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Keith McCandless — The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures · The Innovation Show

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Smart leaders know that they would greatly increase productivity and innovation
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if they could get everyone fully engaged, so do professors, facilitators,
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and every single change maker.
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The challenge is how.
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Liberating Structures are novel, practical, and no-nonsense methods
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to help you accomplish this goal with groups of any size.
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Prepare to be surprised by how simple and easy they are for anyone to use.
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Today's book shows us how, with detailed descriptions for putting
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them into practice, plus tips on how to get started and traps to avoid.
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It takes the design and facilitation methods experts use and puts them
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within the reach of anyone in any organization or initiative from
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the frontline to the C-suite.
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It is a pleasure to welcome the author of The Surprising Power of
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Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash a Culture of Innovation.
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Keith McCandless, welcome to the show.
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Thanks Aidan.
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This is a take two.
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I have to tell our audience this.
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We tried to record last week.
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We had a total tech malfunction, actually a Wi-Fi malfunction, and luckily Keith
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has moved to a different place to actually record today with much better Wi-Fi.
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But Keith, I wanted to actually say something you said to me in
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prep for today, because it actually spoke to me, where sometimes
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you're in a very messy environment.
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And one of the great guests I had on the show before was David Deutsch, and
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there's an actual BBC interview with him, and the BBC interviewer is commenting
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on how messy his surroundings is.
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And he turns to the guy, and he's like I know where everything is." And
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sometimes you see that with great minds.
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You see that with people who like to work in that type of environment.
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And you said that to me, that you like to work in that type of environment
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for a very purposeful reason.
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I'd love you to share that before we even get stuck into the book
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I think the best example of it the first time we field tested work the
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liberating structures, w- was in hospital settings where superbugs were spreading.
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And in a hospital lots of different people in and out of rooms all the
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time, and there's some science how to stop the spread, but each person to
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solve-- to stop the spread everybody has to change their behavior kind of
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at the same time in different ways.
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And so that's just built-in complexity, built-in messiness.
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There's
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fifteen
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languages being spoken there's every kind of technical gizmo around
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people, and there's a power dynamic.
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The physicians and the managers, and it goes all the way down to people
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cleaning the room, and every one of those people need to contribute something
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unique to stop the spread of superbugs.
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And let's talk about that later on as well.
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But for those people wondering should they invest their time with
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us today, let's share what the big idea is and maybe a definition
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of what a liberating structure is
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a definition
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simpler than a method.
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So as soon as you say the word method, it's like, "Oh, only an expert can
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do that." And in your intro you said, "Oh, this is for everybody."
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Well, these are really patterns.
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So if you think about the pattern of you go into a room and there's
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a presentation Do you have to think about a method to do that?
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You don't.
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You just know what's gonna happen.
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Everybody has a role.
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The steps and the results . you know, you can expect it.
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Well, liberating structures are like that.
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It's a set of patterns.
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There's now 43 simple patterns that anyone can use.
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you don't have to be a methodological genius to do it.
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And what they do is make it possible to include every voice in shaping
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what happens next, and only what happens next, but the future.
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And that there's a number of practical reasons to do that, which we'll get into.
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But these are patterns that you can easily start to use include of the voices, all of
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the expertise, all of the experience that adds up to something where you can be more
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creative and adaptive as an organization
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Keith, one of the things I thought we'd talk about was the idea of complexity,
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because it really is a foundational idea behind your work and the messiness even,
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the complexity talks to that messiness because it's from the messiness that
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you actually can create brilliance.
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And I thought we'd talk a little bit about that because you also share admiration
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for a great friend of the show and a, a gentleman I became friends with
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through the show, which was the great Dee Hock, the founder of Visa and the
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author of the this idea of the chaordic organization, which we both love.
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Maybe we'll say something about complexity and then also about
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Dee Hock, may he rest in peace
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Yeah.
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Well when you look through a complexity lens at the world, you can see that the
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world is mostly mechanistically viewed, and the habits that we've developed
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over are more cause and effect oriented.
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And you do this, you do that, and you're gonna get this result.
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And most of the complexity scientists understand that their causes and effects
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can be causes and effects of themselves.
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It's more circular.
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It's messier.
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when you're facing a complex challenge, there's lots of different
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levels of input that contribute to any significant transformation.
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So, w- we-- the ecological view a better lens through which to look at this work.
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And it's in stark contrast to a mechanistic one.
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so in mechanistic things, you change the part.
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You focus on-- the attention on the part.
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You're gonna fix that part of the machine, and then the whole machine will work.
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a complex system, you look at the relationship among the parts.
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What's the pattern of relationship among the parts?
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In this case, the parts are people.
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I don't wanna fix a person.
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I have no need to fix you.
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You are perfect as you are, but the way you're relating, the pattern of how
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you're relating to others in your work environment or your family or even to
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yourself, that pattern of relating, if you take a small enough view, and we
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take a microstructural view of it, if you can shift that pattern, that shifts
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the entire system, not just a part.
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So beauty of it, if-- and the simplicity of it is, you can ignore fixing
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the parts, but you focus all your attention on the relat- the pattern
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of relationship among the parts.
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we'll dive into that because the big thing I took from the book was, I, I l- I loved
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and we h- hosted on the show before, BJ Fogg, who wrote the book Tiny Habits,
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who spawned books like Atomic Habits.
