Category: facilitation

Patterns for Humane Online Meetings

Screenshot of gallery view of Zoom

I’m working on a pro-bono project and came across a request for an online meeting resource. After scrolling through a mind-numbing number of “ok” resources, and struggling to re-find old favorites, I thought I’d share some patterns instead of a recipe.

This is something I’ve been playing with for the new Liberating Structures (LS) book Keith McCandless and I are writing. It comes from a draft chapter on how to get started with LS. It describes six steps or phases of implementation and builds on common meeting and facilitation practice, and expresses the “how” by using LSs. You can replace your favorite interaction processes, all the while y’all know I dearly love Liberating Structures!

Each section has a section for purpose, process/Liberating Structures and tech/artifacts. This just gives you a taste, some hints and resources, but not the full meal. If there is something specific you want to know more about or have questions, please leave comments!

TDLR: Connect people immediately through small group breakouts for meaningful conversation. Reduce presentations. Alternate pacing, mix up people in breakouts and collectively identify what is important to capture. Enable technologies that give power to people to contribute visually, verbally, in text and to interact with each other rather than centralized control.

One: Design, Document & Prepare

Purpose

Define the group’s purpose to inform agenda design.

Hints:

  • Include participants’ needs and perspectives in planning (vs. just the sponsors). Include some of them in your design team! 
  • Consider crafting a statement to frame the purpose like this: The purpose of this meeting is to (DO WHAT) so that (WHO) can (DO WHAT). We know we are making progress when (DESCRIBE). To dig deeper into purpose, try 9 Whys.
  • Attend to relational practices in the context of your group. For example, in times of change, grief or trauma, make space at the start for people to be seen and heard in small groups of 2-4. Take pauses for people to process not just thoughts, but feelings. 
  • Remember: content can be delivered asynchronously; relationship and connecting benefit from synchrony.

Process/Liberating Structures

Design your agenda. Prioritize people and connection before content. You can use LSs for planning too. Purpose to Practice helps include all the aspects of a meeting plan. Design Storyboard helps consider process options and patterns. Always be ready to shift if something shows up in the room suggesting change and adaptation.

Hints:

  • Ensure balance between purposeful interaction and content. Reduce presentations to a minimum. Alternate fast and slow interactions. Alternate frequently between small/large group options where people have a smaller space to share ideas and a larger space to make sense across ideas. Build in time for quiet reflection. Offer space for “no video” time or options for whom video is draining.
  • Craft invitations for each step, activity and/or LS. Iterate till you have the clearest, simplest invitation that both guides and leaves space for emergence (we call this precise ambiguity!)
  • Ensure the participant agenda you send in advance is focused on purpose, not minute by minute process details that can pre-program people to decide what to skip and what to attend to. 
  • Use the Matchmaker to select and sequence (“string”) your LSs/processes that meet the needs of people doing the work. Here are some examples of some of the easiest LSs to use. More are also noted in subsequent steps.

Connect People/Get Started

Share Information or Expertise

Explore Context (internal and external)

Devise Options

Attend to Process and Feelings

Reflect

Tech and Artifacts

Identify and prepare the technology and visual supports needed for your meeting.

Hints:

  • Prepare a run sheet (a.k.a. “Run of show”) that adds on the details including  prompts ready to paste into chat, visual materials (slides, shared whiteboard or document, polls, etc.), and breakout plans.
  • Identify roles (who leads what, who tech hosts, cybrarian tasks: who supports capturing artifacts, etc.)
  • Ensure tech is configured for maximum P2P interaction (group chat, direct messaging, hands on creation of knowledge artifacts.)
    • Support verbal instructions with prepared visual materials.
    • Carefully consider value of recordings from a value creation (or not) and privacy standpoints

Two: Get the Meeting Started and Settled 

Purpose

Support connection and a graceful entrance into technology and launch with interactions that set the tone for the meeting. Attend to the diverse needs of people with a welcoming, inclusive and aesthetic environment.

Process/Liberating Structures

Immediately use LSs that focus on small group breakouts so people can connect and be seen/heard/respected through meaningful, relevant conversational prompts. This is very different from “go around the room and introduce yourself” which can be numbing after a while. Avoid random ice breakers and focus on your purpose. If people are new to tech, make the breakout process as simple as possible to serve as “practice.” You may be pleasantly surprised at how effective starting with meaningful conversations in breakouts changes the tenor of the whole meeting. It says “what you think, say and feel matters!”

Hints:

  • Open the room 5 minutes early and encourage informal greetings, sharing something in chat.
  • Focus on people’s faces, not a slide or agenda.  

Tech and Artifacts

  • Hosting team arrives early for a tech check to ensure all settings/plans/roles are clear and in place.
  • If recording, start after the informal 5 minutes. Pause recording during breakouts and stop recording at end of meeting.
  • Provide tech support (“how to” slide for features you are using, breakout for individual tech support, share hints in chat.)

Three: Dig Into the Work

Purpose

Support the use of LSs (or other relevant processes)  to achieve the group’s purpose.  Delete anything that does not serve the purpose and the participants, where possible. This includes generic welcome talks, over-general presentations and a detailed description of the agenda. Hit the points that move the purpose forward.

Process/Liberating Structures

Follow the minimum specifications of each LS, at least until you are familiar with them. Then improvise. Notice where people do or do not understand your prompts and invitations; take a breath and try again. If people are getting confused, slow down. If things are getting repetitive and “speachy,” speed up.  If a moment arises when everyone wants to talk, send them into breakouts so everyone gets a chance to talk (not just those comfortable speaking or dominators) and ask the groups to share back ONLY what they think everyone should hear. Capture key points. 

Tech and Artifacts

  • Attend to verbal and visual support.  Sometimes we don’t listen as well online so reinforcement with visual instructions is helpful. 
  • Support shared capture of key content – try and get participants to identify what is important. They know best.  Can use chat, shared documents, whiteboard, polls, etc. This is different from having, for example, a staff member “take notes.”

Four: Debrief and Identify Next Steps

Purpose

Develop practices to identify next steps and preparation for moving forward. Debrief for future process and improvement. Next steps can be at any or all levels—individual to whole group.

