Keith McCandless — The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures

"You don't have to be a methodological genius. These are patterns — 43 simple patterns that anyone can use to include every voice in shaping what happens next."

Keith McCandless, co-developer of Liberating Structures and co-author of The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures, joins Aidan McCullen to explain why most meetings are either over-controlled or under-controlled — and how simple shifts in everyday interaction can unleash a culture of innovation from the frontline to the C-suite.

In this conversation, Keith reveals:

• Why the first field test of Liberating Structures happened in hospitals fighting superbugs — with fifteen languages spoken on a single unit
• The Big Five conventional structures (presentation, managed discussion, status report, brainstorm, open discussion) — and why every one of them quietly fails
• How one father went from a year of monosyllabic answers to an hour-long conversation with his teenage daughter using Creative Destruction
• Why 1-2-4-All fixed a two-year meeting nightmare for twenty project managers in Paris in half an hour
• Why repetition is a source of innovation — and how thinking alone first defeats anchoring bias
• The Ecocycle map a healthcare group crumpled, covered in Post-its, and reused every quarter for a year
• The VA hospital leader who declared mid-session, "All the decisions we just made are final"
• Why influencing culture beats changing culture — and what the adjacent possible has to do with it
• How Liberating Structures moved online with nothing more than a tech host and breakout rooms
• The lesson from Dee Hock, the chaordic organisation, and the war language that limits our world

00:00 Sponsor Message
00:27 Liberating Structures Intro
01:27 Messy Work Environments
02:21 Superbugs Field Test
03:35 What Are They
05:02 Complexity Lens
07:52 Influencing Culture
12:31 Adjacent Possible Innovation
14:18 Personal Life Applications
15:59 Creative Destruction TRIZ
19:28 Neurodiversity Inclusion
22:58 Big Five Meeting Traps
30:27 Microstructures Online
32:26 Online Facilitation Tips
36:50 1-2-4-All In Action
42:25 Eco Cycle Strategy Map
47:39 Liberating Leadership
52:45 Wrap Up And Resources
53:54 Sponsor Thanks Outro

Find Keith McCandless at https://www.liberatingstructures.com — the full repertoire, the app (with at least 33 structures on your phone), and the new Liberating Structures Fieldbook, co-authored with Nancy White.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Before we begin, I wanna thankour sponsor, Kyndryl, who runs
and reimagines the technologysystems that drive advantage for
the world's leading businesses.
With a unique blend of AI-poweredconsulting built on unmatched managed
service capability, Kyndryl helps leadersharness the power of technology for
smarter decisions, faster innovation,and a lasting competitive edge.
You can find out more aboutKyndryl and the Kyndryl Institute

(00:23):
at K-Y-N-D-R-Y-L, kyndryl.com.
Smart leaders know that they would greatlyincrease productivity and innovation
if they could get everyone fullyengaged, so do professors, facilitators,
and every single change maker.
The challenge is how.
Liberating Structures are novel,practical, and no-nonsense methods

(00:47):
to help you accomplish thisgoal with groups of any size.
Prepare to be surprised by how simpleand easy they are for anyone to use.
Today's book shows us how, withdetailed descriptions for putting
them into practice, plus tips on howto get started and traps to avoid.
It takes the design and facilitationmethods experts use and puts them

(01:09):
within the reach of anyone in anyorganization or initiative from
the frontline to the C-suite.
It is a pleasure to welcome theauthor of The Surprising Power of

Liberating Structures (01:19):
Simple Rules to Unleash a Culture of Innovation.
Keith McCandless, welcome to the show.
Thanks Aidan.
This is a take two.
I have to tell our audience this.
We tried to record last week.
We had a total tech malfunction, actuallya Wi-Fi malfunction, and luckily Keith
has moved to a different place to actuallyrecord today with much better Wi-Fi.

