The virtual OW

The virtual OW platform is a set of integrated tools, documents and instructions allowing a certified OW trainer to deliver an OW entirely on-line:

• ensuring participants live an immersive "seeing the system" experience close to the one designed by Barry Oshry
• keeping all essential ingredients as close as possible to the original "in-person" OW

The benefits of the virtual OW platform are:

1. flexible and extensible design based on 2 modules (same day or not!) for the core "4 or 5 CCI days" OW: compatible with the attention patterns of participants in the virtual world
2. a safe process to (re-)allocate roles, for participants and in the support team, when anybody could disappear, willingly or unwillingly, into the Internet no/poor connection "black hole" without any warning
3. a mechanism to distribute role-specific support materials in the virtual space
4. a resilient system for money exchange for all transactions (Customers and Tops), for all real-time information needs (like Middles/Bottoms salaries) and for the production of deliverables by Bottoms teams

Participants in a virtual OW use 2 distinct software simultaneously:

1. a meeting platform for:
   • receiving instructions and OW strategic frameworks in webinar mode
   • participating to group interactions: TOOTs, debriefs, Q/A… in meeting mode
   • communicating with other participants in separate virtual rooms via audio, video and room chat
   • moving between virtual rooms
2. the work documents platform for:
   • CCI customers creating contracts and payments within their pre-assigned budget
   • CCI TOPS consulting customer payments and using available funds to pay salaries and bonuses
   • CCI BOTTOMS creating and presenting the deliverables for CCI customers on one shared PowerPoint document per team
   • CCI MIDDLES and BOTTOMS checking their remuneration

To understand better how to use the virtual OW as an OW trainer, you should first discover the real screens participants will use by following the walk through on our website.

Zoom is the recommended meeting platform as the virtual OW requires these features:

• Breakout rooms which enable small group meetings with video
• A large room where the host can “call back” all participants and where +/- 30 participants can see each other video
• Movement capability: some participants can see who is in which breakout room, and can move freely (without the assistance of the meeting host) between any of the breakout rooms
• Possibility to grant/suppress this movement capability to any participant (via the "co-host" status in Zoom)
• Easy editing by participants of their screen name (to make their OW role visible to all other participants)

Why do we not recommend Microsoft Teams? As of early 2021:

• the base paradigm of Teams are conversations (not meetings like Zoom or Webex) and one must visit all conversations to which a user is registered to know in which conversation (s)he is currently present with video.
• it is unclear how to grant/suppress movement capability to participants.

Webex seems to be a viable alternative. As we have no experience with it, we do not provide any guidelines for its usage.

1. Computer with speakers/microphone/camera on the Internet: PC with Windows 10 or Mac with OS 10.9 or later.
   No Android/IOS tablet or mobile phone!
2. Access to Zoom either:
   • via an Internet browser: one of the 2 last versions of Google Chrome (PC or Mac) or Microsoft Edge (PC). This browser will also provide access the the virtual OW document platform.
   • or via the installation of (or update to) the last version of Zoom Client for Meetings. And then also access to the virtual OW document platform via one of the 2 last versions of either Google Chrome / Safari / Firefox / Microsoft Edge

The support team has the same requirements as participants, with Zoom installed on their computer. Support team members must also have a Google account, either:

• an account in their corporate Google Workspace
• a personal Google account: /something/@gmail.com

If their corporate account has restrictions and/or they do not want to use their Google account to manage virtual OWs, members of the support team can create another Google account just to manage virtual OWs: goto account.google.com

Members of the support team need also a "back channel" between them to communicate without disturbing the participants: any chat based application, like WhatsApp, can be used.
Additional requirements are needed to ensure the support roles continuity.

The virtual OW can distribute roles to minimum 10 and maximum 38 participants.

You can have 9 or 8 participants by assigning 1 or 2 customer roles to a member of the support team (or to their colleague(s)/business partner(s)) instead of 1 or 2 participant(s). We have run 2 virtual OW workshops with respectively 11 and 9 participants: in the virtual world the Top/Middle/Bottom/Customer contexts conditions worked very well with this small number of participants.

You can have more than 38 participants by distributing the same role to 2 participants who work then together: ideally in a Bottom team. We do not recommend to go too much above 35 participants to avoid risks of degrading their experience.