Process/Liberating Structures

Tech and Artifacts

  • Continue to provide participants a mechanism to capture content that is identified as important to participants (vs “capture everything”) 

Five: Close

Purpose

Bring the meeting to a close so everyone has clarity on next steps. Provide a human transition in a tech-driven, abrupt environment. F2F we can chat after a meeting has ended, wave, and say goodbye. With intention, we can do this online. 

Process/Liberating Structures

  • Just Three Words in chat (Reflect over our time together. Use three words, just three words, to describe it. Put it in chat.)
  • Positive Gossip
  • Sharing appreciation (The thing I heard from NAME that is staying with me is DESCRIBE.)
  • Turn on cameras and waving goodbye 

Tech and Artifacts

  • Save all digital artifacts that are needed going forward. Identify follow up cybrarian tasks. 

Six: Organize the Artifacts

Purpose

Keep data organized and available for “lifting off from where we left off.” For one time meetings, this can be as simple as bringing together all the artifacts and sending out links or pdfs. For ongoing work, call out conclusions, next steps and actions and send them as soon as possible to participants. 

Process/Liberating Structures

This work is more administrative than something connected with group process. However, having the participant representatives involved in designing the meeting suggests we can also do this at the output stage. What do THEY find important? What meaning do they make of the data?

Tech and Artifacts

  • Have a plan for where artifacts are stored, what format, how public/private they should be, what and how things are shared or distributed and by when.
  • For meetings with follow ups, ensure what has been captured from where the group left off and a sense of how they will be used in the next meeting for “lift off.” 

So You Want To Create a New Liberating Structure!

Introduction

Image

Since Liberating Structures (LS) were first launched into the world, they generated creative energy in practitioners around the world to create new ones. Some people identified gaps that they found in the repertoire. People generated alternatives to existing structures. Adjacent communities saw opportunities to cross pollinate their approaches with LS. We experienced a flowering of new LS.

Most efforts were informal. New structures were passed around between practitioners but rarely documented and intentionally tested. There was some sense that a structure had to be “approved” in order to be “included.” Yet within the distributed LS network, there was no formal mechanism to do this. So collections emerged (e.g. on the LS website) with structures ranging from well defined and tested, to those only a handful of practitioners knew and practiced. 

A conundrum? Not really. To be a structure it must:

  • address the ambitions of LS (see image below) to the highest degree possible
  • be recorded into the LS template (shared below and which has been updated this year as Keith McCandless and I write a new LS book – stand by!), and,
  •  be practiced, integrated and improved and finally SPREAD. By spread, we mean that the developers of new LSs actively share their offerings through immersions and use in their work. 
Sketch with the 10 Ambitions of Liberating Structures. Drawing credit: Thea Schukken (artist) and Barry Overeem (The Liberators)
Drawing credit: Thea Schukken (artist) and Barry Overeem (The Liberators)

There is no formal way to “get new LSs into the repertoire.” Currently there are some Google docs and a Trello board capturing some of them, but it is neither a complete list, nor are all the LSs fully formed. Some folks have forged ahead and made design card decks and included the new LSs they found useful.  Holisticon and The Liberators got things started with beautiful cards.  And more!

In the new LS book, we are including 10 of these many new LSs and we have made sure to note any online adaptations. (We did that for the original 33 as well!). There was no attempt to be comprehensive but rather to show examples of the great LS flowering. And there was no intent to exclude any others. There is an abundance of adaptations and inventions embedded in our network of LS practice. The best thing we can do is  get creative.  LS are always adapted and are used adaptively.

Adapting

Before we create new LSs, consider adapting existing ones. That alone may fill the gap. Here are some ways to adapt that we are including in the new LS book.

Adaptations for Liberating Structures

I Have a New LS and I Want To Share It

Great! Here are our suggestions!

  1. Write up your LS using the template below.  Check out an example of the template in use at the bottom of this post. Include any online adaptations that are needed. Tip: Work with a partner for more fun and ease.
  2. Share your draft with both experienced and novice users. Experienced users may help you refine and new users are the acid test. If they can reliably reproduce the benefits of the structure, you are doing a good job. Tip: when you can simplify, DO IT! (Do as I say, not as I sometimes fail and do!)
  3. Refine your draft again and use it/have others use it as much as you can. Ask for their feedback and refine again. We have been constantly surprised at how much iteration improves the design of a LS. As they say, “lather, rinse and repeat!”
  4. Develop an icon and collateral materials if you can. The visual aspects of the LS repertoire are part of what makes LS special. 
  5. Spread the word. Share your structure with user group gatherings and with your friends and colleagues. 

LS Template

Instructions are in [brackets]. You can find a copy of the template here which you can copy and fill in. There is an example following the template. Have fun!

[Icon] [TITLE OF LS] 

[Tagline: express its essence. Simple, directive, in title case] e.g. Engage Everyone Simultaneously in Generating Questions, Ideas, and Suggestions]

[Duration] E.g. 15 min 

[Relevant Quote that enlivens the structure with attribution] Tell me and I will forget. E.g. Teach me and I may remember. Involve me and I learn. Benjamin Franklin 

WHAT IT MAKES POSSIBLE

[A brief explanation of what you can accomplish using the structure. When a LS brings one of the LS Principles to life, make note of it here. Begins with a description of the LS in 1-2 sentences. Goes on to describe the benefits of the LS in third person (ok to use second person, addressing host and group).]

TAKING IT ONLINE

[This new section lays out roles and online adjustments to the five microstructural elements. If relevant, it calls out shifts in the interaction dynamic experienced by the participants. Third person (ok to use second person, addressing host and group, e.g., “Use it when…”).]

FIVE STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS—MIN SPECS

[What to do and how to do it, step by step. Where there is a difference between F2F and Online, you will see both options listed. Where relevant, the tech tasks are included.]

1. Structuring Invitation

  • [First-person statement for the host to read out to the group that flows from the description and what is made possible. This is then used in the Steps below, reducing duplication.]

2. How Space Is Arranged and Materials Needed

[Identify for each of the bullets below. Note online  differences. All noun phrases/sentence fragments. Online accommodations in brackets and highlighted in light gray.]

