen on deaf ears.

There simply used to be no effective way of dealing with the social issues that plague any meeting. But so what, went the thinking: Until there is something better, let’s get what results we can from a well-facilitated meeting, it’s good enough.

In the post-pandemic world, putting up with “good enough” no longer works. Even when run by a professional facilitator, today’s video conferences do not adequately support facilitation methodology. Neither do boards, quizzes and other tools that are frequently used to augment remote meetings. In short: Substitutes for what may have been good enough in the past often aren’t good enough today.