What are Liberating Structures?
<h2>What are Liberating Structures?</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.liberatingstructures.com/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Liberating Structures</a> are a selection of 33 alternative structures for facilitating meetings and conversations, curated by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless.</p>
<h2>What’s the value in them?</h2>
<p>There are five main conventional “microstructures” that we default to in organisations and groups:</p>
<ul>
<li>Presentations</li>
<li>Managed discussions</li>
<li>Status reports</li>
<li>Open discussions</li>
<li>Brainstorms</li>
</ul>
<p>The problem with these is they are either too constraining (in the case of presentations, managed discussions and status reports) or too loose (in the case of open discussions and brainstorms).</p>
<p><img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/1*Bpq2-Z_5wq-ZVleAUQqzmg.jpeg" style="height:394px; width:700px" /></p>
<p>Source: “The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures” by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless</p>
<p>Liberating Structures, on the other hand, are designed to embrace distributed control and include a fairer, larger number of people in shaping the next steps. The benefits? Innovation, inclusion, participation, clarity, purpose, fun… you’ll see when you experience them.</p>
<h2>Do you have to be a facilitator to lead Liberating Structures?</h2>
<p>Nope! Liberating Structures are deliberately simple and anyone can lead them which means they can spread virally in an organisation or group. Once you’ve experienced one, it’s very easy to start experimenting. All of the instructions of how to run Liberating Structures are on the <a href="http://www.liberatingstructures.com/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">website </a>and in the <a href="http://www.liberatingstructures.com/bookstore/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">book</a>. On the website, select the LS Menu tab and pick one. If, like me, you’re lazy and like simplicity, read the purpose at the top and then skip to step 5: <strong>Sequence of Steps and Time Allocation.</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://reimaginaire.medium.com/what-are-liberating-structures-de6f6d14c2c8"><strong>Learn More</strong></a></p>