(01:42):
But Keith, I wanted to actuallysay something you said to me in
prep for today, because it actuallyspoke to me, where sometimes
you're in a very messy environment.
And one of the great guests I had onthe show before was David Deutsch, and
there's an actual BBC interview with him,and the BBC interviewer is commenting

(02:02):
on how messy his surroundings is.
And he turns to the guy, and he'slike I know where everything is." And
sometimes you see that with great minds.
You see that with people who liketo work in that type of environment.
And you said that to me, that you liketo work in that type of environment
for a very purposeful reason.
I'd love you to share that beforewe even get stuck into the book
I think the best example of it thefirst time we field tested work the

(02:29):
liberating structures, w- was in hospitalsettings where superbugs were spreading.
And in a hospital lots of differentpeople in and out of rooms all the
time, and there's some science how tostop the spread, but each person to

(02:52):
solve-- to stop the spread everybodyhas to change their behavior kind of
at the same time in different ways.
And so that's just built-incomplexity, built-in messiness.
There's
fifteen
languages being spoken there'severy kind of technical gizmo around

(03:15):
people, and there's a power dynamic.
The physicians and the managers, andit goes all the way down to people
cleaning the room, and every one ofthose people need to contribute something
unique to stop the spread of superbugs.
And let's talk aboutthat later on as well.
But for those people wonderingshould they invest their time with

(03:38):
us today, let's share what thebig idea is and maybe a definition
of what a liberating structure is
a definition
simpler than a method.
So as soon as you say the word method,it's like, "Oh, only an expert can
do that." And in your intro yousaid, "Oh, this is for everybody."
Well, these are really patterns.

(04:00):
So if you think about the patternof you go into a room and there's
a presentation Do you have tothink about a method to do that?
You don't.
You just know what's gonna happen.
Everybody has a role.
The steps and the results . youknow, you can expect it.
Well, liberating structures are like that.
It's a set of patterns.
There's now 43 simplepatterns that anyone can use.

(04:25):
you don't have to be amethodological genius to do it.
And what they do is make it possibleto include every voice in shaping
what happens next, and only whathappens next, but the future.
And that there's a number of practicalreasons to do that, which we'll get into.

(04:47):
But these are patterns that you can easilystart to use include of the voices, all of
the expertise, all of the experience thatadds up to something where you can be more
creative and adaptive as an organization
Keith, one of the things I thought we'dtalk about was the idea of complexity,

(05:09):
because it really is a foundational ideabehind your work and the messiness even,
the complexity talks to that messinessbecause it's from the messiness that
you actually can create brilliance.
And I thought we'd talk a little bit aboutthat because you also share admiration
for a great friend of the show anda, a gentleman I became friends with

(05:30):
through the show, which was the greatDee Hock, the founder of Visa and the
author of the this idea of the chaordicorganization, which we both love.
Maybe we'll say something aboutcomplexity and then also about
Dee Hock, may he rest in peace
Yeah.
Well when you look through a complexitylens at the world, you can see that the

(05:52):
world is mostly mechanistically viewed,and the habits that we've developed
over are more cause and effect oriented.
And you do this, you do that,and you're gonna get this result.
And most of the complexity scientistsunderstand that their causes and effects

(06:15):
can be causes and effects of themselves.
It's more circular.
It's messier.
when you're facing a complexchallenge, there's lots of different
levels of input that contributeto any significant transformation.
So, w- we-- the ecological view a betterlens through which to look at this work.

(06:42):
And it's in stark contrastto a mechanistic one.
so in mechanistic things,you change the part.
You focus on-- the attention on the part.
You're gonna fix that part of the machine,and then the whole machine will work.
a complex system, you look atthe relationship among the parts.

