The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash A Culture of Innovation (47 page)
Authors: Henri Lipmanowicz,Keith McCandless
Purpose-To-Practice (P2P)
Design the Five Essential Elements for a Resilient and Enduring Initiative (2 hrs.)
“Very real crises mark our time. And as much as we might like it otherwise, it appears that doing what we have always done, only harder, will not solve them.” Charles Johnston
What is made possible
? By using
P2P
at the start of an initiative, the stakeholders can shape together all the elements that will determine the success of their initiative. The group begins by generating a shared purpose (i.e., why the work is important to each participant and the larger community). All additional elements—principles, participants, structure, and practices—are designed to help achieve the purpose. By shaping these five elements together, participants clarify how they can organize themselves to adapt creatively and scale up for success. For big initiatives,
P2P
makes it possible to include a large number of stakeholders in shaping their future initiative.
Below: presentation material we use to introduce
P2P
FIVE STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS—MIN SPECS
1. Structuring Invitation
•
Invite all or most stakeholders to participate in the design of their new initiative in order to specify its five essential elements: purpose, principles, participants, structure, and practices.
2. How Space Is Arranged and Materials Needed
- Chairs and small tables for people to work in groups of 4
- A large wall with poster paper for recording the P2P result for each element
- For each participant five worksheets, one for each of the five elements
3. How Participation Is Distributed
- All individuals who have a stake in launching the initiative are included
- Everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute
4. How Groups Are Configured
- 1-2-4-All
- Whole group for finalizing each element
5. Sequence of Steps and Time Allocation
- Introduce the idea of
P2P
, the five elements, and related questions, and hand out blank worksheets. 5 min. - To clarify the first element, Purpose, ask the question: “Why is the work important to you and the larger community?”
- Use
1-2-4
to generate individual ideas and stories for Purpose. 10 min. - In groups of four, compare, sift, and amplify the top ideas. 10 min.
- As a whole group, integrate themes and finalize ideas for Purpose. 10 min.
- Move to the remaining
P2P
elements, in turn, repeating the three steps of
1-2-4-All
. Be prepared to go back and revise previous elements as needed (expect some messy nonlinearity). Use the following questions to guide the development of the next four elements:
- Principles: “What rules must we absolutely obey to succeed in achieving our purpose?”
- Participants: “Who can contribute to achieving our purpose and must be included?”
- Structure
: “How must we organize (both macro- and microstructures) and distribute control to achieve our purpose?” - Practices: “What are we going to do? What will we offer to our users/clients and how will we do it?”
- After each element, ask, “Has this element shed new light that suggests revisions to previous elements?” 5 min.
- When all elements have been completed, ask participants to step back and take a close look at their draft of the five elements together. Ask them to use
What, So What, Now What?
in small groups to make sense of all of the possible next steps and prioritize them as a whole group. 15 min. - After the initiative has been launched, invite the participants to revisit their P2P design periodically and adapt elements based on their experience.
WHY? PURPOSES
- Engage and focus everyone’s imagination in designing the collective future of participants.
- Avoid “design” by a small group of people behind closed doors
- Pull together all the elements needed to launch and sustain an effort, thereby avoiding a fragmented process
- Develop innovative strategies that can be implemented and spread quickly because there is shared ownership
- Increase resilience and the ability to absorb disruptions by distributing power fairly
- Build the capacity to rapidly adapt any of the elements to changing circumstances
TIPS AND TRAPS
- Crafting a powerful, wildly attractive “purpose” is the most important step: you may want to use
Nine Whys, Appreciative Interviews
, or
TRIZ
to deepen the conversation - A purpose may be expressed as something positive you are going to start/create or something negative you are going to stop
- Work in quick cycles, failing forward iteratively
- Multiple
sessions spread out over weeks or even months may be required - “Structure” usually is the element that requires the most imagination and leaps away from top-down to more distributed control
- Principles:
Must dos
and
must not dos
often come from hard lessons learned in the field (positive and negative) - Rely on small groups to do the heavy lifting, and keep it moving
- Keep rounds on schedule and when more time is needed, do two rounds
- Rely on and draw out the inspiring-and-despairing experience of group members
- Invite the participants to use their intuition as the process unfolds
- Invite talented participants to take on roles (e.g., writing, drawing, synthesizing)
RIFFS AND VARIATIONS
- Start with one 30-minute, very rapid cycle covering all five elements to illustrate the need for a strong and clear purpose: without one, it is easy to come up with a half-baked design
- Graphic recording helps to hold attention and focus through the rigorous design process
- You can add questions to enrich the conversation about Practices: What is happening around us that creates an opportunity? What is at stake if we do not take a risk? Where are we starting, honestly?
