The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash A Culture of Innovation (28 page)

In the last hour before the final vote, a threat popped up. All the work done to craft the bill could have been lost. Surprisingly, a group of Senate staffers who had not been directly involved in the process stepped forward with support. Why? Lynda suspects it had everything to do with the very inclusive approach used to create SB 29. This legislation was something new, unmistakably a product of all the constituents’ voices.

Transcending a Top-Down, Command-and-Control Culture:
Jon Velez

“When I became chief information officer, IT was known as the place you went to be told, ‘You can’t have that,’” Jonathan Velez told us. “Employees in the department were valued for doing what they were told and saying, ‘Yes, sir.’ There is a cultural legacy of top-down, command and control.”

Jonathan Velez, MD, is chief information officer of Memorial Health System in Colorado Springs. He has joined with system CEO Larry McEvoy to shift the culture toward more interdependency and shared accountability everywhere in the organization
.

Jon started working shoulder to shoulder with Memorial Health System CEO Larry McEvoy to transform the culture and create a more collaborative relationship-centered organization. Both Jon and Larry are MDs, trained as emergency-medicine physicians, so they appreciate the importance of trust, coordination, and autonomy among team members to accomplish goals quickly.

They also appreciate that the dominant command-and-control culture is a dragon with two heads. Hospitals are filled with experts who embrace control. It’s not only the IT experts but also the busy nurses and doctors who can overuse command-and-control behaviors. For many of the challenges these groups handle, including and unleashing others is unnecessary. Whether it’s solving certain technical IT problems or providing “simple” acute medical care, customers and patients don’t need to be trusted partners to succeed.

Immersion Workshop to Turn Novices into Expert Contributors

Nonetheless, Jon and Larry have big ideas. Their strategy is to shift patterns in internal operations (for example, in information technology and finance) as well as to support a patient-centered Bedside Trust Initiative. With the goal of unleashing innovation novices to become expert contributors, everyone from top to bottom in the Memorial Health System IT department was invited to a Liberating Structures Immersion Workshop.

One hundred thirty members of the IT department (plus forty of their internal customers from the finance and clinical departments) spent three days together, applying Liberating Structures methods to the challenges they care about most.

That workshop sparked a wide range of improvements, from advancing clinical transformation projects, through innovations like the Bedside Trust Initiative and physician partnerships, to redesigning the IT request process, to radically shifting how everyday meetings are conducted. “Staff meetings are now fun,” Jon says. “It feels like magic because people contribute in ways they did not anticipate.”

Jon and other users have incorporated their favorite Liberating Structures into their daily work. Jon regularly uses
1-2-4-All
,
Min Specs
, and
What, So What, Now What?
He reports, “Staff members moved from the assumption that ‘my idea is not that important’ to seeing that not only did ‘my idea’ add value but also others are thinking along the same lines. Once everyone believes their contribution matters, the team gets much smarter about solving complex challenges.”

Mountains Beyond Mountains

Similar progress has been made in patches across the organization. However, it feels like there are mountains beyond mountains yet to climb. The legacy culture runs very deep: the unwanted dependent tendencies to wait for someone else to take responsibility, game the system, and blame managers for what is wrong linger. Jon and Larry want more interdependency and shared accountability everywhere in the department.

Even though Jon is doing his best to help employees to let go of overcontrol and practice more self-organization, old behaviors pop up. “The other day, two employees referred to themselves as ‘peons,’” Jon told us. “I cringed.” Clearly, some employees seem unable to believe that this cultural transformation is anything more than talk. “On the one hand, employees want to make more decisions. On the other hand, when invited to create an IT decision-making council—made up of nonmanagement employees and with the responsibility of making some important decisions—the response has been less than enthusiastic.”

Not deterred, Jon keeps the focus on culture and behaviors. For example, a federal Medicare inspection turned into a big success. The visit had revealed a long list of tasks and fixes with a deadline to comply with confidentiality and safety regulations. The work was done in record time with few flaws. Jon asked the staff, “Why? How can we build on this success?”

Jon had his own answers in mind. Precisely four. He convened the team to deal with the question using
1-2-4-All
. Quickly, the answers expanded from four to eight. “Four of the key factors were not on my list,” Jon told us. “I was thrilled, although that doesn’t mean I liked everything I heard.”

In the process, Jon and the team discovered a surprising paradox: their success in the Medicare inspection hinged on tapping elements of the old command-and-control culture. “They said it felt like we met in the war room,” Jon shared. “The general laid out strategy and tactics to get all the tasks done. The chain of command helped us move quickly and accurately.” A surprising paradox indeed.