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James Clear, I think, even took one of BJ Fogg's classes.
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And the idea of habits, I mean, if you think about any type of
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change, a personality change, that it's actually starts with
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small little habit changes first.
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They compound, and they join together, and they become a shift in personal
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reality, which becomes personality.
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And I loved what you wrote here.
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You said, "It is possible to influence culture instead of change culture.
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Through the use of liberating structures, the word change itself implies from
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going from A to B, which suggests that B is already been decided."
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And there's a b- diagram in the book, a- and I'm gonna show this on the screen
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for those people watching us on YouTube.
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For, but for those who aren't, let's have a little bit of empathy for
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them, because this diagram shows how liberating structures influence
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change rather than change itself.
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So, I'm gonna share this on the screen now, and let's just
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describe it a little bit for those people who can't see it, Keith
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A lot of attention is paid in most organization on values,
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what we say the way it should be.
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And pretty clearly you can see that what we say-- There's a difference
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between what we say and what we do, and there's tension associated with that.
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The other thing that gets a lot of attentions are the beliefs,
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the vision of what should be.
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And, Those are great places to focus, but for me, what liberating structures
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do, and the most powerful by far, is to look at those habits, what we do every
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day, and immediately shift the pattern.
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And with that we can get closer to doing what we say is important.
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You know, with our values, we can reduce the difference between what we say
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is important and what we actually do.
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And and there's various liberating structures to help specifically with that.
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these beliefs that we have, because we're getting closer to doing
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what we say is important beliefs change about what is possible.
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And for me, the most im- powerful, simple place to immediately
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get started is with That's the pattern of everyday interaction.
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So when you go into a room who participates?
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Who speaks and who listens?
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How much time do they have?
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And you can play around with those things, very quickly and make a dramatic influence
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on this larger thing is the culture.
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The interaction of these three elements creates a culture, and you--
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primary place to focus with liberating structures is on these everyday habits
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I loved what you said here.
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You said, "At the core of the book is the practical idea that simple shifts in
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our routine behaviors, our patterns of interaction, make it possible for everyone
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to be included, engaged, and unleashed in solving problems, driving innovation,
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and achieving extraordinary outcomes."
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But you go on to say, "Liberating structures help us let go of control
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safety." And I thought that was really important because you talked about
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command and control a lot in the book, as did our, the great Dee Hock.
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He talked about that that's actually how we've been trained.
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It's in our language.
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And you quote Ludwig Wittgenstein, in the opening of the book.
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But there's another quote by Wittgenstein that, "The limits of my language are the
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limits of my world." And Dee talked about the fact that most of the language we use
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in businesses has been imported from war.
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It's battle language, and it gets into our heads.
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But so too do top-down structures.
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And what I loved about liberating structures, and I'd love you to share, is
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that it's, it's not just quite bottom-up.
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It's actually, it's everywhere down… It's everywhere dispersed
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because it's changes in the habits, not just of the bottom up.
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It's top-down.
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It's everywhere.
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It's, little nudges that can change and compound, and then you see this ripple
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effect, like you said, about complexity that leads to a total different reality.
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So maybe we'll share a little bit about that.
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you're making me think about one of the fundamental strategies
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underneath the work, and it's called the adjacent possible.
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And so this is, out of biology, but it's another complex system, and it
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makes sense that innovation unfolds not through a big idea, or rarely is it a big
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idea that comes and changes everything.
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It's the exploitation or the adaptation of your nearest
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neighbor, the thing closest to you.
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And what we're doing with Liberating Structures is inviting each
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person to explore the immediate neighborhood, make small adaptations
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to it, report back on what they're learning in a continuous fashion.
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And so it's at its core, and I think this is why I'm talking with you,
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its core, it's an innovation strategy that starts with every person's
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ability to creatively adapt and explore that in which they're in.
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It doesn't come from an expert, doesn't come down.
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It really comes from what they already know and who they already are.
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And through, again, changing this pattern of how they're relating many different
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levels of people in the organization different ideas about what's happening
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when you're faced with a big disruption.
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Those-- each individual is really developing a unique next step,
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and the combination of those next neighborly next steps is the source
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of innovation that this work unleashes
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when you read a book like this, you think about yourself, and you think about places
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where maybe you've seen this manifest.
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And one of the places it manifested was, I remember, and luckily it was right
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before COVID, I had a chat with my wife, and I was like, "Go on, let- let's…"
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This might have been a bit loaded here, but what I wanted to do was
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kinda list stuff that we were doing, each of us were doing, that was
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getting on the other person's nerves.
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So one of the things that came up was my wife said I had a habit of leaving
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the, the cupboards open in the kitchen.
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And so I just, I changed it.
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So I actually made a conscious effort to do it.
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It was a tiny thing.
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Like, for me, it was kind of flippant.
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I'm from the country, so it wasn't a huge deal.
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But for her it was a huge deal 'cause cleanliness, and hygiene, and flies,
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and all that kind of stuff, right?
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So I did it, and it had a dramatic impact on our relationship, a positive impact.
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It reminded me of that because it was a lit- like this little tiny habit
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that would become a bad habit that was just compounding over and over again,
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and it was probably making what other things that were small seem bigger
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because I was constantly doing this.