- When integrating all five elements for a project is too much, just do the one or two design elements that seem most important
- Use the five
P2P
questions routinely as an easy checklist for small projects - Use with virtual groups by inviting participants to answer the five questions via a chat version of
1-2-All
. Sift and sort answers with a whiteboard and a person playing a “synthesizer” role. Don’t worry about perfection in the first rounds. Virtual rounds can deepen or complement face-to-face exchanges. - Use
P2P
to structure a much longer design session (e.g., a planning or strategy retreat)
EXAMPLES
- By the leaders of the Conversation Café dialogue movement
- The Quality Commons, a group of researchers from eight health systems, used
P2P
to successfully create their consortium - Going
through the first stage of the
P2P
, a management team discovered a much deeper purpose than it expected. The new purpose and shared experience inspired the team to rethink its business model.
ATTRIBUTION
Liberating Structure developed by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless. Inspired by Dee Hock (see his book
Birth of the Chaordic Age
).
COLLATERAL MATERIAL
Below: output for each of the five
P2P
questions
AFTERWORD
Liberating Structures start with something so simple and essential as not to seem worth doing and end with something so powerful and profound that it hardly seems possible
.
“Liberating Structures have been life changing for me! I really mean it. And there are ripple effects with other people I’m collaborating with. Loving it.”
“Liberating Structures are like magic; every time I use them something that seems impossible just happens as if by magic.”
“Using Liberating Structures transformed my way of leading and me as a leader.”
“We must find a way to get Liberating Structures into the drinking water!”
“The student feedback I hear has noticeably changed. I increasingly hear: ‘This class changed my life;’ ‘I learned so much about myself in this class;’ ‘Thank you also for teaching me how to learn.’”
“Liberating Structures have also influenced my interactions with my teenage children. I realized the poor impact I had when I just told them what to do. Now I listen more, let them express their feelings, and let them reach conclusions on what is best for them.”
“Employees were once valued for doing what they were told and saying ‘yes sir’. Now staff meetings are fun. It feels like magic because people contribute in ways they did not anticipate.”
“I have never seen a conversation like this around here. Just about everyone was on the edge of their seat the entire time.”
“After experiencing the freedom and the results that you can achieve with them, I cannot imagine going back to the old way.”
“We must find a way to get Liberating Structures into the drinking water!”
We continue to be blown away by how positive people are when they tell us what learning to use Liberating Structures has meant to them. Their gratitude
has been our greatest reward both emotionally and professionally. We love the stories of all the small and big successes that Liberating Structures have made possible for them. We glow in the pleasure they get from their transformed relationships and working conditions.
Feedback of this sort has convinced us that Liberating Structures have universal and enduring value. This is what motivated us to dig deeply to uncover the fundamental principles behind Liberating Structures and document our fieldwork. It was the people who learned and used Liberating Structures who convinced us to create a website and pushed us to write a book.
It took a good hard push
.
In our work with all kinds of organizations around the world, we have yet to meet anyone who could not address one or more challenges he or she is facing more effectively with Liberating Structures. This tells us that everybody would benefit from learning at least a few of them. Every teacher and professor should use some routinely. Exposure to Liberating Structures in the classroom would prepare students to be more effective contributors in the workplace. Managers should know at least all the basic Liberating Structures. Frontline workers would improve their everyday outcomes by simply mastering a few on their own. Internal and external consultants would enlarge the scope and impact of their work by becoming skilled at using Liberating Structures and would expand their offerings to their clients. Yet only a tiny fraction of the seven billion-plus people in the world have even heard of Liberating Structures!