When you register for the virtual OW platform, you get access to your first workshop: the DEMO workshop with a name starting with "DEMO". In a DEMO workshop, all financial transactions executed by the OW customers (contracts and payments) or CCI TOPS (salaries, bonuses and BOTTOM promotions) are automatically reset to zero every hour. The DEMO workshop is fully functional for all other dimensions:

• creating/distributing role links and sharing the participants/roles list
• adapting role descriptions, allocating roles and sharing the role descriptions
• providing a global timer and real time sharing of pictures across all virtual rooms
• allowing up to 4 groups of participants to use a shared Google Slides file where they can create presentation together

So you can use your DEMO workshop for all your explorations / tests / rehearsals and to deliver workshops of your own design to as many participant groups as you want with as many consecutive sessions as you desire. When you need to deliver a virtual OW to "real clients" you can buy a PREMIUM workshop with a name which does not start with "DEMO":

• its financial data will not be reset to zero
• it will run only during 2 windows of 5 hours: one for module 2 and one for module 3
• its name includes the dates you have chosen to run module 2 and 3
• it uses PowerPoint - instead of Google Slides - to create shared presentations.

When you order a PREMIUM workshop, you must specify the start date/time of the two 5-hours windows where the PREMIUM workshop financial transactions will be operational: one for module 2 and one for module 3. Outside of these two 5-hours windows, the financial transactions will not work! To avoid any time zone confusion, you must give these start date/time in the UTC time zone (Coordinated Universal Time):

• if you need to understand what UTC is, go here
• to go from your local time zone to UTC, you can use this meeting planner . Be careful with the date: it could be different in your time zone and the UTC time zone!
• please triple check: you are the only responsible if you make a mistake in the UTC date/time you give us for your 5-hours windows

Once you have your two UTC 5-hours windows (and the name of your vOW workspace), you can order the creation of a PREMIUM workshop here.

You can order the creation of a virtual OW workspace with a DEMO workshop, accessible from your personal Google account: here.

Once you receive the workspace creation confirmation, just log into the personal Google account you have given us and go to Google Drive: drive.google.com.

If you need help to get started with your Google account and Google Drive, you can find a good free (as of April 2022) training here.

After logging in (and having created the links as indicated in the Note above), you will see the root of your Google Drive

Click on your your workshop folder to open it and you will see the list of your workshops:

Just after the creation of your workspace, there will be only one workshop: the DEMO workshop.

The DEMO and all active PREMIUM workshops have the same directories and structure. When you open one of them (just click on it), you will see:

Reference documents, all supporting documents useful to run a virtual OW, are in the "MasterDocs" folder:

• return to the top of your workspace by clicking on "My Drive" (left vertical menu)
• click on "MasterDocs" to open its folder

The reference documents are stored in these folders:

All reference documents are read-only. You can copy them to the top of your workspace ("My Drive" folder) where you can edit/rename the copy and then move it possibly to one of your "My Documents" folder. For handling Microsoft Office documents in Google workspace, we have prepared these recommendations.

While experienced facilitators will readily deliver an in-person Organization Workshop alone (with minimal help from a client assistant), the virtual (on-line) version adds a layer of risk and complexity that is mostly outside the control of the facilitator - namely its reliance on information & communication technology. At the same time the virtual environment severely limits all non-verbal communication cues - for instance: participants disappearing or disengaging, or conversely trying to catch the facilitator’s attention by raising their hand. These specific roles must be fulfilled in the support team:

• Host (or Technical Coordinator): The Host role corresponds to the Zoom Meeting host. The Host prepares the virtual breakout rooms, ‘accepts’ participants into the Zoom Meeting, grants participants co-host status (to enable movement between breakout groups), calls back all participants into the main meeting room at the end of the breakout sessions (OW days), etc.. The Host also helps all participants with any technical problems. The virtual OW Host should therefore remain as much as possible in a room accessible by all participants from inside and outside the meeting platform (the Main Room in Zoom).
• Facilitator (or Trainer): The virtual OW Facilitator delivers all the virtual OW materials (including instructions on how to use the meeting platform), gives all OW instructions to the participants (except customer training as indicated hereafter), manages time to ensure completion within the planned schedule, manages the TOOTs, monitors the chat during plenaries. In addition, this role helps the TOPS to understand and master their financial transactions during day 1. The Facilitator will therefore join the TOPS in their virtual breakout room as soon as the Transition-in is finished.
• Support-Roles: This role allocates the OW roles to the participants ahead of the Transition-in and provides access to each participant to their work documents.
• Support-Customers: During the second part of Transition-in and at the start of first OW day this role explains to Customers their role (Customer Orientation) and the use of their Customer work documents for projects/payments.
• Support-Tops: At the start of first OW day this role explains to Tops the use of their Tops work documents for tracking cash and remunerations.
• Support-Government: During all OW days, except the first one, this role answers any OW-related questions that participants may have, and checks that the payment for the promotion of Bottoms has been made before instructing the Host to promote them to co-host.

