Here is a summary of the 33 Liberating Structures, you are encouraged to open the link to fully understand how to set it up right and get the real benefit.
List of Structures
- 1-2-4-All. Engage Everyone Simultaneously in Generating Questions, Ideas, and Suggestions (12 min.)
- What is made possible?
- Generate better ideas and more of them faster than ever before.
- Tap the know-how and imagination that is distributed widely in places not known in advance. Open, the generative conversation unfolds. Ideas and solutions are sifted in a rapid fashion.
- Structuring Invitation.
- Ask a question in response to the presentation of an issue, or about a problem to resolve or a proposal put forward (e.g., What opportunities do YOU see for making progress on this challenge? How would you handle this situation? What ideas or actions do you recommend?)
- Impromptu Networking. Rapidly Share Challenges and Expectations, Build New Connections (20 min.)
- What is made possible?
- Tap a deep well of curiosity and talent by helping a group focus attention on problems they want to solve.
- A productive pattern of engagement is established if used at the beginning of a working session.
- Structuring Invitation.
- Ask, “What big challenge do you bring to this gathering? What do you hope to get from and give this group or community?”
- Nine Whys. Make the Purpose of Your Work Together Clear (20 min.)
- What is made possible?
- Clarify for individuals and a group what is essentially in their work.
- Reveal when a compelling purpose is missing.
- Avoid moving forward without clarity.
- Discover an unambiguous shared purpose.
- Structuring Invitation.
- Ask, “What do you do when working on ______ (the subject matter or challenge at hand)? Please make a short list of activities.” Then ask, “Why is that important to you?” Keep asking, “Why? Why? Why?” up to nine times or until participants can go no deeper because they have reached the fundamental purpose of this work.
- Wicked Questions. Articulate the Paradoxical Challenges That a Group Must Confront to Succeed (25 min.)
- What is made possible?
- Diminishing "yes, but…" and "either-or" thinking.
- Revealing entangled challenges and possibilities that are not intuitively obvious.
- Expose safely the tension.
- Structuring Invitation.
- Ask, “What opposing-yet-complementary strategies do we need to pursue simultaneously in order to be successful?”
- Appreciative Interviews (AI). Discovering and Building on the Root Causes of Success (1 hr.)
- What is made possible?
- Generate the list of conditions that are essential for its success.
- Search for what works now and by uncovering the root causes that make success possible.
- Stories from the field offer social proof of local solutions, promising prototypes, and spread innovations while providing data for recognizing success patterns.
- Structuring Invitation.
- Ask, “Please tell a story about a time when you worked on a challenge with others and you are proud of what you accomplished. What is the story and what made the success possible? Pair up preferably with someone you don’t know well.”
- Making Space with TRIZ. Stop Counterproductive Activities and Behaviors to Make Space for Innovation (35 min.)
- What is made possible?
- Helping a group let go of what it knows (but rarely admits) limits its success by inviting creative destruction.
- TRIZ makes it possible to challenge sacred cows safely and encourages heretical thinking. The question “What must we stop doing to make progress on our deepest purpose?” induces seriously fun yet very courageous conversations.
- Since laughter often erupts, issues that are otherwise taboo get a chance to be aired and confronted. With creative destruction come opportunities for renewal as local action and innovation rush in to fill the vacuum. Whoosh!
- Structuring Invitation. In this three-step process, ask:
- “Make a list of all you can do to make sure that you achieve the worst result imaginable with respect to your top strategy or objective.”
- “Go down this list item by item and ask yourselves, ‘Is there anything that we are currently doing that in any way, shape, or form resembles this item?’ Be brutally honest to make a second list of all your counterproductive activities/programs/procedures.”
- “Go through the items on your second list and decide what first steps will help you stop what you know creates undesirable results?”
- 15% Solution. Discover and Focus on What Each Person Has the Freedom and Resources to Do Now (20 min.)
- What is made possible?
- They get individuals and the group to focus on what is within their discretion instead of what they cannot change.
- With a very simple question, you can flip the conversation to what can be done and find solutions to big problems that are often distributed widely in places not known in advance.
- Shifting a few grains of sand may trigger a landslide and change the whole landscape.
- Structuring Invitation.
- In connection with their personal challenge or their group’s challenge, ask, “What is your 15 percent? Where do you have discretion and freedom to act? What can you do without more resources or authority?”
- Troika Consulting. Get Practical and Imaginative Help from Colleagues Immediately (30 min.)
- What is made possible?
- Peer-to-peer coaching helps with discovering everyday solutions, revealing patterns, and refining prototypes.
- Structuring Invitation.
- Invite the group to explore the questions “What is your challenge?” and “What kind of help do you need?”
- What, So What, Now What? W³. Together, Look Back on Progress to Date and Decide What Adjustments Are Needed (45 min.)
- What is made possible?
- Help groups reflect on a shared experience in a way that builds understanding and spurs coordinated action while avoiding unproductive conflict.
- It is possible for every voice to be heard while simultaneously sifting for insights and shaping new directions.
