Information technology augmentation of the skilled facilitator approach

Work in the new millennium requires globally distributed organizational members to collaborate in groups and make decisions. In general, research has shown that groups that use facilitators and group support systems make high quality decisions in less time. The skilled facilitator approach is a values-based systemic methodology that helps facilitators and groups interact successfully. Today's facilitators are being asked to work with groups that range in size from ten to five thousand, meet twenty-four hours a day seven days a week, and are located around the globe. Clearly no facilitator could be available to the group for this period of time much less effective. This paper proposes an operational view of an information technology system based on current state of the art natural language processing technologies that will augment the skilled facilitator approach and allow effective facilitation of large distributed meetings twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.