Task plans - available in reference documents - describe all tasks (including breaks) by all roles (support team and participants) in sequence starting from the support team pre-meeting down to the end of module 2 or 3. A copy of the start of the task plan for Module 2 is included here below:

These task plans are available in Excel format:

• "Mod 2 - 3h standalone - Excel task plan.xlsx" : module 2 standalone (not on the same day as module 3), 3h duration with breaks
• "Mod 3 - 3h standalone - Excel task plan.xlsx" : module 3 standalone (not on the same day as module 2), 3h duration with breaks
• "Mod 2 3 - 5h30m + pause - Excel task plan.xlsx" : modules 2 with module 3 on the same day, 5h30 total duration with breaks but excluding a long pause between the 2 modules

You can download these plans in Excel format and modify them:

• change the task durations in the DUR. column
• modify/insert/delete tasks (and sections) as indicated in the INSTRUCTIONS sheet of these task plans

We recommend that you use initially a support team of 3 people to deliver the virtual OW. And once you have built some experience and you understand how to mitigate risks, you can move progressively to a support team of 3 people during the first hour and 2 people during the rest of the workshop:

• The Host must remain available and easily reachable throughout the entire workshop to both welcome participants at the start of the workshop and, more importantly, to be ready to help with technical problems or with participants (re)joining on-going meetings in the right breakout room (e.g. in case they dropped out or accidentally left a meeting). The Host should therefore not take any other significant role. It is the only ‘full-time’ role even though this role may not always be active. A first support team member must be dedicated to the Host role.
• The Facilitator role is active throughout the entire workshop - except for the OW days. A second support team member must be dedicated to the Facilitator role.
• The Support-Roles is only active during the first half-hour of Module 2 (and Module 3 if not sequential) and could be done by an experienced Host.
• The Support-Customers role is active in parallel with the Facilitator and the Host roles during the second half-hour of Module 2 (and Module 3 if not sequential). So we need here a third support team member.
• The Support-Tops role is active only during the first OW day and could therefore be taken by the Facilitator.
• The Support-Government role is active only during the OW days 2 through 5 and could therefore be taken by the Facilitator.

The competences and experience needed to fulfil each role are:

Notes:
(1) Most critical competence to complement a typical certified OW facilitator: the Zoom Host must be capable of executing easily all instructions of the "Zoom technical coordinator guide" in the Administration folder of the reference documents
(2) Minimum number of virtual OWs attended as participant
(3) Detailed script and example video for virtual OW customer orientation are in the reference documents: MasterDocs / Participant docs
(4) To help participants who encounter technical difficulties

Once the support team with the right competencies is assembled, what investment is needed to learn to deliver the first client virtual OW?

Here is the list of activities and time needed by a 3 person team (2 certified OW facilitators and one confirmed Zoom producer) to go from "zero" to a succesful first PREMIUM workshop over a period of one week:

Notes:
(1) Number of hours per person for this activity
(2) Total number of hours fort his activity

So the total time needed is 45 hours for a team of 3 people, with 11 hours for the Zoom producer and 34 hours to share between the 2 facilitators (with a minimum of 9 hours for the non-lead facilitator).

To reduce this time investment, you can buy support as indicated in the support page on the main website.

The biggest impact on participants' experience of the virtual OW is likely to occur in the event that one or more support and/or participants’ roles suddenly and unexpectedly ‘disappear’ (for more than a few minutes) in the course of the workshop - due to a serious technical problem with either computers or Internet connections, or due to participant drop-out.

Here are the different roles from greatest to least potential impact: (1) Host, Facilitator, and Support-Roles, (2) Support-Customers and any participant in Customer role, (3) Support-Government, (4) any participant in MIDDLE role and (5) any participant in TOPS or BOTTOM role.

We recommend thus the following risk mitigation measures:

• For the support team

  • Plan for a minimum of 3 people in a support team with limited experience, with the 3rd person taking not only the Support-Customers role and possible the Support-Roles role, but also on stand-by to jump into the Host or Facilitator role if one of these drops out of the virtual meeting.
  • All members of the support team should (MUST if only 2 people in the support team) have at their disposal 2 computers (main & backup) and 2 independent means of accessing the Internet (e.g. a cable Internet access via Wi-Fi or preferably wired LAN, and a backup access like 4G via a smart-phone). They must all avoid ANY operating system updates during any virtual OW sessions (for Windows 10: go to Windows Settings - Update & Security - Advanced Options - Pause updates)
• For the participant drop-outs after role allocation
  • It is difficult to detect when certain roles have dropped out. So It is IMPERATIVE to explain well in advance to participants - and ultimately to their management or training administrator or project leader … - that they must commit to attending all sessions in their entirety. And that too many drop-outs could result in an entire module being cancelled, even after it has started.
  • Specific recommendations for role allocation in case of drop-outs are detailed in the role allocation process
• For the participant technical set-up
  • For participants within the same company, checking well in advance if IT policies/configurations would interfere with the virtual OW access
  • All participants should receive instructions at least 2 weeks before the virtual OW sessions to configure their computer and test this configuration for access to the meeting and work document platforms.