  • Room Setup: [Physical/virtual space requirements, furniture setup] E.g.: Space for participants to work face-to-face in pairs and foursomes [breakout rooms]
  • Tools & Supplies: [Tools for recording/sharing]
  • Display: [What to display, what display materials are needed. Identify visual materials to share the steps and/or prompts because online our attention may wane.]

3. How Participation Is Distributed

[All noun phrases/fragments]

  • Roles: [which roles need to be filled, including differences online with tech hosts)]
  • Minimum: [minimum number of participants, if applicable]
  • Inclusion: [Default: Everyone is invited and has equal opportunity to contribute. Adjust as needed.]
  • 4. How Groups Are Configured

[All noun phrases/fragments]

  • Configuration: [alone, in pairs, whole group, etc.]
  • Group Structure: [Specific group sizes, specifications for membership]
  • Formation: [How groups are formed]

5. Sequence of Steps and Time Allocation

  • Name of Step 1 (X minutes). [Describe what happens in third person.
    • Format participant-focused language (directions, questions) as bullet points. Online instructions in square brackets and light gray shading.
    • The name of the step is in title case. Capitalize most words after hyphens, e.g. “Plan Follow-Up.”
    • Format name of step as noun or directive, e.g. “List Items” (not “Listing Items”).
    • Do not number steps.
    • Capitalize steps when referring to them in other sections.
    • The first step is always Intro (1 min). Share the structuring invitation. Display supporting materials where everyone can see them.]

WHY? PURPOSES

  • [Primary reasons for using this Liberating Structure. Directives in second person. [E.g.: Engage every individual in searching for responses to a challenge]

TIPS AND TRAPS

[Useful advice for ensuring the best possible outcomes including attention to online.] 

Tips:

  • [Statements in third person. Complete sentences ending with a period].

Traps:

  • [Identify what the trap is. [Statements in third person. Complete sentences ending with a period.]

RIFFS AND VARIATIONS

[Alternatives or embellishments for you to try and ideas for designing others. Options for complementary LS and frequently used strings. ]

  • [Statements in third person. Complete sentences ending with a period.]

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

[A few ideas and real world use cases to inspire you to find opportunities that exist in your context.]

  • [Complete sentences with a period.]
  • [Standalone bullet points. Have to be differentiated from purposes. (If an example doesn’t fit here, move it to purposes.)]

ATTRIBUTION

[Our most immediate sources of inspiration or invention. There are many additional rhizomatic connections to the deep and rich traditions in facilitation, organizing, complexity theory and organizational development.]

  • Name(s) or one key source

COLLATERAL MATERIALS

[Useful presentation materials and templates plus illustrations of Liberating Structures in action. They can be projected or used as handouts F2F and used as slides or whiteboard templates online. For LS with multiple dimensions and phases, we recommend participants draw the image by hand.]

  • [Images or instructions that are used in running the structure with captions.]
  • [Templates to capture ideas and actions generated by participants (with space for sticky notes.)]

Example of a Newly Formatted LS

Image of a droplet into water, the icon for Spiral Journal.

Spiral Journal

Calmly Prepare and Sharpen Observations for the Work Ahead

If there were a little more silence if we all kept quiet…
maybe we could understand something. Federico Fellini

18-20 min

WHAT IT MAKES POSSIBLE

In Spiral Journal, participants draw a spiral and respond to four open-ended prompts to focus their thoughts, and enact the LS principle Practice Self Discovery Within a Group. This structure helps us reflect calmly on challenges or opportunities, unleashing our most creative ideas. When shared, these responses reveal patterns and potential new directions for our work. This approach also creates a comfortable space for quieter people to contribute to planning next steps.

TAKING IT ONLINE

Spiral Journal works well as a way to calmly start an online meeting. It helps people transition from their previous activities, supports both individual and group reflection, and reintegrates physical activity into online interaction. 

FIVE STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS—MIN SPECS

1. Structuring Invitation

  • Before we jump into talking about our topic, let’s take a few minutes to collect our thoughts. We are going to do a quiet activity to prepare for the work ahead. By digging deeper into our imaginations, we will uncover a range of ideas and options.

2. How Space Is Arranged and Materials Needed

  • Room Setup: Space for participants to form pairs and trios [breakouts of 2-3]
  • Supplies: Paper and a pen or pencil for each participant
  • Display: Supporting materials to reinforce invitation, prompts, and steps

3. How Participation Is Distributed

  • Roles: Host, participants [tech host]
  • Inclusion: Everyone is invited and has an equal opportunity to contribute.

4. How Groups Are Configured

  • Configuration: Alone, pairs or trios, whole group
  • No minimum group size
  • Formation: Participants choose their own groups. [Randomly assign participants to breakout groups.]

 5. Sequence of Steps and Time Allocation

  • Intro (1 min). Share the structuring invitation. Hand out paper. [Display instructions where everyone can see them and ask everyone to find a piece of paper.]
  • Spiral Setup (1-2 min). Instruct participants to take a sheet of paper and demonstrate the process:
    • Fold it in half twice to create four equal quadrants.
    • Draw a small dot at the center of the page where the folds intersect. 
    • Starting from the center dot, slowly draw a spiral outwards. Keep the lines very close together.
  • Generate Ideas (8 min). Assign a prompt for each quadrant. For example:
    • Upper left: My absurd, impractical ideas are…
    • Upper right: My bold yet actionable ideas are…
    • Lower left: My common sense ideas are…
    • Lower right: My low- or no-cost ideas that can be acted on immediately are…

Participants take 2 minutes per quadrant to write their responses.

  • Review and Select Ideas (2 min). Invite participants to read through their responses and circle one or two ideas that stand out or surprise them.
  1. Group Sharing: Pair or Trio Discussion (3 min). Participants form pairs or trios [breakouts of 2 or 3] and share the ideas they circled with each other, sharing why those ideas stood out for them.
  2. Group Sharing: Collective Insights (3 min). Everyone returns to plenary. Invite a few participants to share any key insights, observations, or common themes that everyone should hear [in Chatterfall]. Record these insights where everyone can see them.

