The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash A Culture of Innovation by Henri Lipmanowicz, Keith McCandless
Authors: Henri Lipmanowicz, Keith McCandless
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fears will lessen but never completely recede because unpredictability never goes away: your success will always come with many surprises. These are a big part of the satisfaction you will derive from using Liberating Structures. As you gradually push the envelope by including more people, more functions, and more levels, and by embracing more diversity, more surprising and exciting results will emerge.
Three Pathways to Fluency and Routine Use
Where you sit in an organization influences not only your first steps but also the subsequent paths you can take to develop fluency in the use of Liberating Structures.
For Senior Leaders
Senior leaders with resources can quickly engage many other people with workshops for some two hundred people at a time (see Immersion Workshops below) and they can also put in place mechanisms to encourage dissemination and to support a growing number of applications. A senior leader who personally becomes a visible regular user sends a powerful invitation to the entire organization to join in the experiment. From this, a critical mass can emerge to overcome the huge inertia of conventional practices that dominate existing work systems.
We use the word “invitation” purposely because we believe that it is not a good idea for leaders to use their authority to impose Liberating Structures. Instead, we advise creating opportunities for people to learn and allowing them to implement at their own pace and at their own level of comfort. Webelieve that the use of Liberating Structures will best flourish when it is left to grow through the enthusiasm and energy of spontaneous adopters. So the role of leaders is not to impose but to provide lots of support where it is wanted and welcomed. In addition, they need to be regular users themselves for there is absolutely no other way for them to fully make sense of what Liberating Structures can contribute to the performance of their organization.
Leaders have many opportunities every day to start practices that can easily be copied by others in their organization. For instance, replacing conventional meeting agendas with “storyboards” will inevitably support the use of Liberating Structures since they always specify for each session not just its purpose but also the detailed structure that will be used to achieve the purpose.
The use of Liberating Structures spreads most effectively when people experience and discover what they make possible. For leaders, this means creating opportunities for people to be exposed to Liberating Structures in workshops or making it easy for people to learn them in partnership with others. It means supporting the development of communities of practice in all organizational functions so that people can easily network and learn peer-to-peer. It means encouraging experiments and disseminating news of both successes and failures.
Managers, Individual Contributors, Solo Practitioners
In contrast to senior leaders, managers, frontline workers, and professionals such as educators or nurses are unlikely to have access to a lot of resources. So their starting point will not be a workshop but a single application of one Liberating Structure or a small number of structures in connection with a meeting with their team or colleagues. In our experience, small but frequent steps, with a thorough debrief after each step, are the most effective way to proceed. We always advocate working with a partner as it makes the learning process so much more effective, faster, safer, and fun.
Don’t try to convince anybody, words will not do it but experiences will
.
We are frequently asked, “I want to start using Liberating Structures myself, but how can I convince the people around me to start using them?” Our answer always is, “Don’t try to convince anybody, words will not do it but experiences will.” In other words, just use a Liberating Structure at your first opportunity and let those who like it learn from you. Then use your
Three Pathways to Fluency and Routine Use
Where you sit in an organization influences not only your first steps but also the subsequent paths you can take to develop fluency in the use of Liberating Structures.
For Senior Leaders
Senior leaders with resources can quickly engage many other people with workshops for some two hundred people at a time (see Immersion Workshops below) and they can also put in place mechanisms to encourage dissemination and to support a growing number of applications. A senior leader who personally becomes a visible regular user sends a powerful invitation to the entire organization to join in the experiment. From this, a critical mass can emerge to overcome the huge inertia of conventional practices that dominate existing work systems.
We use the word “invitation” purposely because we believe that it is not a good idea for leaders to use their authority to impose Liberating Structures. Instead, we advise creating opportunities for people to learn and allowing them to implement at their own pace and at their own level of comfort. Webelieve that the use of Liberating Structures will best flourish when it is left to grow through the enthusiasm and energy of spontaneous adopters. So the role of leaders is not to impose but to provide lots of support where it is wanted and welcomed. In addition, they need to be regular users themselves for there is absolutely no other way for them to fully make sense of what Liberating Structures can contribute to the performance of their organization.
Leaders have many opportunities every day to start practices that can easily be copied by others in their organization. For instance, replacing conventional meeting agendas with “storyboards” will inevitably support the use of Liberating Structures since they always specify for each session not just its purpose but also the detailed structure that will be used to achieve the purpose.
The use of Liberating Structures spreads most effectively when people experience and discover what they make possible. For leaders, this means creating opportunities for people to be exposed to Liberating Structures in workshops or making it easy for people to learn them in partnership with others. It means supporting the development of communities of practice in all organizational functions so that people can easily network and learn peer-to-peer. It means encouraging experiments and disseminating news of both successes and failures.
Managers, Individual Contributors, Solo Practitioners
In contrast to senior leaders, managers, frontline workers, and professionals such as educators or nurses are unlikely to have access to a lot of resources. So their starting point will not be a workshop but a single application of one Liberating Structure or a small number of structures in connection with a meeting with their team or colleagues. In our experience, small but frequent steps, with a thorough debrief after each step, are the most effective way to proceed. We always advocate working with a partner as it makes the learning process so much more effective, faster, safer, and fun.
Don’t try to convince anybody, words will not do it but experiences will
.
We are frequently asked, “I want to start using Liberating Structures myself, but how can I convince the people around me to start using them?” Our answer always is, “Don’t try to convince anybody, words will not do it but experiences will.” In other words, just use a Liberating Structure at your first opportunity and let those who like it learn from you. Then use your
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