The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash A Culture of Innovation (37 page)

• Evaluate and decide what is absolutely essential for success
  
• Open space for new possibilities
  
• Reduce frontline frustration and free people from micromanagement
  
• Focus or redirect resources and energies where it matters
  
• Help guide scaling up and spreading innovations with fidelity
  

• Start with a complete list of dos
  
• Include as many players/stakeholders as possible
  
• Be ruthless in dropping dos: don’t allow max specs to creep in
  
• Do extra rounds as needed
  
• Make the
  Min Specs
  official! Live by them (no “yes but”)
  
• Give more weight to direct experience in the field rather than conceptual knowledge
  
• Keep the
  Min Specs
  alive by adapting them based on field experiences and Simple Ethnography observations
  
• If groups are having difficulty, you may need to circle back to clarify purpose and make sure that it is down to what is truly important.
  
• Learn more in Brenda Zimmerman’s
  Edgeware
  or at
  www.plexusinstitute.com/edgeware/archive/think/
  

• Do a second round of purpose testing with the question, “If you followed all the
  Min Specs
  except this one, would you achieve your purpose?” If yes, you can drop that spec from the list.
  
• Instead of developing
  Min Specs
  for the present, ask people to speculate on what Min Specs should shape action in the future. Use them to inform the present.
  
• Do Min Specs with virtual groups by using the chat function to share answers to each “can you violate this specification and achieve your purpose?” question. When your
  Min Specs
  list is getting shorter and tighter, open the voice conversation to all.
  
• Simple Ethnography
  or
  Nine Whys
  may reveal implicit or tacit Min Specs (dig deeper!)
  

Below: Min Specs guide a self-organizing pattern in Brazil

• Senator Lynda Bourque Moss used Min Specs to identify the must dos and must not dos for all the stakeholders to share responsibility for preventing the habit of driving while intoxicated and support new state legislation. Read Lynda’s story, “
  Passing Montana Senate Bill 29
  ” in
  Part Three: Stories from the Field
  .
  
• After a company-wide
  Open Space
  meeting, Alison Joslyn developed a set of
  Min Specs
  with the new project leaders of a corporate turnaround. See “
  Turning A Business Around
  ” in
  Part Three
  .
  
• Include
  Min Specs
  with any assignment given or received.
  

Below: presentation materials we use to introduce Min Specs

“To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as if nothing of consequence will happen. On the contrary, when we are playful with one another, we relate as free persons, and the relationship is open to surprise; everything that happens is of consequence, for seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcomes of open possibility. To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for unlimited possibility.” James Carse

Sources of Knowledge & Innovation, adapted from Alan Duncan, MD (Mayo Clinic), designed for VHA Health Foundation (2006)
.

•
  
Invite participants to identify a frustrating chronic challenge in their work, then to playfully experiment, invent, and discover better ways to address the challenge by acting out the situation and possible solutions.

• An open space or stage at the front or in the middle of a room
  
• If needed, props for the scene or scenes to be offered
  
• Small clusters of chairs to accommodate all participants
  

• Everyone is included either as players or observers
  
• A few volunteers to be “players”
  
• Everyone else acts as observers and evaluators, then cocreative players
  

• One small group of players on “the stage”
  
• All others, the observers, in small groups in front or around the stage
  

• Explain what will be done and describe the sequence of steps. 2 min.
  
• Set the stage by describing the scenario that will be acted out and the various roles. 3 min.
  
• Players on stage enact the scene. 3–5 min.
  
• Each small observer group debriefs with
  1-2-4-All
  to identify successful and unsuccessful “chunks” from the scene that they just observed. 5 min.
  
• Each observer group then pieces together the successful chunks into a new prototype and volunteers from within the group act out the new prototype for their own group only. 5 min.
  
• Participants from one of the observer groups who judge that they have an improved prototype volunteer to come on stage and enact their version in front of the whole group. 3–5 minutes.
  
• Continue with as many rounds as necessary to arrive at one or more prototypes that are good enough to put into practice.
  

• Enable people to act their way into new thinking:
  Improv Prototyping
  is a rehearsal for real life
  
• Break a task that seems daunting into smaller pieces
  
• Engage and focus everyone’s imagination on solving messy challenges
  
• Break through frozen or resistant behaviors
  
• Create an engaging and fun alternative to dry or unproductive training
  
• Work across functional and disciplinary barriers
  
• Help people learn from peers that have behaviors that solve the problem
  

• Be as inclusive as possible: invite everyone in different roles to join in
  
• Draw meaningful themes and dramatic lines for each scene from
  Discovery & Action Dialogues
  and
  Simple Ethnography
  
• Consider creating three supporting roles depending on the complexity of the scenario: stage manager, creative director, and facilitator.
  
• Replay scenes that do not capture the imagination or generate new ideas
  
• Invite people to let go of assumptions and biases by putting themselves in the shoes of others, e.g., doctor plays nurse and nurse plays doctor, student plays professor
  
• Invite creative director to gently redirect the players as needed
  

• With the goal of discovering better (and worse) actions, invite the audience to replay the scene in small groups. Start with separate small groups staging their own impromptu Improvs, then invite face-off competitions judged by an “applause-o-meter”
  
• Link to and string with
  Design StoryBoards, Shift & Share
  , and
  User Experience Fishbowl
  to help spread the innovations (specify
  what is
  and
  what could be
  )
  

• Hospital trainers have substituted
  Improv Prototyping
  for conventional courses
  
• For
  sales reps to invent new ways to interact with their customers
  
• For managers to make their interactions with people who report to them more productive
  
• For health-care providers to practice end-of-life and palliative-care conversations with patients and family members
  
• For teachers to discover effective responses to disruptive classroom behaviors
  
• For training young nurses to stand their ground on safety issues (see “
  Dramatizing Behavior Change to Stop Infections
  ” in
  Part Three:
  Stories from the Field).
  

Below: presentation materials we use to introduce
Improv Prototyping

“You cannot help a man permanently by doing for them something they could and should do for themselves.” Abraham Lincoln