- Progressing in stages makes this practical — from collecting facts about What Happened to make sense of these facts with So What and finally to what actions logically follow with Now What. The shared progression eliminates most of the misunderstandings that otherwise fuel disagreements about what to do.
- Structuring Invitation.
- After a shared experience, ask, “WHAT? What happened? What did you notice, what facts or observations stood out?” Then, after all the salient observations have been collected, ask, “SO WHAT? Why is that important? What patterns or conclusions are emerging? What hypotheses can you make?” Then, after the sense-making is over, ask, “NOW WHAT? What actions make sense?”
- Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD). Discover, Invent, and Unleash Local Solutions to Chronic Problems (25-70 min.)
- What is possible?.
- Discover practices and behaviors that enable some individuals (without access to special resources and facing the same constraints) to find better solutions than their peers to common problems. These are called positive deviant (PD) behaviors and practices.
- Discover by themselves these PD practices.
- Create favorable conditions for stimulating participants’ creativity in spaces where they can feel safe to invent new and more effective practices.
- Structuring Invitation. Invite people to uncover tacit or latent solutions to a shared challenge that are hidden among people in their working group, unit, or community. Ask anybody interested in solving the problem to join a small group and participate in a DAD. In the group, ask seven progressive questions:
- How do you know when problem X is present?
- How do you contribute effectively to solving problem X?
- What prevents you from doing this or taking these actions all the time?
- Do you know anybody who is able to frequently solve problem X and overcome barriers? What behaviors or practices made their success possible?
- Do you have any ideas?
- What needs to be done to make it happen? Any volunteers?
- Who else needs to be involved?
- Shift & Share. Spread Good Ideas and Make Informal Connections with Innovators (90 min.)
- What is possible?.
- Share several innovations or useful programs that may lie hidden within a group, organization, or community.
- Gets rid of long large-group presentations and replaces them with several concise descriptions made simultaneously to multiple small groups.
- A few individuals set up “stations” where they share in ten minutes the essence of their innovations that may be of value to others.
- Innovators learn from repetition, and groups can easily spot opportunities for creative mash-ups of ideas.
- Structuring Invitation.
- Invite participants to visit several innovators who will share something new or innovative they are doing that may be of value to them.
- 25/10 Crowd Sourcing. Generate and Sift a Group’s Most Powerful Actionable Ideas (30 min.)
- What is possible?.
- Help a large crowd generate and sort their bold ideas for action.
- Spread innovations “out and up” as everyone notices the patterns in what emerges.
- A valid way to generate an uncensored set of bold ideas and then tap the wisdom of the whole group to identify the top ten.
- Structuring Invitation.
- Invite participants to think big and bold and discover the most attractive of their ideas together by asking, “If you were ten times bolder, what big idea would you recommend? What first step would you take to get started?”
- Wise Crowds. Tap the Wisdom of the Whole Group in Rapid Cycles (15 min. per person)
- What is possible?.
- Engage a small or large group of people in helping one another.
- You can set up a Wise Crowds consultation with one small group of four or five people or with many small groups simultaneously or, during a larger gathering, with a group as big as one hundred or more people.
- Individuals, referred to as “clients,” can ask for help and get it in a short time from all the other group members.
- Each individual consultation taps the expertise and inventiveness of everyone in the group simultaneously.
- Individuals gain more clarity and increase their capacity for self-correction and self-understanding.
- It develops people’s ability to ask for help.
- Structuring Invitation.
- Ask each participant when his or her turn comes to be the “client” to briefly describe his or her challenge and ask others for help.
- Ask the other participants to act as a group of “consultants” whose task is to help the “client” clarify his or her challenge and to offer advice or recommendations.
- Min Specs. Specify Only the Absolute “Must dos” and “Must not dos” for Achieving a Purpose (35-50 min.)
- What is possible?.
- By specifying only the minimum number of simple rules, the Min Specs that must ABSOLUTELY be respected, you can unleash a group to innovate freely. Enabling constraints: they detail only must dos and must not dos.
- You will eliminate the clutter of nonessential rules, the Max Specs that get in the way of innovation.
- Often two to five Min Specs are sufficient to boost performance by adding more freedom AND more responsibility to the group’s understanding of what it must do to make progress.
- Structuring Invitation.
- In the context of a challenging activity, a new initiative, or a strategic bottleneck, invite the participants to first generate the entire list of all the do’s and don’ts that they should pay attention to in order to achieve a successful outcome. This is the list of maximum specifications (Max Specs).
- After the list of Max Specs has been developed, ask the participants to reduce it to the absolute minimum needed to achieve their purpose. Invite them to sift through the list one item at a time and eliminate every rule that gets a positive answer to the question, “If we broke or ignored this rule, could we still achieve our purpose?”
- Improv Prototyping. Develop Effective Solutions to Chronic Challenges (20 min. per round)
- What is possible?.
- Tapping three levels of knowledge simultaneously: (1) explicit knowledge shared by participants; (2) tacit knowledge discovered through observing each other’s performance; and (3) latent knowledge, i.e., new ideas that emerge and are jointly developed.