WHY? PURPOSES

  • A slow and deliberate activity can improve the depth and quality of responses.
  • A wider range of options can arise from inviting different types of ideas.
  • Freewriting without judgment can reveal unexpected associations.
  • With time to reflect, each participant can access a huge store of memories and assemble them in novel combinations.

TIPS AND TRAPS

Tips:

  • All spirals are perfect, whether neat or wobbly. The action of drawing is the important part. 
  • Explain afterwards that there is no other purpose to the spiral other than to focus our attention and be present while drawing.
  • Encourage everyone to write down all their ideas without filtering or critiquing them. Then they can choose what they want to share (and nothing more). 

Traps:

  • Interruptions can break people’s concentration, which is essential for Spiral Journaling. Act like a librarian! Do everything you can to avoid interruptions while participants are drawing and writing. 

RIFFS AND VARIATIONS

  • You can adapt the four prompts for different situations. For example, a group making a transition or working through a loss could respond to these prompts:
    •  Yes, it is true that…
    •  It is hard because…
    •  I will always remember, I will never forget…
    •  Now, it may be possible for me to…
  • Use Spiral Journal at the beginning of a meeting or workshop and link the sequence of prompts directly to the purpose of the session. See examples linked to clarifying context and expanding options shown in Collateral Materials. 
  • To close in plenary, invite participants to consider how the response adds to a previous activity or informs the next. Ask, “Based on these responses, what seems possible now?” 
  • Play gentle background music while people draw their spirals.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

  • Use Spiral Journaling to start a gathering where there will be diverse views and opinions. The spiral centers attention, then allows people to see where there are common or divergent perceptions of a challenge or situation.
  • Help a group slow down and generate fresh ideas or reflect more deeply on a challenge.

ATTRIBUTION

Developed by Fisher Qua and Anna Jackson with inspiration from Lynda Barry (cartoonist)

COLLATERAL MATERIAL

Image

Instructions to demonstrate preparing a page for Spiral Journaling.

Image

A sample page layout for Spiral Journal.  The four open sentences are designed to expand the depth and breadth of options to be considered.  

Rewilding Strategic Knotworking with Barry Overeem

A guest post by Philip Clark

Picture of Barry Overeem wearing glasses, blue shirt and smiling broadly.

Introduction: I am happy to share the blog space with guest author Philip Clark for the fourth in the series of his reflecting on the learnings of our little CoP on strategy knotworking. You can read his bio at the end of the post! 

“Where passion meets precision, mastery is born.” – Bruce Lee

Within the larger Liberating Structures network there is a community of practice devoted to the development and understanding of Strategy Knotworking (SK), a set of six questions, often answered using various Liberating Structures (LS). SK lends itself to complex contexts and where there is a desire to engage everyone in planning. 

This is the fourth installment (here is the first, here is the second, here is the third) of takeaways from the various conversations that we have been fortunate to have with seasoned practitioners on Strategic Knotworking (SK). Today, the guest is Barry Overeem. 

Barry is one of the two founders of TheLiberators. The other is Christiaan Verwijs. To say they’ve been instrumental in the diffusion of LS across Europe would be an understatement. Not only are they consummate facilitators, but they’ve also produced one of the most extensive bodies of literature on Liberating Structures in Europe, built an impressive community around their work and LS, and, last but not least, created one of the sleekest, coolest pop-style brand identities. Nancy calls them “real super spreaders” and “generous,” while Keith praises Barry’s “liberating superpowers.”

Their output is prolific (articles, podcasts, visual artifacts, surveys, workshops, tools, meet-ups, posters, academic research) and what is truly remarkable about this flurry of activities is that most of it is absolutely FREE for anyone who cares to look, think and be curious about LS in general and its interaction with Scrum in particular. 

Barry discovered LS in 2018 starting a lifelong affair. From then on he says, “I used Liberating Structures for my training, workshops, and meetups. More importantly, I also use it for regular day-to-day conversations and meetings.” For Barry, the ultimate value of LS is to make things actionable. They are fast, easy to use, and provide the right balance between structure and creativity.

Barry’s interview offers a wealth of insights. You can listen to the recording here : https://fathom.video/share/5Q6Fb58cc5djdrzkr_-vdPJNdqCKeKKG

Here are 3 takeaways:

  • Strategic execution will be improved if you think of strategy as a narrative
  • SK is amenable to many usages
  • SK welcomes process innovation and new tools

Strategic execution will be improved if you think of strategy as a narrative 

Execution is the Achilles’ heel of strategic knowledge. The critical question is: how do we ensure insights from workshops translate into lasting, sticky outcomes?”

The traditional solution is action plans. But the truth is, they rarely work as intended. When treated as the ultimate path to implementation, they often prove unsustainable, leading to defunding, abandonment, or waste. Is there a better alternative? More precisely, a more sustainable, antifragile, and “sticky” way to ensure that the insights and foresights gained in SK actually take hold?

Barry believes that the true power of SK doesn’t lie merely in drawing up a plan—or in sense-making terms, sensing, ordering, and acting—but in crafting a compelling narrative. Even the most streamlined action plan cannot, on its own, guarantee the successful delivery of strategy. A shared storyline that people can own and engage with, however, can.

Barry emphasizes that when a narrative is clear, inspiring, and meaningful, people are far more likely to act on its outcomes. To help teams develop their strategic narrative, he employs visual tools like posters and whiteboards and encourages them to continually revisit key questions, ensuring the narrative evolves and remains relevant.

SK is amenable to many usages 

SK is, first and foremost, a strategic tool—a framework designed for crafting strategy. However, the Liberators uncovered another powerful application: using it as a platform to teach and train people in LS.

Once upon a time, TheLiberators were well known throughout the LS community for their LS Immersion Workshop (Barry recently announced that he’ll no longer be offering this workshop to the public), where large groups of participants were invited to discover, explore, and experiment with roughly 20 LS from the original repertoire. The 2-day workshop was an immediate hit drawing large crowds and sparking numerous vocations. Yet, this approach left a significant portion of LS unexplored.