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But then you point out in the book, because I wanna actually
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talk about this, how this can help your life at a personal level.
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It's not just about business.
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Because you talked about a father for, who had been for almost a year unable
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to get beyond a monosyll- syllabic response from his teenage daughter.
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So let's share how one little change there, and this is an
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example of a liberating structure, changed where all of a sudden she's
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talking to him for over an hour
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Henri and I, when we're doing field work to support this the very first
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times we'd go into a country, work with a big company do strategy work to,
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like, can we move to the next level?
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Can we make this transition that the whole company's trying to make
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across the world here in Brazil?
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And we'd stay for a week afterward and do office hours, and people would
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come in and we thought they were gonna wanna talk about the business.
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They had an hour to use any way they wanted, and inevitably it would be, "Well,
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I wanna use this particular liberating structure." Let's-- One that we call
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creative destruction is a family one.
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They wanna talk about their kids and their family.
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The business issues were down the list, seven or eight or nine, you
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know, they-- All of the things they really wanted to talk about.
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So what we recommended and what people often did was a child in your home one
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thing that's pretty effective is to ask, you know, "What are all the things that
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you can do to really the entire family wrong and, you know, and, and irritate or
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do-- You know, what's the worst behavior you can imagine that's going to disrupt
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the family? And let's think about-- let's all think about that together.
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What are all the things we can do?" And they tend it to be a list of habits.
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You know, let's imagine all of the ones that we could do.
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then the second part is, well, which ones are we actually doing, you know,
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that are going on in this household?
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And then third part of it, it's, sounds but it isn't.
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Third part is, well, which ones can we stop?
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Which ones when, when, when-- Like maybe Aidan, you'd say, "Well, I can close
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the cupboard. You know, I can really-- I can try to do that." here, the i-
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the big idea behind that, even at the family level, level or the individual
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level if for innovation to emerge, there needs to be things that are stopped.
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There has to be open space a new behavior to enter in to this
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environment in which you're operating.
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And so it's one of the fundamental liberating structures.
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We used to call it TRIZ, but it's poorly named.
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It's creative destruction.
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It's like w- what is it that we can stop to make space for innovation?
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And it-- for me, it was a surprise.
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It works in the family, it works in a corporation, it probably works everywhere.
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But I had to be shown it worked at the family level.
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I love it, and it reminded me of a Peter Drucker quote that if
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you wanna do something new, you have to stop doing something old.
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And, you know, when I work with organisations like you do on innovation,
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I usually start with, like, habits.
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And it's actually where can you carve out new space to innovate
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or to be innovative in any way?
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And one of the things I was getting at with, one of the things I liked
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about i- Liberating Structures is your idea of and it's not just
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diversity washing or equity washing.
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It's like, it's the neurodiversity and equity of contribution where everybody
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has the right cognitive capacity to share what they, how they see the world.
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And if everybody's doing that, you have just such a bigger
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range of options fr- from that.
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And I think that's such an important thing.
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Before we start to go into the concepts of macro structures and micro structures
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and how , most of us are limited with what we actually use, let's share the
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importance of that quotient that we can lean into as organisations and as leaders
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there's two parts of it, I guess.
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One is we've designed the structures and the way they're described the patterns
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so that somebody who doesn't like to make eye contact use them productively.
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Second thing is the-- they all start with some moment to pause to give an
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individual, each individual, 'cause we're inviting them to contribute.
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We're inviting, giving them a minute or more just to think for
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themselves and write it down.
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As you're thinking about it, write it down.
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So we're building in and there's a lot more to it, but we're building in all
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the different ways that people learn and like to communicate, and that
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accommodates the neurodiversity and celebrates it even in lots of ways.
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There's quite a bit of non-verbal activity, including drawing
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expressions, things that we invite that you wouldn't normally see.
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so in those two ways, one is the work is simple enough that really
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anybody can run a structure.
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then the of the work itself draws out each individual's creative adaptability
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with whatever strength they have.
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And I give examples about that, but you just have-- for the moment, take my
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word for it that when you look across a repertoire of forty-three patterns,
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every kind of unique contribution that a-- or nearly every type of unique
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contribution is invited by the work
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So one of the ways you describe this is we're limited by language.
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So this is why I brought up Freakanstein.
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We're limited by the, the letters we use in an alphabet, and you say actually most
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of us are using five, if even we're using five different letters, and you have a
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very limited vocabulary if you do that.
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But you introduced 43, and you've upgraded it even since the first
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book, Liberating Structures.
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Now you have the Field Book as well, which introduces even more.
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So there's 43 letters, and if you think about the idea of the factorial and how
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they can all combine like Lego blocks, you can create multiple different things.
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But let's talk about the difference of that and what those five are that
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limit us mostly, and actually, the, the big thing you do when you reali-
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when you read the book is you realise this is not stupidity by leaders.
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Most are trained in this.
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Th- this is all they know of.
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It's more about ignorance, and not stupidity ignorance.
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It's, like, not knowing.
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So you, you don't know what you don't know, and when you know, when you
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know there's other options there, you can unleash yourself as a leader.
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And then the next difficulty becomes actually will I try this and will I stick
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with it, because it's g- obviously gonna be awkward when I start with these things.
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So a lot in there, Keith, but the idea of the macro structures, these
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f- these limiting ideas, and then micro structures and the idea of the
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43 versions of liberating structures.