(07:02):
What's the pattern ofrelationship among the parts?
In this case, the parts are people.
I don't wanna fix a person.
I have no need to fix you.
You are perfect as you are, but theway you're relating, the pattern of how
you're relating to others in your workenvironment or your family or even to

(07:23):
yourself, that pattern of relating, ifyou take a small enough view, and we
take a microstructural view of it, ifyou can shift that pattern, that shifts
the entire system, not just a part.
So beauty of it, if-- and the simplicityof it is, you can ignore fixing

(07:45):
the parts, but you focus all yourattention on the relat- the pattern
of relationship among the parts.
we'll dive into that because the big thingI took from the book was, I, I l- I loved
and we h- hosted on the show before, BJFogg, who wrote the book Tiny Habits,
who spawned books like Atomic Habits.

(08:05):
James Clear, I think, eventook one of BJ Fogg's classes.
And the idea of habits, I mean,if you think about any type of
change, a personality change,that it's actually starts with
small little habit changes first.
They compound, and they join together,and they become a shift in personal
reality, which becomes personality.

(08:27):
And I loved what you wrote here.
You said, "It is possible to influenceculture instead of change culture.
Through the use of liberating structures,the word change itself implies from
going from A to B, which suggeststhat B is already been decided."
And there's a b- diagram in the book,a- and I'm gonna show this on the screen

(08:48):
for those people watching us on YouTube.
For, but for those who aren't, let'shave a little bit of empathy for
them, because this diagram showshow liberating structures influence
change rather than change itself.
So, I'm gonna share this onthe screen now, and let's just
describe it a little bit for thosepeople who can't see it, Keith
A lot of attention is paid inmost organization on values,

(09:12):
what we say the way it should be.
And pretty clearly you can see thatwhat we say-- There's a difference
between what we say and what we do, andthere's tension associated with that.
The other thing that gets a lotof attentions are the beliefs,
the vision of what should be.

(09:34):
And, Those are great places to focus,but for me, what liberating structures
do, and the most powerful by far, is tolook at those habits, what we do every
day, and immediately shift the pattern.
And with that we can get closerto doing what we say is important.

(09:55):
You know, with our values, we can reducethe difference between what we say
is important and what we actually do.
And and there's various liberatingstructures to help specifically with that.
these beliefs that we have, becausewe're getting closer to doing
what we say is important beliefschange about what is possible.

(10:20):
And for me, the most im- powerful,simple place to immediately
get started is with That's thepattern of everyday interaction.
So when you go into aroom who participates?
Who speaks and who listens?
How much time do they have?

(10:40):
And you can play around with those things,very quickly and make a dramatic influence
on this larger thing is the culture.
The interaction of these threeelements creates a culture, and you--
primary place to focus with liberatingstructures is on these everyday habits

(11:02):
I loved what you said here.
You said, "At the core of the book isthe practical idea that simple shifts in
our routine behaviors, our patterns ofinteraction, make it possible for everyone
to be included, engaged, and unleashedin solving problems, driving innovation,
and achieving extraordinary outcomes."
But you go on to say, "Liberatingstructures help us let go of control

(11:23):
safety." And I thought that was reallyimportant because you talked about
command and control a lot in thebook, as did our, the great Dee Hock.
He talked about that that'sactually how we've been trained.
It's in our language.
And you quote Ludwig Wittgenstein,in the opening of the book.
But there's another quote by Wittgensteinthat, "The limits of my language are the

(11:46):
limits of my world." And Dee talked aboutthe fact that most of the language we use
in businesses has been imported from war.
It's battle language, andit gets into our heads.
But so too do top-down structures.
And what I loved about liberatingstructures, and I'd love you to share, is
that it's, it's not just quite bottom-up.

(12:07):
It's actually, it's everywheredown… It's everywhere dispersed
because it's changes in thehabits, not just of the bottom up.
It's top-down.
It's everywhere.
It's, little nudges that can change andcompound, and then you see this ripple
effect, like you said, about complexitythat leads to a total different reality.