It soon became clear that a sequel was needed for participants to fully integrate LS into their toolbox. In response, The Liberators introduced a second, more advanced—though Barry dislikes the term—workshop, designed to deepen participants’ fluency by exploring and testing more complex LS, such as Panarchy, What I Need From You (WINFY), and Drawing Together. And the perfect vehicle for this next step? SK—providing a clear framework to guide and elevate the entire journey.

In complexity, the only certainty is that every action brings unintended consequences. Such was the case when Barry found himself facilitating an “advanced” workshop for the Dutch Ministry of Defence, intended to build on their existing knowledge and skills in LS. However, an hour into the session, the participants found the framework so powerful and compelling that they decided to test it as a strategic tool on their own organization—completely shifting focus from the original purpose. And so, SK, which had evolved from a strategy tool into a support for training, came full circle—once again being used to shape strategy.

SK welcomes process innovation and new tools   

SK follows a certain sequence, and Barry has experimented with different combinations, but he typically ends up with Purpose, Baseline, Context, Challenges, Ambition, and finally Action and Evaluation. To him, this progression seems both logical and helpful in keeping groups focused on the realities of their current situation. 

This reason is straightforward: it helps participants enter the strategic process—often daunting—through something familiar. Another way to say this, Barry suggests, is to look at SK through the lens of W3 (What? So what? Now what?). From this perspective, Baseline represents the ‘what’—the concrete reality of one’s work. From there, participants explore the ‘so what’ by assessing context and challenges, leading to the ‘now what’ as ambitions and actions take shape.

But the true shift brought by The Liberators is cognitive.

Their mission statement (“to unleash teams all over the world from outdated, old-fashioned, and ineffective ways of working through an evidence-based approach.”) focuses on an “evidence-based approach”, moving away from subjective assumptions towards data-driven analysis. This approach is built on Christiaan’s research (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3571849 )at Aalborg University with Daniel Russo, which pinpoints the key factors that affect team performance. The result is Columinity—a tool that gives teams a clear picture of their strengths and weaknesses and how to address them. Teams can compare their results either with other teams in their organization (if multiple teams are involved) or against a broader benchmark from the entire study. (A good place to start learning about Columinity is here: https://medium.com/the-liberators/study-the-underlying-research-of-columinity-and-set-a-solid-foundation-to-get-started-d44dc168fce4 )

Readers of earlier blogs may recall that Lynda suggested examining context through the lens of comparative advantages rather than external triggers for change. Both Lynda’s and Barry’s value proposition could be summed up as follows: grounding your inquiry in existing capabilities clarifies options and prioritizes execution.

There is much to explore about Columinity and its integration with SK, particularly its impact on the remaining steps of the strategic process. But that’s a discussion for another time.

Conclusion

Reflecting on SK as a process, two key insights from TheLiberators stand out: its interpretation as a narrative and its potential for adaptability

The first lesson is to view SK not only as a process, but as a narrative. This was, and to a large extent still is, new to me. However, I’ve come to realize that thinking of strategy this way is incredibly useful—not only to make sense of our reality (as humans, we are natural storytellers) but also to enhance the flexibility of strategy. Narratives give skin to the bones of process, or, to put it differently, they add feeling and emotion to logic.

The second lesson is how SK is exceptionally adaptable. We also saw this inclination toward accommodation with Lynda and Michele. Lynda not only redefined the question of context but also integrated frameworks and tools from other approaches to strengthen execution. Michele introduced an alternative way of exploring context through the history of organizations. As for Barry, not only did he tweak the sequence of SK’s steps to secure stronger participant buy-in, but he also introduced a completely new tool —reshaping the very definition of Baseline.

Finally, looking at the way TheLiberators work, I’m struck by how deeply aligned they are with the spirit of LS. As far as I know, the scope and depth of their work with LS is unmatched in Europe— and freely available to anyone interested. It’s a treasure trove of insights, ready to be explored and learned from. I encourage everyone to take advantage of it.

Strategy isn’t within everyone’s reach—it’s often reserved for a select few somewhere between heaven and earth. But SK’s modularity makes it accessible at any level of your organization. A sense of strategy—call it a direction of travel if you prefer—is valuable no matter who you are or what you do. And SK puts it within everyone’s grasp. You don’t have to follow the whole process—use what you need, when you need it. In doing so, you’ll not only gain a deeper understanding of your activities but also develop the skills to facilitate many LS.

Our Guest Author 

Philip Clark:.  After running his company -a digital design firm – for 10 years, and the innovation department of Orange Business Services, Philip now teaches innovation and change  at the university of Applied Science in Lausanne Switzerland. He also facilitates organizational transformation with a special emphasis on complexity designed tools and methods (Liberating Structures, Cynefin, Estuarine, Sensemaker…) promoting collective intelligence and distributed leadership. Contact Philip to collaborate and share ideas (https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-evans-clark/)

Rewilding Strategic Knotworking with Lynda Frost

A guest post by my friend and colleague, Philip Clark (bios at end of post for Philip and Lynda!)

Image of Lynda Frost

“Here is a test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.” Richard Bach 

Within the larger Liberating Structures network there is a community of practice devoted to the development and understanding of Strategy Knotworking (SK), a set of six questions, often explored using various Liberating Structures (LS). SK lends itself to complex contexts and where there is a desire to engage everyone in planning. 

This is the third installment (here is the first, here is the second) of takeaways from the various conversations that we have been fortunate to have with seasoned practitioners on Strategic Knotworking (SK). The entry focuses on Lynda Frost.

One of Lynda’s distinctive professional marks is her vast competence and experience in both strategic planning and facilitating Liberating Structures (LS). In fact, when it comes to LS, she undoubtedly falls in Everett Roger’s “early adopter” category. Her use of LS is not only fluent, it can be pervasive.

So it is worth paying attention when she remarks that SK is not primordially a strategic planning tool. People familiar with prior blogs may remember that the issue of execution, or operational savvy or action planning were matters of concern for other practitioners as well. For Lynda, SK essentially serves to explore, share and socialize important, critical strategic content but is not geared to finalizing a written strategic plan. Other tools do it better. To use her own words, SK is a great way “to navigate the strategic process.” 

