The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures

The goal of Liberating Structures is to increase productivity and innovation by getting everyone fully engaged. This book serves as a guide with detailed descriptions of 33 Liberating Structures, along with tips for getting started using Liberating Structures in your meetings and in your organization, and common traps to avoid. Liberating Structures can be used in a range of settings from boardrooms, classrooms, healthcare, military, and government, as seen by the testimonials included detailing how Liberating Structures have helped their organization. 

Small changes make big differences.

 “Not hammer strokes, but the dance of the water sings the pebbles to perfection” - R. Tagore

Liberating Structures are small changes in people’s routine that can produce big differences in the results obtained by replacing a “conventional microstructure” with a “Liberating Structure”. Examples of microstructures include meeting rooms, offices, presentations, agendas, questions, and discussions. They are the small structures that we routinely do to help us interact or work with people. By making small changes to these structures, we can challenge the myth that engaging people in an organization is difficult.

The notion of Liberating Structures is a contrast to the conventional ways people work together. If you have been a part of a workgroup or organization that has faced the following examples, then you may benefit from incorporating Liberating Structures:

• Frustrating meetings

• Mind-numbing PowerPoint presentations

• Fear and politics getting in the way

• Group process that is chaotic

• More training but no change

• Avoiding difficult conversations

• Great ideas that never get off the ground

• Things everyone knows don’t work but are never changed

The Liberating Structures approach is to include and unleash everyone and to ensure that every individual not only has influence but also the structure to contribute something unique. Often we rely on experts to solve our problems or design our work instead of tapping into the people directly working on it. Alternatively, the Liberating Structures approach seeks to engage and tap into the knowledge and expertise of the team or organizaiton to resolve the issue at hand. Liberating Structures are designed to be accessible to users at any and every level of the organization. 

The book is broken down into four parts. Part one covers the hidden structure of engagement. Part two discusses getting started and beyond, offering guidelines to begin experimenting with Liberating Structures. When experimenting with incorporating Liberating Structures, this section details how to incorporate them into one-on-one meetings, small group interactions, as well as scale them to system-wide change initiatives. Part three shares stories from the field of various organizations, sectors, and professions and their experiences and results using Liberating Structures. Part four provides the field guide to liberating structures, along with tips and pitfalls to avoid. 

Liberating Structures are a great way of making meetings, training, improving processes, and/or decision making more engaging and inclusive for those affected by the work/change/idea/etc. The authors suggest starting with one Liberating Structure and keeping a feedback loop open to hear what went well and what needs improvement. As you get more comfortable using Liberating Structures, you can string various Liberating Structures together to achieve your desired outcomes. For example, the image below shows a string of five Liberating Structures for a leadership retreat.