(12:29):
So maybe we'll share alittle bit about that.
you're making me think about oneof the fundamental strategies
underneath the work, and it'scalled the adjacent possible.
And so this is, out of biology, butit's another complex system, and it

(12:49):
makes sense that innovation unfolds notthrough a big idea, or rarely is it a big
idea that comes and changes everything.
It's the exploitation or theadaptation of your nearest
neighbor, the thing closest to you.

(13:10):
And what we're doing with LiberatingStructures is inviting each
person to explore the immediateneighborhood, make small adaptations
to it, report back on what they'relearning in a continuous fashion.
And so it's at its core, and I thinkthis is why I'm talking with you,

(13:31):
its core, it's an innovation strategythat starts with every person's
ability to creatively adapt andexplore that in which they're in.
It doesn't come from anexpert, doesn't come down.
It really comes from what theyalready know and who they already are.
And through, again, changing this patternof how they're relating many different

(13:56):
levels of people in the organizationdifferent ideas about what's happening
when you're faced with a big disruption.
Those-- each individual is reallydeveloping a unique next step,
and the combination of those nextneighborly next steps is the source
of innovation that this work unleashes

(14:18):
when you read a book like this, you thinkabout yourself, and you think about places
where maybe you've seen this manifest.
And one of the places it manifested was,I remember, and luckily it was right
before COVID, I had a chat with my wife,and I was like, "Go on, let- let's…"
This might have been a bit loadedhere, but what I wanted to do was
kinda list stuff that we were doing,each of us were doing, that was

(14:42):
getting on the other person's nerves.
So one of the things that came up wasmy wife said I had a habit of leaving
the, the cupboards open in the kitchen.
And so I just, I changed it.
So I actually made aconscious effort to do it.
It was a tiny thing.
Like, for me, it was kind of flippant.

(15:02):
I'm from the country, soit wasn't a huge deal.
But for her it was a huge deal 'causecleanliness, and hygiene, and flies,
and all that kind of stuff, right?
So I did it, and it had a dramatic impacton our relationship, a positive impact.
It reminded me of that because it wasa lit- like this little tiny habit
that would become a bad habit that wasjust compounding over and over again,

(15:23):
and it was probably making what otherthings that were small seem bigger
because I was constantly doing this.
But then you point out in thebook, because I wanna actually
talk about this, how this can helpyour life at a personal level.
It's not just about business.
Because you talked about a father for,who had been for almost a year unable

(15:45):
to get beyond a monosyll- syllabicresponse from his teenage daughter.
So let's share how one littlechange there, and this is an
example of a liberating structure,changed where all of a sudden she's
talking to him for over an hour
Henri and I, when we're doing fieldwork to support this the very first
times we'd go into a country, workwith a big company do strategy work to,

(16:10):
like, can we move to the next level?
Can we make this transition thatthe whole company's trying to make
across the world here in Brazil?
And we'd stay for a week afterwardand do office hours, and people would
come in and we thought they weregonna wanna talk about the business.
They had an hour to use any way theywanted, and inevitably it would be, "Well,

(16:33):
I wanna use this particular liberatingstructure." Let's-- One that we call
creative destruction is a family one.
They wanna talk about theirkids and their family.
The business issues were down thelist, seven or eight or nine, you
know, they-- All of the thingsthey really wanted to talk about.
So what we recommended and what peopleoften did was a child in your home one

(16:56):
thing that's pretty effective is to ask,you know, "What are all the things that
you can do to really the entire familywrong and, you know, and, and irritate or
do-- You know, what's the worst behavioryou can imagine that's going to disrupt
the family? And let's think about--let's all think about that together.
What are all the things we can do?" Andthey tend it to be a list of habits.