- A diverse mix of people is invited to dramatize simple elements that work to solve a problem.
- Innovations represented in the Improv sketches are assembled incrementally from pieces or chunks that can be used separately or together. It is a playful way to get very serious work done!
- Structuring Invitation.
- Invite participants to identify a frustrating chronic challenge in their work, then playfully experiment, invent, and discover better ways to address the challenge by acting out the situation and possible solutions.
- Helping Heuristics. Practice Progressive Methods for Helping Others, Receiving Help and Asking for Help (15 min.)
- What is possible?.
- Gain insight into their own pattern of interaction and habits.
- Experience how they can choose to change how they work with others by using a progression of practical methods.
- Help people identify what is important when entering a new situation.
- Develop deeper insight into their own interaction patterns and make smarter decisions quickly.
- Structuring Invitation.
- Invite participants to view all human interactions as offers that are either accepted or blocked (e.g., Improv artists are trained to accept all offers)
- Ask them to act, react, or observe four patterns of interaction
- Invite them to reflect on their patterns as well as to consider shifting how they ask, offer, and receive help
- Conversation Café. Engage Everyone in Making Sense of Profound Challenges (35-60 min.)
- What is possible?.
- TBD
- Structuring Invitation.
- TBD
- User Experience Fishbowl. Share Know-How Gained from Experience with a Larger Community (35-70 min.)
- What is possible?.
- TBD
- Structuring Invitation.
- TBD
- Heard, Seen, Respected (HSR) Practice Deeper Listening and Empathy with Colleagues (35 min.)
- What is possible?.
- TBD
- Structuring Invitation.
- TBD
- Drawing Together. Reveal Insights and Paths Forward Through Nonverbal Expression (40 min.)
- What is possible?.
- TBD
- Structuring Invitation.
- TBD
- Design StoryBoards – Basic. Define Step-by-Step Elements for Bringing Meetings to Productive Endpoints (25-70 min.)
- What is possible?.
- TBD
- Structuring Invitation.
- TBD
- Celebrity Interview. Reconnect the Experience of Leaders and Experts with People Closest to the Challenge at Hand (35-60 min.)
- What is possible?.
- TBD
- Structuring Invitation.
- TBD
- Social Network Webbing. Map Informal Connections and Decide How to Strengthen the Network to Achieve a Purpose (60 min.)
- What is possible?.
- TBD
- Structuring Invitation.
- TBD
- “What I Need From You” (WINFY). Surface Essential Needs Across Functions and Accept or Reject Requests for Support (55-70 min.)
- What is possible?.
- TBD
- Structuring Invitation.
- TBD
- Open Space Technology. Liberate Inherent Action and Leadership in Groups of Any Size (90 min. and up to 3 days)
- What is possible?.
- TBD
- Structuring Invitation.
- TBD
- Generative Relationships STAR. Reveal Relationship Patterns That Create Surprising Value or Dysfunctions (25 min.)
- What is possible?.
- TBD
- Structuring Invitation.
- TBD
- Agreement-&-Certainty Matrix. Sort Challenges into Simple, Complicated, Complex, and Chaotic Domains (45 min.)
- What is possible?.
- TBD
- Structuring Invitation.
- TBD
- Simple Ethnography. Observe and Record Actual Behaviors of Users in the Field (75 min. to 7 hrs.)
- What is possible?.
- TBD
- Structuring Invitation.
- TBD
- Integrated~Autonomy. Move from Either-or to Robust Both-and Solutions (80 min.)
- What is possible?.
- TBD
- Structuring Invitation.
- TBD
- Critical Uncertainties. Develop Strategies for Operating in a Range of Plausible Yet Unpredictable Futures (100 min.)
- What is possible?.
- TBD
- Structuring Invitation.
- TBD
- Ecocycle Planning. Analyze the Full Portfolio of Activities and Relationships to Identify Obstacles and Opportunities for Progress (95 min.)
- What is possible?.
- TBD
- Structuring Invitation.
- TBD
- Panarchy. Understand How Embedded Systems Interact, Evolve, Spread Innovation and Transform (2 hrs.)
- What is possible?.
- TBD
- Structuring Invitation.
- TBD
- Purpose-To-Practice (P2P). Design the Five Essential Elements for a Resilient and Enduring Initiative (2 hrs.)
- What is possible?.
- TBD
- Structuring Invitation.
- TBD
How to Start
- If you are new to LS, we recommend that you start practicing with the simplest (e.g., 1-2-4-All, Impromptu Networking), starting from the top left and moving to the most intricate at the bottom right (Panarchy, Purpose-To-Practice).
- The more intricate methods use many of the simpler LS as building blocks.
Principles
- Include and Unleash Everyone.
- Practice Deep Respect for People and Local Solutions.
- Build Trust As You Go.
- Learn by Failing Forward.
- Practice Self-Discovery Within a Group.
- Amplify Freedom AND Responsibility.
- Emphasize Possibilities: Believe Before You See.
- Invite Creative Destruction To Enable Innovation.
- Engage In Seriously-Playful Curiosity.
- Never Start Without a Clear Purpose.
