Thursday Complexity Post - Liberating Structures

Thursday Posts

Apr 8 2010

Description:
Liberating Structures Inspire Trust, Hope and New Solutions

Can the most productive meeting be one that starts without an agenda?
Can one minute of silent reflection change the outcome of a meeting?
Can people in an organization offer contributions that make a real difference?
Can meetings be fun?

With Liberating Structures, answers to all those questions can be an enthusiastic "Yes!"

Henri Lipmanowiczand Keith McCandless tell how Liberating Structures work in their article in Performance, a quarterly business publication of the Global Business Thinktank of Ernst & Young. Liberating Structures are a growing collection of processes and methods that make it quick and easy for a group of any size to change how its members interact and collaborate. They are designed to tap into collective intelligence, liberate energy and stimulate creativity. You have probably heard of Open Space Technology, Conversation Cafes, and Storytelling. There are many more creative processes, and some may surprise you. They are interesting to learn, productive to use, and engaging for participants who discover that their own ideas are significant, and that people in conversation together can produce solutions for all kinds of thorny issues.

In the experience of these authors, both Liberating Structure pioneers, including and unleashing everyone brings hope and trust to organizational life. Henri Lipmanowicz is a founder of Plexus Institute and chairs its Board of Trustees. He retired in 1998 after a 30 career at Merck, where he was president of International and Japan division. Keith McCandless, a founding partner of the Social Invention Group,is a consultant with expertise in strategic planning, leadership and organizational development. Lipmanowicz and McCandless both served as coaches for healthcare organizations in in the Positive Deviance MRSA Prevention Partnership, an initiative to halt the spread of MRSA in healthcare.

Read their article,"Liberating Structure: Innovating by Including and Unleashing Everyone," and learn how these practices can bring about positive change in large ad small organizations of all kinds.