(17:18):
You know, let's imagine allof the ones that we could do.
then the second part is, well, whichones are we actually doing, you know,
that are going on in this household?
And then third part of it,it's, sounds but it isn't.
Third part is, well,which ones can we stop?
Which ones when, when, when-- Like maybeAidan, you'd say, "Well, I can close

(17:40):
the cupboard. You know, I can really--I can try to do that." here, the i-
the big idea behind that, even at thefamily level, level or the individual
level if for innovation to emerge, thereneeds to be things that are stopped.
There has to be open space anew behavior to enter in to this

(18:03):
environment in which you're operating.
And so it's one of thefundamental liberating structures.
We used to call it TRIZ,but it's poorly named.
It's creative destruction.
It's like w- what is it that we canstop to make space for innovation?
And it-- for me, it was a surprise.
It works in the family, it works in acorporation, it probably works everywhere.

(18:27):
But I had to be shown itworked at the family level.
I love it, and it reminded meof a Peter Drucker quote that if
you wanna do something new, youhave to stop doing something old.
And, you know, when I work withorganisations like you do on innovation,
I usually start with, like, habits.

(18:48):
And it's actually where can youcarve out new space to innovate
or to be innovative in any way?
And one of the things I was gettingat with, one of the things I liked
about i- Liberating Structuresis your idea of and it's not just
diversity washing or equity washing.
It's like, it's the neurodiversity andequity of contribution where everybody

(19:14):
has the right cognitive capacity toshare what they, how they see the world.
And if everybody's doing that,you have just such a bigger
range of options fr- from that.
And I think that's suchan important thing.
Before we start to go into the conceptsof macro structures and micro structures
and how , most of us are limited withwhat we actually use, let's share the

(19:37):
importance of that quotient that we canlean into as organisations and as leaders
there's two parts of it, I guess.
One is we've designed the structures andthe way they're described the patterns
so that somebody who doesn't like tomake eye contact use them productively.

(20:00):
Second thing is the-- they all startwith some moment to pause to give an
individual, each individual, 'causewe're inviting them to contribute.
We're inviting, giving them aminute or more just to think for
themselves and write it down.
As you're thinkingabout it, write it down.

(20:21):
So we're building in and there's a lotmore to it, but we're building in all
the different ways that people learnand like to communicate, and that
accommodates the neurodiversity andcelebrates it even in lots of ways.
There's quite a bit of non-verbalactivity, including drawing

(20:46):
expressions, things that we invitethat you wouldn't normally see.
so in those two ways, one is thework is simple enough that really
anybody can run a structure.
then the of the work itself draws outeach individual's creative adaptability

(21:08):
with whatever strength they have.
And I give examples about that, butyou just have-- for the moment, take my
word for it that when you look acrossa repertoire of forty-three patterns,
every kind of unique contribution thata-- or nearly every type of unique
contribution is invited by the work

(21:30):
So one of the ways you describethis is we're limited by language.
So this is why I brought up Freakanstein.
We're limited by the, the letters we usein an alphabet, and you say actually most
of us are using five, if even we're usingfive different letters, and you have a
very limited vocabulary if you do that.

(21:50):
But you introduced 43, and you'veupgraded it even since the first
book, Liberating Structures.
Now you have the Field Book aswell, which introduces even more.
So there's 43 letters, and if you thinkabout the idea of the factorial and how
they can all combine like Lego blocks,you can create multiple different things.
But let's talk about the differenceof that and what those five are that

(22:11):
limit us mostly, and actually, the,the big thing you do when you reali-
when you read the book is you realisethis is not stupidity by leaders.
Most are trained in this.
Th- this is all they know of.
It's more about ignorance,and not stupidity ignorance.
It's, like, not knowing.
So you, you don't know what you don'tknow, and when you know, when you

(22:33):
know there's other options there,you can unleash yourself as a leader.
And then the next difficulty becomesactually will I try this and will I stick
with it, because it's g- obviously gonnabe awkward when I start with these things.
So a lot in there, Keith, but theidea of the macro structures, these
f- these limiting ideas, and thenmicro structures and the idea of the

(22:55):
43 versions of liberating structures.
I spent my whole career looking at macrochanges, and I-- starting with quality
improvement and then benchmarking andidealized design and scenario planning and
design thinking and human-centered design.