Different questions different insights, different LS different tones

New tools bring new questions and new outlooks. For instance, David La Piana – Lynda’s inspiration for strategic planning for her nonprofit clients – talks about Comparative Advantages [His exact expression is “competitive advantage” but Lynda prefers “comparative advantage”] i.e., the unique skills that an organization possesses which Lynda uses to articulate Context. 

This switch is not neutral since the notion of Comparative Advantage has deep strategic roots ever since Michael Porter’s article in 1979; more importantly it shifts the attention from external influences by linking them to internal capacities.

Lynda’s interview offers a wealth of insights. Here are 3 takeaways: 

  1. The importance of preparation (sponsorship, leadership, planning team, and the use of LS) 
  2. The centrality of Purpose and its extension to mission and values
  3. Insight about SK: a) with regard to strategy and strategy planning, and b) about the choice of LS. 

Process 

Like most significant consulting interventions, obtaining approval for a participatory strategic workshop usually involves a series of critical steps. Here are some elements worth considering. 

Step 1 with the executive team: the job consists in understanding the group dynamics, setting clear goals, checking for commitment, and evaluating the compatibility of the organization’s culture with the LS mindset among other things. 

One of the most important factor is group dynamics, that is the level of cooperation between people.  If an organization is marred with conflict, tension, infighting, any approach to collective action should start with some form of reconciliation. In this context, Appreciative Interviews because it describes situations at their best can be an effective structure to build (or repair frazzled) relationships while gaining substantive insights to inform the planning process. Group’s dynamics will also impact how groups will be formed: will they be a mix people and functions, or will they follow the organization’s chart?

Step 2 the Planning team: It’s function is to lay out the retreat’s purpose, structure, goals and participation. At this stage, it is key to have diverse perspectives within the group.

This is when Lynda will introduce LS both as a canvas (or metastructure) and/or as a set of tools. As it is, Purpose to Practice can provide the overall blueprint whereas individual LS will be used to address specific instances such as scoping, setting rules, principles, participation, etc. As a result, the planning team will be somewhat familiar with LS before the start of the strategy meetings.

Lynda will also walk the Planning team through more complex structures that she will use during the strategy sessions; often these include her two favorite LS : Ecocycle Planning and Critical Uncertainties (CU).

The Planning team should meet 2 to 3 times before a 1-2 day workshop to ensure thorough preparation. 

Step 3 facilitating the retreat: the intensive phase of the work is often an in-person or virtual retreat between a half day and 1.5 days over a weekend, with smaller online co-planning meetings leading up to the retreat and following up as a debrief and accountability tool.

It matters what matter matters 

The second characteristic of Lynda’s practice I chose to share with you concerns Purpose writ large. Purpose, you’ll recall, is step 1 in SK. It is also the 10th principle of LS “Never start without a clear Purpose” which, experience shows, especially resonates with nonprofit organizations. 

Lynda will spend a fair amount of time making sure a good purpose statement or mission statement will resonate with the participants. Like she says : “ I want them to really feel like they’re looking at that mission, they’re reading it and they’re thinking about it before we get into anything else.” 

To insure adhesion, she will avoid “mission or purpose language” preferring a more oblique approach. For example, she may start with something like “what is the fundamental value of your organization?” or “how did you first get involved with the organization?” or even, in cases where there are a number of new people in the room, with a prompt on their engagement to insure their inclusion and boost their confidence. 

If the group is small, she will use Impromptu Networking to gather stories, perspectives, ideas. If the group is larger, she will opt for 1-2-4-all. If it is online, she will favor Chatterfall . 

In a longer version, she will favor 9 word purpose statements over 9Whys. Purpose, mission or vision are so central for Lynda that her final report will rate each strategic initiative based on its alignment with the mission as well as other key criteria identified by the group [For example, a strategic initiative might be rated based on 4 criteria: the consistency with the mission, the organization’s competitive advantages, the organization’s capacity to implement, and the financial viability of the initiative]. 

Jamming with SK

Exploring new prompts

I said it several times before, one of the greatest feature of SK is its malleability. With Michelle, we saw that when an organization is fraught with tensions, history could provide a good basis for reconciliation. Context then is not just “What is happening around us that demands a fresh approach?” It can be “where do we come from and what has been lost that could be rekindled”. With Lynda, as we have seen, Context can become “what is/are our comparative advantage(s)?” In other words, “what is it that we do or have or built that is unique and attractive to our clients or users or beneficiaries?”

Mixing asynchronous and synchronous activities

Because time is precious and thinking slow, Lynda doesn’t hesitate to mix asynchronous work with synchronous activities. This is the case with the comparative advantage. Participants are asked to look at adjacent organisations prior to the workshop to get a sense of what they do differently. Once in the workshop with the content ready at hand, they can quickly discuss what makes them unique (smoother communications, quicker decision making, better delivery, etc.…) and converge using 1-2-4-all. 

Favorite structures

Lynda’s favorite LS for strategy work are Ecocycle Planning and Critical Uncertainties (CU)

As a rule of thumb, she wants to get Ecocycle up and running as soon as possible in the workshop, usually at the end of the morning. Ecocycle allows people to map their activities whether they are just talked about, getting traction, fully mature and running out of steam. It is all about doing. It can also level-set the group, informing newer members and giving long-term participants a place to gather historical and current initiatives.

CU will come in to get a broader view, and guide strategic planning, not just built resilience. One remembers that CU consists in two perpendicular axis. The first one is about uncertainty: what is most uncertain and what is less in your situation. The second is about criticality: again what is most critical and what is less. 

When working with nonprofit organisations, Lynda suggests money for the uncertain axis. In other words, will money be available or not. And for the critical axis, the policies in place; are they enabling or are they limiting. This brings a strategic layer to Ecocycle and allows for the selection of activities going forward according to the scenarii discussed in CU.

Keep it simple keep it moving

If I were to summarize Lynda’s approach to Strategy, the words that come to my mind  are “keep it simple, keep it moving”.

Simplicity starts with using the right kind of language. It then translates into the use of simple LS such Impromptu Networking, 1-2-4-all, Conversation Café. For example, 1-2-4-all can be used to determine the comparative advantages, the values of an organisation or even purpose, and/or its ambitions. You can also simplify the process by fully taking stock of what a given LS can give. For example, ambitions can also be derived from Ecocycle. And Conversation Café turns out to be very effective at identifying existing and emerging priorities.  