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I spent my whole career looking at macro changes, and I-- starting with quality
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improvement and then benchmarking and idealized design and scenario planning and
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design thinking and human-centered design.
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All the Dee Hock's work, you know, a, whole cavalcade, and I had positions
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where I was the kind of research director turning people onto these approaches.
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And the single disappointing, soul-crushing experience with that is
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they never really caught on There are some experts that were developed in
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small clumps within organizations, but they never were practiced in any depth.
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And usually were made to mirror the expert orientation, the mechanical
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orientation that we're just… It's everything around us, so we mimic
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that in how we adopted these very exciting ideas, these approaches.
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And so I-- Because of the complexity science and thinking, well, it's
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the pattern of relationship.
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It's not the ideas themselves.
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The pattern underneath about how we're using human-centered design
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or Chaordic design or any…
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it doesn't matter.
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They all fell into the same, I'm gonna call it a trap, and I'm
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gonna be really hard on the way the trap manifests in habits.
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So the habits that get in our way is these ideas are delivered
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in a presentation, right?
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And a presentation is very limiting.
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It's a mo-monopoly on all the good idea.
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So it's one person's idea, and they're lay it on you, and at the end of a
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presentation, they may remember to aft- after all these ideas, that are
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spewed out are there any questions?
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But they'll probably forget 'cause it's a total ego trip.
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There's very little relationship between the presenter and the unwashed, right?
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It's just, it's a power dynamic that's negative.
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So I'm gonna be really hard on each of these big five.
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We call them the big five.
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The second one is, well, let's bring an expert facilitator in And let's
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have the leader work in cahoots with the expert facilitator to get
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the outcomes, outcomes out there.
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And so the group will arrive at a place that we've already predetermined, where
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everybody knows they just need to sit back, kind of it wash over them, but,
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they're gonna have to do something later.
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And when you bring the facilitator in-- again, I'm being not very nice about
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this, but it's they're working in cahoots, and you really don't have any influence
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over it, and, and people know it.
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Okay?
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So that's the managed discussion, is what it's called.
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oftentimes the leader will think, "Oh, well, we'll get some great interaction
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there, and it'll be great. We'll all agree on the thing we already
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determined." It just doesn't work.
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It doesn't work, Aidan.
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It doesn't.
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Third thing is a status report.
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Everybody… You know, let's hear everybody's voice, you're sitting
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around the table or wherever it is, and only at-- someone who's demented
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would actually say anything that wasn't rosy and positive, right?
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The report is always, well, what does the leader wanna hear?
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What do you think?
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Are they having a bad day or good day?
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Can we add anything that's actually spicy in this update?
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Usually, no.
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There's no cover.
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It's very dangerous.
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Fourth one which is more modern, but it's the brainstorm.
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Let's get a couple of the really smart, high talented people in a room
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away from wherever the operations or action is, and we'll have them dream
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up some really great best practices or, you know, really big ideas.
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And then later on, we'll have to bribe coerce people to adopt
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those brainstorm ideas, right?
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So that's brainstorming.
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And again, I'm not being nice, but that's often how it rolls frequently.
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So these are all patterns.
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I'm describing a dynamic and a pattern.
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And then the fifth one, the-- of the big five, and these are the ones,
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only ones we seem to use The fifth one is the open discussion, and this
27:34
is when leader or manager whoever's convening the group, ha-hasn't gotten
27:41
what they need from a presentation or a facilitated discussion, a brainstorm,
27:45
or a, a, a update kind of thing.
27:50
And they just say, "Oh, anybody can say anything. The rules are open."
27:54
And typically what that does, there's not enough structure there, so a couple
27:58
people get into a, a familiar argument.
28:02
And everybody is sort of amused, but it's not productive kind of conversation.
28:09
And then at the end, the manager or leader usually has to say, "Isn't it
28:12
great that we all had a chance to say what we think? Now we've-- we're gonna
28:18
go with the idea that I, you know, that we had before." And it's all very
28:24
So that, that's what we have, Aidan.
28:25
It's-- I'm not being nice about it, but that's kind of where we are, it's all
28:30
either over-controlled or under-controlled
28:34
I'm trying to think of the guy.
28:35
There's a quote, oh, it's like, "If I, if I want your opinion, I'll, I'll give
28:41
it to you." And it's kinda like that.
28:44
It's like we have the strategy.
28:47
We have to pretend to the group that we've listened to them so they feel
28:51
that they're empowered and that we've taken in their feedback on board.
28:54
There's a cartoon that I often share where it shows a lady putting an idea
28:59
into an idea box, and then it zoomed out, and underneath the table there's
29:03
a shredder that shreds the ideas.
29:06
And like kinda, it's kinda like that.
29:07
We go through this rigmarole, but it's actually not really listening to people,
29:11
when actually there's gold in there
29:15
Well, even if there's a strategy.
29:17
let's say superbug work again, 'cause this is where it started.
29:22
I like to talk about it.
29:24
It was really clear thing.
29:25
There's things that work to eliminate superbugs, and
29:27
everybody knew the strategy.
29:29
They just didn't know… So the strategy is keep surfaces clean, wash your
29:33
hands, isolate patients, How-- So how do you-- how does housekeeping do that?