(23:16):
All the Dee Hock's work, you know, a,whole cavalcade, and I had positions
where I was the kind of research directorturning people onto these approaches.
And the single disappointing,soul-crushing experience with that is

(23:38):
they never really caught on There aresome experts that were developed in
small clumps within organizations, butthey never were practiced in any depth.
And usually were made to mirror theexpert orientation, the mechanical

(23:58):
orientation that we're just… It'severything around us, so we mimic
that in how we adopted these veryexciting ideas, these approaches.
And so I-- Because of the complexityscience and thinking, well, it's
the pattern of relationship.
It's not the ideas themselves.
The pattern underneath about howwe're using human-centered design

(24:21):
or Chaordic design or any…
it doesn't matter.
They all fell into the same, I'mgonna call it a trap, and I'm
gonna be really hard on the waythe trap manifests in habits.
So the habits that get in ourway is these ideas are delivered
in a presentation, right?

(24:42):
And a presentation is very limiting.
It's a mo-monopoly on all the good idea.
So it's one person's idea, and they'relay it on you, and at the end of a
presentation, they may remember toaft- after all these ideas, that are
spewed out are there any questions?
But they'll probably forget'cause it's a total ego trip.

(25:03):
There's very little relationship betweenthe presenter and the unwashed, right?
It's just, it's a powerdynamic that's negative.
So I'm gonna be really hardon each of these big five.
We call them the big five.
The second one is, well, let's bringan expert facilitator in And let's

(25:24):
have the leader work in cahootswith the expert facilitator to get
the outcomes, outcomes out there.
And so the group will arrive at a placethat we've already predetermined, where
everybody knows they just need to sitback, kind of it wash over them, but,

(25:46):
they're gonna have to do something later.
And when you bring the facilitator in--again, I'm being not very nice about
this, but it's they're working in cahoots,and you really don't have any influence
over it, and, and people know it.
Okay?
So that's the manageddiscussion, is what it's called.
oftentimes the leader will think, "Oh,well, we'll get some great interaction

(26:08):
there, and it'll be great. We'llall agree on the thing we already
determined." It just doesn't work.
It doesn't work, Aidan.
It doesn't.
Third thing is a status report.
Everybody… You know, let's heareverybody's voice, you're sitting
around the table or wherever it is,and only at-- someone who's demented

(26:29):
would actually say anything thatwasn't rosy and positive, right?
The report is always, well,what does the leader wanna hear?
What do you think?
Are they having a bad day or good day?
Can we add anything that'sactually spicy in this update?
Usually, no.
There's no cover.
It's very dangerous.
Fourth one which is moremodern, but it's the brainstorm.

(26:53):
Let's get a couple of the reallysmart, high talented people in a room
away from wherever the operations oraction is, and we'll have them dream
up some really great best practicesor, you know, really big ideas.
And then later on, we'll haveto bribe coerce people to adopt
those brainstorm ideas, right?

(27:16):
So that's brainstorming.
And again, I'm not being nice, butthat's often how it rolls frequently.
So these are all patterns.
I'm describing a dynamic and a pattern.
And then the fifth one, the-- of thebig five, and these are the ones,
only ones we seem to use The fifthone is the open discussion, and this
is when leader or manager whoever'sconvening the group, ha-hasn't gotten

(27:41):
what they need from a presentation ora facilitated discussion, a brainstorm,
or a, a, a update kind of thing.
And they just say, "Oh, anybody cansay anything. The rules are open."
And typically what that does, there'snot enough structure there, so a couple
people get into a, a familiar argument.

(28:02):
And everybody is sort of amused, butit's not productive kind of conversation.
And then at the end, the manager orleader usually has to say, "Isn't it
great that we all had a chance to saywhat we think? Now we've-- we're gonna
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.
It's-- I'm not being nice about it, butthat's kind of where we are, it's all
either over-controlled or under-controlled
I'm trying to think of the guy.
There's a quote, oh, it's like, "If I,if I want your opinion, I'll, I'll give
it to you." And it's kinda like that.