1. Understand the four modules design of the virtual OW in order to select your own chosen modules: at least modules 2 and 3.
2. Adapt the reference documents, usually presentations and task plans, to your design.
3. Assemble your support team ensuring that the required role competences are present and give them access to your virtual OW workspace.

Once you have clarified the meeting platform and the technical requirements for participants, you can (ask your client contact to) send an email to all participants. You will find an email template, with annotations about possible attachments, in the Administration folder of the reference documents.

You will find 2 documents in the Administration folder of the reference documents:

• the "Zoom technical coordinator guide" explains how to prepare the Zoom meeting, including breakout rooms
• the "Zoom configuration options" (as of 2021-03-20) indicates exactly which Zoom configuration options we are using in our virtual OWs

The responsibilities, detailed tasks and competencies for all team members are described here.

Once a competent team is assembled, it is absolutely necessary to rehearse the first hour of module 2 (and module 3 if standalone) until every team member can easily execute his/her tasks as indicated in the task plans.

The OW role instructions can be changed in file "My Workshop - …" :

• customer roles in tab "CustInstructions"
• customer projects in tab "CustProjects"
• CCI roles in tab "CCIinstructions"

If you want to share link(s) so that all participants can access instructions / documents / applications(like Jamboard…) in their browser when they are in different virtual rooms:

• prepare your own link(s) and one line access instruction for each link
• in your file "My Workshop - …" tab "ExeciseTimer", put the access instruction in column F and the link in column G, so that you can show them rapidly to participnats by copying them on the lest part of the sheet, shared with participants worksheet tab "ExerciseTimer".

We recommend that the support team starts its check-list review at least 20 minutes before the start of every module 2 or 3. This check-list is the section "Our pre-meeting" at the start of all task plans. THis includes the set-up of the shared timer.

If you are using a DEMO workshop which was already used before the start of a module 2:

• it is necessary to re-open the configuration to allow filling again the EXPECTED PAXS column in "My Workshop - …", tab Participants. Then in the next trainer action menu, submit: CAUTION: ARE YOU SURE? — Reopen configuration.
• it could be necessary to reset all transactions to zero before restarting. Then in the next trainer action menu, submit: CAUTION: ARE YOU SURE? — Reset all transactions to zero.

Do not use these selection at anytime between showing roles to participants in Module 2 and the end of the complete Module 3 !

The role allocation process is highly automated and resilient towards participants drops:

• the overall configuration (number of: customers / PAXS per customer / Tops / PAXS in each Bottom team) is frozen 25 minutes after the module 2 session start based on the actual number of present participants
• after that, the real number of participants can increase (max. 10%) or drop (max. 20%) without serious impact on the role configuration. In case of dropouts, the necessity to maintain some key roles for the Organization Workshop could force role distribution changes (see below)

The role allocation steps are listed here:

• the steps letter (A, B…) refer to the tasks with the same letters (white on black) in the task plan picture for module 2 available here.
• the BOLD UPPER CASE TEXT references elements in the spreadsheet "My Workshop - …", tab Participants.
• the Select MENU:"menu choice" indicates the selection of the indicated menu choice in the menu 'Next trainer action' obtained by clicking the link under/right of the orange cell 'menu' in "My Workshop - …", tab Participants.

The links to participants worksheets are available in the "MasterLink - …" spreadsheet and are distributed via the chat of the meeting platform:

• each customer receives his/her own link via one-to-one chat
• all Tops receive the same link, each via one-to-one chat
• all Middles and Bottoms receive the same link via chat to everyone

In Zoom (as of early 2021) chat can only be sent to people present in the same virtual room, so the links distribution is coordinated in the task plans with the actual presence of participants in the room where the sender role is present.

To see a shared timer across all virtual rooms, participants use the link on top of the "ExerciseTimer" tab on their worksheet. A new browser tab opens with the shared countdown timer set by the Host.