29:39
How does a busy doctor who just wants to pop into the room
29:41
briefly, how do they do it?
29:43
How does the per- person scheduling and the room cleaning and the,
29:47
lunch going in and out of the room, how do all those things how do you
29:51
relate to each other on a unit How do you do the strategy together?
29:56
Even if it's not strategic thinking, it's operational.
30:00
Everybody's unique, creative, adaptive approach needs to be included, and once
30:06
it is, then strategy can change, too.
30:08
Okay, we don't-- We-- so anyway, that's-- You triggered me a little
30:16
Hopefully not in a negative sense, I triggered him.
30:18
no.
30:19
Jacob's like, "Ah, I've gotta tell you
30:20
For those not watching, he's throwing, he's smashing up his environment.
30:24
He's trying to make it messy again.
30:26
I triggered him.
30:27
But I, I, I wanted to come back to one of the definitions, 'cause it's a term you
30:32
coined, which is microstructures, and I'll pull a little excerpt from the book here.
30:36
"Tangible microstructures are the physical spaces where
30:39
interactions or work take place.
30:41
They are like the room where the family eats dinner.
30:44
.. They include how we choose to arrange the tangible structural
30:47
elements within that space, tables, chairs, flip charts, and the like.
30:50
Intangible ones are how we micro organize our interactions with
30:55
elements such as an agenda."
30:57
And I pulled this excerpt in particular, "Conventional
31:00
microstructures in one form or the other have been around for centuries.
31:03
They are designed for convincing, teaching, debating,
31:06
brainstorming, controlling, or some combination of these purposes.
31:11
Their usefulness, however, is limited by side effects that are difficult or
31:14
impossible to avoid, such as unengaged participants or audiences, excessive power
31:19
dynamics, and competition for attention, bodies present but minds absent."
31:24
And the reason I pulled that, Keith, I would love your opinion on this, because
31:30
you wrote the first book a long time ago.
31:33
Not that long ago, but particularly more… It was before we had so
31:39
much interaction on tools like Slack or WhatsApp or Zoom or
31:44
Teams or any of these platforms.
31:47
And as a facilitator, when you're asked to do some type of webinar
31:52
or some type of event virtually, that, for me, that compounds because
31:58
the human energy, the setup of the room, they're so, so important.
32:05
And I th- I actually do think this, Keith, that oftentimes when you're
32:08
the facilitator and you ask for the room to be set up in a certain way,
32:12
there's a little bit of like an, "Oh, that person's being awkward," but
32:15
it, it has a such a dramatic effect.
32:17
I mean, it's the point of the whole book.
32:19
But in a virtual world, that becomes even more difficult, and
32:24
I'd love your thoughts on that.
32:26
Yeah.
32:26
So you gotta get the new book because we completely online facilitation.
32:36
And we started with the idea, just as you're saying, it
32:40
must be much harder It isn't.
32:44
You have to be able to do-- Well, the, the main thing we recommend,
32:49
it's you, the facilitator, you're hosting, and you have a tech host.
32:54
And the tech host manages breakout rooms and chat and a, a few things
32:58
that are not as tangible or physical.
33:05
But I think you'd be-- I wanna invite you to some things to
33:08
s- have you see it in person.
33:12
the same kind of things that you do in a room, you do in a breakout room.
33:18
And there are some differences, but primarily but one of the
33:24
original liberating structures made it into the online repertoire.
33:30
And I think they produce very nearly the same results.
33:40
so you do it is similar.
33:44
Like what we're doing, we're playing around with time.
33:48
First by yourself, a minute.
33:51
Get out a pen even though you're online.
33:53
Get out a piece of paper and get a pen, and l- let's make it tactile.
33:57
For this minute, you have a chance to jot down some thoughts about
34:00
how we're-- what we might do next or what you think is going on.
34:05
Then you're gonna go in a breakout room with one other person, and then we're,
34:12
and you're just gonna share your idea.
34:13
And then you may really like that person, but you're, now you're gonna
34:18
be thrown for a couple minutes and then a breakout room with four, and
34:23
there's gonna be two more ideas.
34:25
And suddenly this the world in which you're trying to figure out what's
34:30
going on is enriched in the same way that if you created little…
34:36
If you had people in chairs and a pair rotated to a group of four.
34:39
So as long as you have a tech host doing the work.
34:42
And now you come back to the main room and those groups of four, you can have
34:47
400 people or 800 people, doesn't matter.
34:49
The groups of four, something spectacular happened in their room, an insight
34:54
or an action they're invited to it into and you have a record of that
35:04
you can immediately scan up and down.
35:07
All the participants, p- participants can, can see the insights or the actions that
35:11
were generated by groups of four So the-- I'm talking about the upside of online
35:18
interactions it is more challenging.
35:21
I'll tell you that the reality of it is in generating momentum and action.
35:28
Like, so what we want, and the reason liberating structures have spread
35:33
around the world, is because they generate engagement, they generate
35:39
resolve, and they generate action.
35:43
So if you're-- if you want the resolve and the action, not just the engagement, but
35:48
also everybody brings their imagination.
35:52
They start to decide, this is-- We-- I need to do this.
35:54
I need to make my little move in the neighborhood, you know, my, my adjacent
36:00
possible option, and I'm gonna do it.