The revelation left Jon wondering, “Does the organization need a break from working on interdependency, or do I need to push harder? It seems counterintuitive, but I am contemplating telling them to just do it. A
Wicked Question
indeed. Liberate yourselves now!”

Paradox: Leaders Stepping Up While Stepping Back

Jon is transforming along with the IT department. Individually and collectively, they are shaping a way forward. His original idea about transformation is not as simple as stopping command and control and starting liberated self-organization. Rather, he is working with two opposing tendencies: control and letting go. Depending on the situation, comingling approaches can create robust and productive results.

“In some places, the culture seems to be stuck in a dependent rut,” Jon muses. “You can tell a team about a better way to work together and even get agreement. What you don’t always get is movement. In other words, I might need to dictate, ‘Come on, we’re moving out of the rut!’ to get a team unstuck.”

These paradoxical tendencies make it hard to know when to step up and when to step back. On the other hand, Jon can see clearly that members of his group are learning a new pattern for themselves. Now they have access to more than a single command-and-control structure to achieve results. A new culture that includes and transcends the old is coming into existence.

PART FOUR

The Field Guide to Liberating Structures

Part Four contains your ready-to-use repertoire of thirty-three Liberating Structures.

For each structure here, we provide a step-by-step outline of what to do to put it into practice immediately plus a brief description of what to expect as a result, tips on successful use, and ideas for designing variations. Also included are examples of how managers, frontline workers, and facilitators have used each structure in different types of organizations and communities as well as information on sources and some suggestions for getting additional information or supporting materials.

How To Navigate The Field Guide

The information on all thirty-three Liberating Structures is displayed in the same format. Under its name in the main heading, there is a tagline that expresses its essential characteristic and an estimate of the approximate minimum time required to use the structure in a group setting.

We then describe each structure in a standard format that includes the following entries:

WHAT IS MADE POSSIBLE
: A brief explanation of what you can accomplish

FIVE STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS—MIN SPECS
: What to do and how to do it, step by step:

WHY? PURPOSES
: Primary reasons for using this Liberating Structure

TIPS AND TRAPS
: Useful advice for ensuring the best possible outcomes

RIFFS AND VARIATIONS
: Alternatives or embellishments for you to try and ideas for designing others

EXAMPLES
: A few actual applications to inspire you to find opportunities that exist in your context

ATTRIBUTION
: Sources of inspiration or invention

COLLATERAL MATERIAL
: Useful presentation materials and templates plus illustrations of Liberating Structures in action. Additional materials are available on the website:
www.liberatingstructures.com

Before—and after—you use any Liberating Structure, we recommend that you read through its entire description. Obviously, it is necessary to read all the way through the step-by-step explanation of what to do before attempting to use a structure for the first time. It also never hurts to do a dry run, mentally or with a pilot group. After each experience using a Liberating Structure, take the time to reread the description and to reflect on what happened; it will greatly accelerate your learning, deepen your understanding, and spark ideas for creative variations and combinations (use
What, So What, Now What?
). Finally, recall that
Part Two: Getting Started and Beyond
is full of ideas and advice on how to put Liberating Structures to work in various settings, from a one-time meeting to large-scale organizational change initiatives.

However you decide to begin, remember that this Field Guide is not meant to be an instruction manual. The descriptions are brief synopses of essential points to remember: the minimum instructions you need to start using any of
the Liberating Structures. For many of the structures, there are volumes of additional materials available on our own and others’ websites and in books and articles. To dig deeper, start with the references here in Tips and Traps and Attributions and, at the end of the book, in the Learning Resources.

Finally, this Field Guide is a map, not the territory. The territory will be discovered through your lived experience with Liberating Structures. The map is simply designed to help you with designing a wide range of activities. The
Design Storyboards
Liberating Structure and
Part Two:
Getting Started and Beyond are good points of departure for your exploration. You may also find it useful to have Liberating Structures Design Cards handy for composing; see
http://liberatingstructures.com/cards

Playfully Serious Icons

Every icon in the Field Guide was designed to illustrate the particular essence of each Liberating Structure. The fabulous artist Lesley Jacobs worked with us to create images that are playful but have a serious purpose: to become over time a form of visual shorthand that jogs the memory of users and signals what is coming without the need for explanation. The icons also provide you with symbols that you can use to simplify your planning and designing activities. Their deliberately playful style is intended to attract your attention and incite you to use them. Finally, the icons are a reminder that playfulness is positive energy that promotes participation in the lively search for answers that is unleashed by Liberating Structures.