Set up the timer before the workshop start:

• click the link indicated SHARED TIMER in My Workshop - ExerciseTimer
• a new browser tab opens. Click PREPARE TIMER on it.
• replace '60' with '13' (minutes)
• click SHARE TIMER to copy the timer link for participants
• IMPORTANT: NEVER CLOSE your CLOQ browser tab! (text in tab: Shared Timer for Remote Teams)
• return to "My Workshop …" - ExerciseTimer.
• paste the link for participants in cell D3
• run the orange menu "Refresh participants links…"

Explain to ALL participants how to access the timer:

• go to the CLOQ browser tab (text in tab: Shared Timer for Remote Teams)
• click START TIMER
• grab the ACME link in "MasterLink - …"
• put on your screen the tab ExerciseTimer of the ACME spreadsheet
• share your screen with participants
• show participants to click on the timer link on the spreadsheet tab ExerciseTimer
• all participants will see the countdown timer on your shared screen - perhaps after a few seconds
• attract their attention to the small countdown always visible in the tab name
• when done, stop sharing your screen
• return to the CLOQ browser tab
• click STOP TIMER : it will reset to 13
• IMPORTANT: NEVER CLOSE your CLOQ browser tab!

Launch the timer at the start of the first OW day:

• go to the CLOQ browser tab (text in tab: Shared Timer for Remote Teams)
• click START TIMER

Launch the timer at the start of all following OW days:

• go to the CLOQ browser tab (text in tab: Shared Timer for Remote Teams)
• click PREPARE NEW TIMER : it will reset to 13
• click START TIMER

To access shared link(s) across all virtual rooms , participants use the link(s) in the "ExerciseTimer" tab on their worksheet. A new browser tab opens with the prepared application.

To make a prepared link accessible by all participants, the Host uses the tab "ExeciseTimer" on the file "My Workshop - …" :

• copy/paste the prepared access instruction from column F to column C
• copy/paste the prepared link from column G to column D
• use the menu link on top left to Select MENU:"Refresh participants links, including timer."

In case of (very) late newcomers, S-Rol can:

1. first use the remaining open roles in the role list
2. when they are no more roles available, just pair the newcomer with an existing role, preferably Bottom

And then in both cases:

• change the newcomer Zoom name
• if needed, ask the Host to give the newcomer co-host status
• distribute the corresponding role link to the newcomer
• if needed, ask the Host to move her to the corresponding Bottom room

In case of late drop outs, S-Rol should consult the Presenter before making any change. Here are some guidelines to avoid too complex role changes for participants:

• If one or two Customers drop out, a support team member should take over the role during the OW days.
• If a MIDDLE drops out, S-Rol should promotes a BOTTOM to MIDDLE role and ask the Host gives her/him co-host status.
• If BOTTOMS drop out to the point where a BOTTOMS team has only one member, S-Rol reallocates that BOTTOM to another team. (No Bottoms Teams should only have one member).
• If TOPS drops out to the point where there is only one TOP left, S-Rol promotes a BOTTOM to TOP and the Host gives her/him co-host status.

To share final financial results, open the "financesCCI" worksheet (use the link in "MasterLink - …") and share your screen in the meeting platform on:

• the tab "TOPS Worksheet" to see customer projects and payments
• the tab "Remunerations" to see:
  • the distribution of salaries, bonuses
  • which Bottoms have been promoted to be able to move freely between virtual rooms

The "Next trainer action" menu opens by clicking the link under/right of the orange cell 'menu' in "My Workshop - …", tab Participants or ExerciseTimer.

As of end 2020, we experience the following situation in Google Workspace:

• Native Google Docs/Sheets/Slides are very attractive in a multi user situation: real-time editing/commenting and "infinite" undo/redo
• The compatibility between Google and Microsoft formats, for our type of work, is:
  • Very good for Google Docs to/from Microsoft Word
  • Very good for formulas/text based Google Sheets to/from Excel. Zero for macros/programming and advanced database functions.
  • Poor for Google Slides to/from PowerPoint: font and formatting issues.

So we have adopted the following guidelines for our virtual OW work:

• For text and spreadsheet documents, do all work related to the virtual OW within your vOW workspace in Google Docs/Sheets format. Download as Microsoft Word/Excel only to share "non-live documents" outside, like an email attachment with instructions to participants.
• For presentation documents:
  • If OK for the/all editor(s), use only Google Slides. Then to avoid formatting issues, present always in Google Slides.
  • If PowerPoint must be used by only one editor, this editor could keep the master version on his/her PC and, if needed, upload to Google Drive for sharing with read/commenting-only co-workers
  • If PowerPoint must be used with multiple editors, all editors should download and use Drive File Stream to see who's editing with real-time presence in Microsoft Office. And they must all pay attention to avoid simultaneous edits.