36:03
So if you can get that, it won't matter to you whether it's online or face to face
36:09
You just reminded me, , I started my business during COVID.
36:13
A- and w- that's what I was doing.
36:15
I was doing this stuff.
36:16
I didn't have the language for it, but I probably am showing a personal preference
36:23
here of the, the one thing I feel like it was great that those sessions went
36:27
well, but, like, you're- you emit an energy, and I think people can feel
36:32
that better when you're , in a session.
36:34
But when you're talking about lots and lots of people, maybe
36:38
online engages people more.
36:39
Certainly, some people prefer it, I think, where they'd rather that
36:44
than actually being in a breakout room, rather than being actually
36:46
in a physical room with people.
36:48
But you triggered one here for us.
36:50
So you preempted a liberating structure.
36:53
So just I want to remind our audience again, liberating structures are
36:56
almost like letters of the alphabet.
36:58
They can be used to trigger habit change inside an organization,
37:02
not bottom up, not top down, widespread across the organization.
37:07
One of them, and it was used actually in my research, apart from reading the
37:11
book and our rehearsal episode we did, I was-- I listened to you interviewed by a
37:18
former guest on the show, Aaron Dignan, and he has a business called The Ready,
37:22
and he talked about the fact that they use one of these liberating structures.
37:25
They l- they loved your work, and they brought it into the organization,
37:29
and it's the idea of 1-2-4-All.
37:33
And if there's nothing else anyone else does from this episode, it's do this one,
37:38
because this one, as long as you have, you know, y- you're either facilitating or you
37:43
have that many people in your business, you can't do it if you're on your own.
37:47
But 1-2-4-All is an easy one to get started with
37:51
I'm gonna give context to it.
37:52
I was in Paris in a corporate headquarters and we're walking down the hall with
37:57
my co-author, Henri, and a s- a project manager comes and says, "Come and fix
38:02
our meeting." know, it's a nightmare.
38:04
It's been going on for two years.
38:06
The project managers, there's 20 of us.
38:08
We're in a room.
38:10
It's beyond imagination what's going on.
38:15
And, you know, in France it's, a little diff- there's a cultural thing going on.
38:21
But we go into the room, the lights are turned way down.
38:24
There's one person in the front droning with a, projection on a
38:27
screen, and everybody else has their computers open part way, and it
38:31
looks like they're all doing email.
38:34
And so we're, we, we've been invited to fix the meeting, and this
38:38
has been going on for two years.
38:39
It's, it's deadly.
38:41
First thing, you know, "Can we turn on the lights? Can we…" You know and
38:47
what we suggest, let's do a 1-2-4-All.
38:49
What's wrong with this?
38:50
So the invitation to the whole group is do you diagnose
38:54
what's wrong with this meeting?
38:56
And first think for yourself, talk to your partner, they're
38:58
all in a square configuration.
39:01
Then a group of four, and come up with the things.
39:04
So it's one minute by themselves, two minutes in a pair, group of four, come
39:08
up with, with the key things that are wrong, you know, that, that are wrong.
39:13
And so there were four groups, I guess, maybe five groups, and they
39:18
all identified the same thing.
39:20
You know, the, the four, the four minutes and then all was just took
39:24
two or three minutes to find out that they all had the same diagnosis.
39:29
Said, "Okay, well, let's do another." And this is an interesting
39:31
thing about 1-2-4-All, repetition is a source of innovation.
39:36
So we're just like, "Well, let's do another one of those, but let's do it
39:39
about what would be some moves you could make immediately to solve the-- to change
39:43
the character of this tedious project manager meeting?" So they did another
39:49
1-2-4-All in that sequence, one minute, two minutes, four minutes, and the all.
39:55
And group, there was one unique idea, but there were three ideas
39:59
that every group had, and they all agreed, and like they were doing it.
40:03
They immediately… Every voice had been heard they had three really
40:09
solid solutions to the problem and they were ready to do it.
40:14
And in this entire experience in the room with the group, in about a half an hour,
40:19
Henri and I felt cont- confident that we could leave the room that they had forever
40:24
changed that meeting something productive.
40:27
so that's, that's 1-2-4 all.
40:30
One of the things I thought was so important and that it, it speaks
40:34
to what we spoke about earlier on was you have a leader in the room.
40:38
The leader cannot disguise their preference for an idea,
40:43
and maybe it's their idea.
40:45
And as to your point earlier on, you said, like, for example, you're kind
40:49
of looking for cues from the leader.
40:51
"Well, I, I need to say what they want.
40:54
I need to be on board.
40:55
I can't be the person who's, like, the na- seen as the naysayer
40:58
but could be the gainsayer.
40:59
So don't speak up because we know what happens.
41:02
The last time people went missing," right?
41:05
And you're, like, going, "Okay, if if I do one, two for all, I'm spending time
41:10
on my own first to actually come up with my own genuine ideas, if I have them."
41:16
And in there, it defeats anchoring, so this anchoring that happens
41:20
inside organizations to anchor around what idea is deemed the best
41:24
by everybody else, 'cause these are really important biases that prevent
41:28
people from innovating all the time
41:30
The CEOs or senior leaders that I've worked with all
41:36
wanted to change the dynamic.
41:39
They knew that something was wrong and their groups were
41:45
dysfunctional in one way or another.
