The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash A Culture of Innovation (35 page)

• Describe the process: explain that small groups will move from station to station for a 10-minute presentation and brief questions and feedback period. If it wasn’t done in advance, identify the 3 to 7 presenters for the innovation stations (can be people who volunteer in the moment). Form the same number of small groups as there are presenters. 5 min.
  
• Each small group goes to a different station, where presenters conduct their sessions (repeated up to 7 times). 10 min. per station/session
  
• Participants ask questions or provide feedback. 2 min. per station/session
  
• Small groups move to the next station. 1 min. per move
  
• Repeat until groups have visited all stations.
  
• Total time for visiting 6 stations is approximately 90 minutes.
  

• Quickly share ideas and innovations
  
• Enable people to recognize that they are innovating or have the potential to innovate
  
• Build trust and a community of practice among members
  
• Reveal how the formal technological hierarchy can obscure the hidden contributions of frontline innovators
  
• Quickly give participants a sense of the innovation landscape
  
• Explore and expose bottom-up and fringe-in innovations
  
• Spark friendly competition, mash-ups, and collaboration
  

Below: a group gathered for an eight-minute Shift & Share presentation in Seattle

• Pick presenters by digging deep into the informal social networks (presentation skills and charisma are less important than content for this approach)
  
• Keep tightly to the schedule: use a loud sound or tingsha bells to signal the shift from one station to the next
  
• When possible prepare the presenters: 10 minutes is much shorter than they are used to!
  
• Invite presenters to tell stories that help the audience make the leap from understanding a small example of behavior change to seeing a broad change in values or a shift in resource allocation, or both
  
• Invite presenters to supplement their presentations with examples and objects that participants can see and touch
  
• Encourage presenters to entertain and engage the imagination of the audience
  
• Trust that people will follow up to get more depth if they are interested
  

• Invite the roving groups to use
  What, So What, Now What?
  to debrief what they experienced
  
• Like a PechaKucha Night presentation, add snacks and drinks at each station
  
• Shorten the presentation time to 8 minutes
  
• Do not establish set groups; instead mash up with
  Open Space
  (individuals use their two feet to go where they are most curious about and where they are learning something)
  
• If you do a second round, leave a few stations open for impromptu presenters
  
• Use with virtual groups by creating a series of chat rooms. The groups then select a handful of sessions they want to attend
  
• String together with
  Improv Prototyping
  to generate variations on ideas presented
  

• For orienting new members of a research consortium to the depth and breadth of innovations within the whole community
  
• For introducing technology applications at a conference, mixing presenters from within the field with commercial vendors
  
• For highlighting the programs and people from two “sides” of a newly merged organization
  

Below: presentation materials we use to introduce
Shift & Share

“Every journey has a secret destination of which the traveler is not aware.” Martin Buber

• 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 it is to help the “client” clarify his or her challenge and to offer advice or recommendations.
  

• Groups of 4 or 5 chairs arranged around small tables or in circles without tables
  
• Paper for participants to take notes
  

• Everyone is included
  
• Everyone has an equal amount of time to ask for and get help
  
• Everyone has an equal opportunity to offer help
  

• Groups of 4 to 5 people
  
• Mixed groups across functions, levels, and disciplines are ideal
  
• The person asking for help, the “client,” turns his or her back on the consultants after the consultation question has been clarified.
  

• The client presents the challenge and request for help. 2 min.
  
• The consultants ask the client clarifying questions. 3 min.
  
• The client turns his or her back to the consultants and gets ready to take notes
  
• The consultants ask questions and offer advice, and recommendations, working as a team, while the client has his or her back turned. 8 min.
  
• The client provides feedback to the consultants: what was useful and what he or she takes away. 2 min.
  

• Generate results that are enduring because each individual and the group produced them together without “outside expertise”
  
• Refine skills in giving, receiving, and asking for help
  
• Tap the intelligence of a whole group without time-consuming up and sideways presentations
  
• Liberate the wisdom and creativity that exists across disciplines and functional silos
  
• Replace boring briefings and updates with an effective and useful alternative
  
• Actively build trust through mutual support and peer connections
  
• Practice listening without defending
  

• Invite a very diverse crowd to help (not only the experts and leaders)
  
• Invite participants to critique themselves when they fall into traps (e.g., jumping to action before clarifying the purpose or the problem). See
  Helping Heuristics
  for a complete list of unwanted patterns when helping or asking for help.
  
• Remind participants to try to stay focused on the client’s direct experience by asking, “What is happening here? How are you experiencing what is happening?”
  
• Advise the consultants to take risks while maintaining empathy
  
• Avoid having some participants choosing not to be clients: everybody has at least one challenge!
  
• If the first round is weak, try a second round
  
• Invite participants not to shy away from presenting complex challenges without easy answers
  

• Restrict the consulting to asking only honest, open questions, focusing on helping the client gain personal clarity. In other words, forbid recommendations and advice (thinly veiled as a question) or any speeches whatsoever! This is also called Q-Storming and is similar to a Quaker Clearness Committee.
  
• Can be used with groups of up to 7 people but not more.
  
• The “large format” of
  Wise Crowds
  makes it possible for one person to ask a whole room for help. See the detailed description of the five structural elements/min specs below.
  
• Use
  Wise Crowds
  with virtual groups by using the chat function to share answers from a small number of consultants, then opening the chat line and whiteboard to the whole group for additional feedback
  
• Link to and string with
  Helping Heuristics
  plus
  Heard, Seen, Respected (HSR), Nine Whys, Troika Consulting, What I
  Need From You
  , and
  Appreciative Interviews
  . These Liberating Structures offer a variety of productive choices for helping.
  

Below: self-administered aid to deepen listening during Wise Crowds

• Ask the participant who is the “client” to describe his or her challenge, the status of any work in progress, and the advice or help he or she is looking for
  
• Ask the other participants to act as a group of “consulting teams” whose task it is to help the “client” clarify his or her challenge and to offer advice or recommendations.
  

• One chair for the client in the front of the room
  
• Screen and projector only if absolutely indispensable
  
• Three chairs for the primary consultants in the front of the room
  
• Groups of 5–8 chairs arranged around small tables, or in circles without tables, for all the satellite consulting teams
  
• Paper for participants to take notes
  
• Index cards at each table to write recommendations
  
• Microphones for the client and primary consultants