Now of course Lynda’s repertoire is much larger than this and she will, given the right opportunity, include User Experience Fishbowl  to bring lived experience into the process, and 25/10 and Shift and Share to decide on which initiative to pursue. More playful structures in development can serve other purposes. A favorite one is Drawing Monsters to address concerns or fears about changes associated with a new strategic plan.

The simplicity of these structures also allows for a nice rhythm to set in. But it seems to me that the real momentum is due to a focus on concrete actions from the get go. First, there is what can be called a standard operating model applicable to almost all small and medium nonprofit. Then there is the marriage of specific planning tools – themselves streamlined – with LS. For example, selecting priorities is made easier by the customized “strategy screen” measuring each potential initiative on a scale of 1 to 5  around key criteria such as alignment with purpose, enhancement of comparative advantage, feasibility, and financial viability.

The switch from Context to Comparative Advantage also emphasizes concreteness by zooming on known strengths and/or developing news ones. The way Critical Uncertainties is designed with its 2 distinct phases and its orientation towards operations definitely also leans toward action.

In fact, Lynda’s clients benefit from both world: the world of planning oriented towards actions and the world of creativity and collective intelligence brought by LS.

Our Guest and Guest Author

Lynda Frost, J.D., Ph.D. Lynda has lived and worked on four continents, but calls Austin TX home since 2003. She’s committed to helping foundations, nonprofits and other agencies maximize their impact in improving health, human services, education and criminal justice outcomes for the most vulnerable communities. She’s passionate about fair and effective process, with expertise in facilitating groups to maximize the engagement of each participant to apply what we know to make positive change on the ground. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lyndaefrost/ )

Philip Clark: After running his company -a digital design firm – for 10 years, and the innovation department of Orange Business Services, Philip now teaches innovation and change  at the university of Applied Science in Lausanne Switzerland. He also facilitates organizational transformation with a special emphasis on complexity designed tools and methods (Liberating Structures, Cynefin, Estuarine, Sensemaker…) promoting collective intelligence and distributed leadership. Contact Philip to collaborate and share ideas (https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-evans-clark/)  

Rewilding Strategic Knotworking with Fisher Qua

A guest post by Philip Clark
(Nancy’s Note: Philip and I are members of this little community of practice focusing on the use of Liberating Structures in strategic planning and work. He has been generously taking the lead of crafting and building on these summaries of our learning sessions. THANKS, PHILIP!)

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely,…”

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Image by Paula Fagerberg of the six knotworking questions
Image by Paula Fagerberg of Visual Acuity

Within the larger Liberating Structures network there is a community of practice devoted to the development and understanding of Strategy Knotworking (SK), a set of six questions, often answered using various Liberating Structures (LS). SK lends itself to complex contexts and where there is a desire to engage everyone in planning. 

This is the second installment (here is the first) of takeaways from the various conversations that we have been fortunate to have with seasoned practitioners on Strategic Knotworking (SK). Today, the celebrity is Fisher Qua.

Fisher started the session by recalling the beginnings of SK, reminding us that somehow Liberating Structures do not come out of hat or fully dressed like Athena from Jupiter’s head. 

Image

It started, he reminisced, with the incorporation of Core Prime questions as part of Celebrity Interview Riffs and Variation prompts options. Questions like : what is happening around us that demands creative adaptation? Given our purpose, what seems possible now? As for the first visual representation, it stemmed from the graphic gameplan of David Sibbet of the Grove and evolved into a mash-up of several approaches to strategy that Keith called Strategy Safari. (For the deeply process geeks, see here and here.)

Image

Something changed for Nancy and others when she started looking at the process as a narrative weaving together the 6 questions to create a storyline that everybody could own and operate. Somewhere along the way, it got its name. Nancy wrote several blogs about it. Keith and Johannes wrote a long article, and then our community of practice got together. 

Nancy added the Ecocycle to the arrow which provided a structure to record things (questions, answers, observations, etc). At first, the idea was not to define a deliberate sequence but to use a bunch of LS to collect the responses so that people could see them.

Like most beginners I reckon, I first believed that SK was a somewhat linear process evolving from Purpose to Action and Evaluation in a series of well defined and logical steps. Listening to Fisher, Michelle, Lynda, and Barry (our other guest practitioners) I am amazed to see how malleable the structure is. The structure itself  invites a large array of questions and prompts (see Michelle’s account), and can utilize many combinations and a variety of tools. It is malleable in how it can roll out over time, from 2-3 hours to days, either in a single session or spread over time. In the case discussed by Fisher (that of a business school) the process lasted 9 months with a medley of formats and both synchronous and asynchronous work. 

Fisher’s story of a business school 

The project explored all 6 questions and included quite a large design or core team (about 20 people) bringing together concerned stakeholders: undergraduate and graduate students, business school administrative staff, a couple local business owners, a couple of alumni, and associate, adjunct and full-time faculty fulfilling the need for requisite diversity and participation and, at the same time, embodying the first principle of LS “include and unleash everyone”. 

The delivery was intricate. 

The first part aimed at gathering people’s view on the various components of the SK process (Purpose, Context, etc) To do this, the Core team was invited to self-organize into pairs or trios and were tasked to interview at least 10 people in each of the areas of SK. For example, regarding purpose, they were asked to interview 10 people using 9-Whys. The same approach was applied for Context, Challenge, etc…

A half day online workshops were planned every two weeks to harvest and make sense of the material gathered during the week. 

The second part of the project consisted of 2-day in-person sessions with rotating groups spending 3 hours at a time in structured interactions. For example, on day one, members of the business community and undergrad students came together and explored Context. In another session full-time and adjunct faculty had a chance to work on Purpose. There were other sessions where everybody came together simultaneously in the room and worked through Ecocycle. This took 2 x 3 hour half day sessions.. 

An interesting development happened around Purpose. 