41:48
And That was a refreshing and mind-blowing for them to let go of that
41:57
experience that they'd had that, that they needed to come up with the idea,
42:01
then they needed to push that through.
42:05
And so I guess emotionally the habit was harder.
42:11
They had all the desire and ambition to change it more than other people,
42:15
but the actual habit of not having their idea make it to the top I
42:22
had to have empathy for them often.
42:25
not always because a, a typical thing that we do would be… I'm
42:32
gonna describe another liberating structure briefly called the eco-cycle.
42:35
And you, you put all of your strategies on a a chart that has things that
42:43
are being birthed, things that are mature, strategies that are delivering
42:47
results, things that need to be creatively destroyed or stopped, and
42:51
then those that are in gestation or they're a seed rather than a birth.
42:58
on either side, there's a trap a poverty trap where the seeds don't turn into
43:03
birth, and a rigidity trap on the other side where the strategy that did work that
43:09
isn't working anymore doesn't get stopped.
43:13
You keep using it past its prime.
43:16
so when the whole group is involved in placing individually that each
43:22
place where these strategies, the current strategies fit and the
43:25
new strategies and strategies that aren't-- are just seeds at the moment.
43:28
They put them all up on the where they are and start to talk about priorities
43:33
and all that kind of thing And then the senior leaders are, "Oh my, now I see
43:41
all of these in a context." And I'm-- know that it's a really new context for
43:47
them, and they have really big ideas.
43:50
And we sort of move, move that conversation from where things are
43:53
now to where they might be, and what we might do to move our strategies
43:57
forward through birth to maturity, what needs to be creatively destroyed,
44:01
and what needs to be m-more investment to get a seed to a, a birth.
44:07
And that kind of thinking is something that an individual has usually done
44:12
by themselves or a, a senior leader has done by themselves or just with
44:17
a few people in the senior team.
44:20
And suddenly it's all there for everyone to see, a much larger group.
44:25
And it's breathtaking, and it's breathtaking because… And I'll
44:29
often ask the leaders privately on the side, "Well," with a smile kinda, "You
44:35
knew that, right?" You knew that They didn't see it until the whole group
44:41
made sense of it, put it up on a map, and started to move it dynamically.
44:45
And again, the pattern of interaction was there were more voices included,
44:50
more insight, and the thinking that you normally attach to the senior leadership
44:58
group was dramatically improved.
45:04
And I want this-- When I'm working with a group, I want that experience,
45:08
although it's hard, right?
45:11
you're not alone.
45:13
You got the whole group to think strategically.
45:16
Do you wanna do more of that?
45:17
And the again, I had to learn these lessons in the field.
45:22
I had one of these big maps on a piece of paper.
45:24
You know, I like working in face-to-face too a big healthcare group, and we
45:30
spent a couple days on their strategy doing this work I just described.
45:34
And I didn't go back for another year to work with them, and they unrolled the
45:38
same piece of paper, and there'd been hundreds of dirty looking Post-it notes
45:45
and replacements and arrows and comments made on this piece of paper, which was
45:49
crumpled, and it was just a big mess.
45:51
But they'd used it every quarter since I w- they'd used it four times to rework
45:55
this magic that was, wow, together as a lar- an expanded leadership group
46:01
was so much smarter than the group, a few people at the top by themselves.
46:05
So it kind of like, okay And I want you to notice that that was
46:10
something you didn't know, and that might be a little difficult.
46:14
But if you wanna continue with this work, you need to recognize that the group gonna
46:18
be more creative and adaptive the larger-- more people we can include in it, the more
46:23
chance we're gonna do really smart things
46:26
I think that's one of those hangovers from the post-world wars world where many
46:34
of the leaders who got into positions were rewarded with those positions
46:38
because they were m- generals in the army, and you didn't have access to
46:43
the, to the field, to the battlefield to actually get that information.
46:47
Or, or you didn't want it because you didn't have time or you could be
46:50
sending people to certain death and you didn't wanna know who they were.
46:54
But that idea of the organization a- as everybody's empowered as
46:58
sensors to detect danger, to spot opportunities is, is a shift that is
47:06
not really taught in business schools.
47:08
And I think that this is where we're talking about the ignorance, that
47:11
it's not stupidity, it's ignorance.
47:13
It's, it's not knowing that these options are there.
47:16
And like you said, when they, the leader themselves, has the psychological
47:21
safety to go, "Actually, it was Keith in sector 7G who came up with that idea,"
47:28
and you're talking in the boardroom and you're telling your board that
47:31
y- yeah, we've empowered the whole organization, that's a brilliant story.
47:35
Like, you don't need to have all the information as the leader.
47:39
And it brings us to actually chapter four of the book, which is called
47:42
Liberating Leadership, and this is about how leaders can avoid perpetuating
47:46
the problems they complain about.
47:48
And you open up this chapter by saying, "Leaders don't purposely set
47:52
out to demotivate employees or to discourage them from speaking up.
47:56
They don't want to discourage cooperation.
47:59
They don't want thousands of useless meetings conducted in their organizations.
48:03
It's the contrary.
48:05
They live with these frustrations because they don't see any other
48:08
choice." So maybe we'll share some ways leaders can actually lean into
48:14
this, some ideas they can employ.