It was this writer’s bias that the purpose of an organization would be one and shared by all, but in the case of the business school different stakeholders had different purposes; for example between students and faculty, but also between faculty and the representatives of the business community. One can easily imagine a desire for employability versus an interest in academic inquiry leading to different purposes. At any rate, they ended up with multiple propositions which, after some consideration, were shown to express different positions at different scales within different contexts creating a sort of stepping stone towards Panarchy. 

The same thing happened when Ecocycle was used to map the Baseline. The final result was four Ecocycles. One was Business School relationships, another Departments program, a third around different practices, a fourth related to curricular elements 

Considerations  

  • SK can not only address the main elements of strategy (purpose, context, etc…), it can do it on several scales which, as far as I know, is uncommon and much-neglected in more traditional frameworks. 
  • Ecocycle can map different things such as activities, tasks, actions etc. It can be paired with Panarchy to look at the effect of scale on a given topic and look at progression/development over time, but it can also be used to zoom in on a single item within an specific Ecocycle if it appears too large or too obscure or too complex. 

Execution is the Achilles heel

When the process ended at the business school, committees were created to carry on the actions identified in the sixth step of the SK process. But, as it were, things got “lost in translation” since nobody was willing to take operational responsibility. We had seen something similar in one of the cases that Michelle described, reminding one that if decision makers are often responsible for crafting strategy they are rarely involved or even interested in execution. This is all the more wicked that, at the outset of strategic work, the general expectation of teams and management often revolves around planning with little or no patience for introspection, connections, relations, or inquiry. 

Given this state of affair Fisher muses about the possibility to add a macrostructure that would weave execution into SK. He calls it “Strategy Knotworking and Operational Knitting.” It consists of replicating the patterns used in the strategy design phase – core team, regular cadence of meetings, structured interactions – in the implementation phase. In his words, “to make sure there is an operational “function” with the organization that can pick-up knotworking where it leaves off.” 

Practitioners like Lynda Frost use non LS strategy planning tool (in her case David La Piana’s Strategic Planning template) and a couple of follow-up meetings with the management team to ensure that actions are undertaken and monitored. And then, from  a purely LS process, we have Henri’s meeting macrostructures. AsI would be very interested to learn about other ways to provide/integrate a scaffold regarding execution within or without the realm of LS. 

Relational coordination 

There is a sense among some practitioners that SK does not really make the grade as a strategic tool or process because it lacks mechanisms for implementation and allocation of resources. Said another way, SK may be good at strategy-thinking not at strategy-doing. But is this true? 

It is indisputable that the tactical side of strategy is its ultimate validation. Without actions and measured outcomes, strategy remains a pie in the sky. But there is another side to strategy which Fisher calls relational coordination inspired by the Relational Coordination Research Collaborative at Brandeis University that few organizations pay real attention to and yet, as we shall see later, directly impacts performance.

In Fisher’s words relational coordination is “the practice of tuning into context, revisiting purpose in a way that multiple people are invited to respond, dramatically increasing people’s sense of shared awareness about themselves as a system.” “As a system…”  in other words as a complex network of agents, activities and architectures that are in fact the substrates of production and creativity. 

By increasing the density and the quality of relationships, SK also develops better adaptability and responsiveness. The strategic shift here is toward resilience as a driver of delivery. Borrowing the syntax from the Agile Manifesto, we could say “discovery and tuning into where we have a higher capacity to respond to the world around us as it changes” over process and planning. 

Secondly, if SK does not directly address how decisions are made or how resources are allocated, that does mean that we are left bereft of solutions. There are several ways to deal with this. Within the LS tool box one could, at the end of the process, add some form of project management using Purpose to Practice (P2P) or, if looking for engagement and commitment, something around What I Need From You (WINFY). 

So what makes SK so incredibly useful?

For Fisher the value of SK is not so much the answers given at any one moment of time  to the 6 questions as it is to help us ““understand the relationship of one’s work to other people’s work or one’s work to the constituencies we are working for” to quote Nancy.

Looking at SK this way induced Fisher to become less formal and to use the 6 questions more like a “set of improvisational lenses” than steps in a process. Musing on the last 9 months, he acknowledges that notwithstanding intense preparation, things never followed the intended path with the business school. One reason is that perception varies within the ranks of an organization, and so you work out a detailed agenda with one constituency only to find out that it does not apply to another.  

In this context, the robustness of the process is provided by the quality of the conversations, hence the importance of questions. What is really useful becomes a good library of prompts from which one can retrieve the right trigger at any moment anywhere in the process. Focusing on prompts rather than steps improves the relational capabilities of the group and helps circumvent resistances. 

For example “(If) this group isn’t going to tolerate talking about purpose”, Fisher says, (…) here’s two ways of inviting them to consider purpose without calling it purpose. Right? so that becomes a Conversation Cafe topic. Here’s a group arguing about their shared portfolio, but they don’t have a language of portfolios. And so we’re going to do an Ecocycle to baseline the portfolio of investments.(…) and to conclude “it just becomes a much less structured practice and much more like fluid.” 

Relational coordination is the second pillar of strategy 

I mentioned Fisher’s disappointment with the lack of execution that followed the 9-month work he did with the business school. And indeed, this echoes the experience of many practitioners leading to doubt SK as a full-fledged strategic tool. While we can bemoan this state of affair, things are no better with a traditional strategic plan. The difference is that their actions are undertaken – usually with great ponderousness and miscommunication –  only to be found inappropriate down the line.  

Listening to Fisher I came to the conclusion that there is another side to strategy than setting goals and listing actions. As it happens this is not only my opinion. Keith referred to Jody Hoffer Gittell’s research on what she also calls relational coordination and to her conclusions that indeed it impacts performance (operations). Two remarks follow from this. One is the fact that, to quote Keith, “there are not many mechanisms in lots of organizations where that stuff is built into the fabric.” Second, this aspect of strategy cannot be top-down which may explain its absence in most companies. The reason it cannot be a top down affair is that relational coordination does not fit hierarchical models, it feeds on networks. 

Of course Jody Hoffer Gittell’s attributes of relational coordination are not identical to the 6 questions of SK. Hers are: mutual respect, shared goals, shared knowledge, as well as frequent, timely and accurate communication but it is hard not to see that SK definitely addresses all of them in one form or another.