48:17
One I'll just wanted to br- remind you of is earlier on you talked about the idea
48:21
of a new leader acquires a company, so this organization acquires another one.
48:28
They're, they're the co- company that's being merged.
48:31
Of course, there's huge fear, huge resistance there.
48:34
He goes and he has one meeting, conducts that meeting, total bomb site.
48:38
It was terrible.
48:39
But he goes a second time, and this time he just sits among everybody else.
48:43
That's all, the only change.
48:45
This is a liberating structure in action.
48:47
Tiny change, dramatically different impact.
48:50
So with that, I'll tee you up to talk about liberating leadership.
48:55
Well it's a big thing to move from I'm commanding to guiding on
49:01
the side and, um Uh, two things.
49:05
One is a, a little story.
49:07
A field let's say Veterans Administration hire to run their
49:14
hospital and hospital system.
49:15
So this particular guy I'm thinking of, , his name was Clyde.
49:19
He sets up field hospitals and worked in Afghanistan and a senior military leader.
49:29
And he moved over to hospital work in the US.
49:34
So was pretty intrigued and counterintuitively in the
49:39
military, you really do need a lot of intelligence from the field
49:43
immediately shared back and forth.
49:46
And so we were doing really early work with liberating structures and his--
49:50
there were 90 people in a big room, and they were trying to figure out how
49:54
to do referral patterns or something.
49:56
I don't remember the content very well.
49:58
But we were using a liberating structure called User Experience Fishbowl, where
50:02
a few people were talking about, it, and they could ask people around the outside.
50:08
These 90 people were in groups, and they were generating ideas, too.
50:12
And partway through this leader, we couldn't-- Henri and I couldn't tell
50:17
if it was meaningful or w-what was going on, but this leader just threw up
50:24
his hands And said, "This is the best conversation, the most action-oriented
50:32
conversation we've ever had together.
50:35
All the decisions we just made," and I didn't hear any decisions at all,
50:39
"are final." He got so excited about this exchange from people closer to
50:45
the field with the leadership decisions that he needed to make as a, a whole
50:52
organization That he was ready in that moment to just like, "Okay, those
50:56
are decisions." Now, that's too fast and too soon, and all kinds of things
51:02
were-- made me uncomfortable about it.
51:04
But that's the relief that a leader can feel when they can rely on more people
51:12
and have some patterns to use to rely on more people to generate direction.
51:19
Now the other s- a little story I wanna tell you.
51:23
can't tell you how many senior leaders would say to me, when I retire,
51:30
the thing I wanna do is what you're doing." it just made me think, well,
51:34
why aren't you-- Wait a second.
51:36
Why-- You could be doing it right now.
51:38
I'm not… I'm, you know, I swish in, I help you, and I'm, I, I go away.
51:43
could do that every day here, and it, there's still some
51:46
hesitancy, so some clumsiness.
51:48
Aidan, I think you called it.
51:50
be a little clumsy when you first start, right?
51:53
You'd have to do one minute, and then two minutes, and you need to
51:55
switch groups, and then you know, there's all this stuff comes out.
51:59
How do you make sense out of that?
52:00
So it does take a little practice.
52:03
But I think they could ask for help from some people in their organization
52:08
to get this going, and I've seen plenty of CEOs the work needed and enable
52:15
the work needed to make it happen.
52:18
So that's… It's not insurmountable, but you're gonna start somewhere, and
52:22
it's not gonna be… It can be very emotional, but you need to keep it going.
52:27
It's not just oh, we're gonna use it at the special event, and
52:32
then we're gonna stop using it.
52:34
It's actually an everyday kind of habit everyone.
52:38
So it's, you get into it, you'll get the best results if you can
52:43
do it everywhere with everyone
52:45
Amazing.
52:46
I think it's a, a lovely way to, lovely place to leave it actually,
52:50
and we'll encourage people to get the book because really we couldn't do it.
52:56
It'd be like drinking water from the hose pipe to go through all
52:59
43 liberating structures today.
53:01
And the new book is just out, the new field book as well is just out.
53:05
For you, Keith, where is the best place to find that book, to find
53:09
you, to find the work that you do with Liberating Structures and
53:12
your colleague and co-author Henri?
53:15
Yeah.
53:16
The best place is a, a website and well, an app as well.
53:22
If you're a phone user at least 33 of the Liberating Structures are available on
53:29
your phone and you can just search for it.
53:31
You'll find it.
53:33
Website just created to match the new book is at www.liberatingstructures.com.
53:40
And the book's available Amazon and Lightning Source and you can find it
53:48
anywhere in the world and it's called the Liberating Structures Field Book
53:53
It's been a pleasure having you on the show.
53:54
Before I thank you and sign off with you, I wanna thank our sponsor,
53:58
Kyndryl, who runs and reimagines the technology that runs the infrastructure
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of AI-powered consulting built on unmatched managed service capability.
54:14
Kyndryl helps leaders harness the power of technology for smarter
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decisions, faster innovation, and a lasting competitive edge.
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Sounds a little bit like Liberating Structures does as well.
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You can find out more about Kyndryl at K-Y-N-D-R-Y-L, kyndryl.com.
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And finally, I wanna thank our author and our guest, author of The Surprising
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Power of Liberating Structures, Keith McCandless, thank you for joining us
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Aidan, my pleasure.
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Thank you