(28:44):
It's like we have the strategy.
We have to pretend to the group thatwe've listened to them so they feel
that they're empowered and that we'vetaken in their feedback on board.
There's a cartoon that I often sharewhere it shows a lady putting an idea
into an idea box, and then it zoomedout, and underneath the table there's
a shredder that shreds the ideas.

(29:06):
And like kinda, it's kinda like that.
We go through this rigmarole, but it'sactually not really listening to people,
when actually there's gold in there
Well, even if there's a strategy.
let's say superbug work again,'cause this is where it started.
I like to talk about it.
It was really clear thing.
There's things that workto eliminate superbugs, and

(29:27):
everybody knew the strategy.
They just didn't know… So the strategyis keep surfaces clean, wash your
hands, isolate patients, How-- So howdo you-- how does housekeeping do that?
How does a busy doctor whojust wants to pop into the room
briefly, how do they do it?
How does the per- person schedulingand the room cleaning and the,

(29:47):
lunch going in and out of the room,how do all those things how do you
relate to each other on a unit Howdo you do the strategy together?
Even if it's not strategicthinking, it's operational.
Everybody's unique, creative, adaptiveapproach needs to be included, and once
it is, then strategy can change, too.

(30:08):
Okay, we don't-- We-- so anyway,that's-- You triggered me a little
Hopefully not in a negativesense, I triggered him.
no.
Jacob's like, "Ah, I've gotta tell you
For those not watching, he's throwing,he's smashing up his environment.
He's trying to make it messy again.
I triggered him.
But I, I, I wanted to come back to one ofthe definitions, 'cause it's a term you

(30:32):
coined, which is microstructures, and I'llpull a little excerpt from the book here.
"Tangible microstructuresare the physical spaces where
interactions or work take place.
They are like the room wherethe family eats dinner.
.. They include how we choose toarrange the tangible structural
elements within that space, tables,chairs, flip charts, and the like.
Intangible ones are how we microorganize our interactions with

(30:55):
elements such as an agenda."
And I pulled this excerptin particular, "Conventional
microstructures in one form or theother have been around for centuries.
They are designed forconvincing, teaching, debating,
brainstorming, controlling, orsome combination of these purposes.
Their usefulness, however, is limitedby side effects that are difficult or
impossible to avoid, such as unengagedparticipants or audiences, excessive power

(31:19):
dynamics, and competition for attention,bodies present but minds absent."
And the reason I pulled that, Keith, Iwould love your opinion on this, because
you wrote the first book a long time ago.
Not that long ago, but particularlymore… It was before we had so

(31:39):
much interaction on tools likeSlack or WhatsApp or Zoom or
Teams or any of these platforms.
And as a facilitator, when you'reasked to do some type of webinar
or some type of event virtually,that, for me, that compounds because
the human energy, the setup of theroom, they're so, so important.

(32:05):
And I th- I actually do think this,Keith, that oftentimes when you're
the facilitator and you ask for theroom to be set up in a certain way,
there's a little bit of like an, "Oh,that person's being awkward," but
it, it has a such a dramatic effect.
I mean, it's the point of the whole book.
But in a virtual world, thatbecomes even more difficult, and
I'd love your thoughts on that.

(32:26):
Yeah.
So you gotta get the new book becausewe completely online facilitation.
And we started with the idea,just as you're saying, it
must be much harder It isn't.
You have to be able to do-- Well,the, the main thing we recommend,

(32:49):
it's you, the facilitator, you'rehosting, and you have a tech host.
And the tech host manages breakoutrooms and chat and a, a few things
that are not as tangible or physical.
But I think you'd be-- I wannainvite you to some things to
s- have you see it in person.

(33:12):
the same kind of things that you doin a room, you do in a breakout room.
And there are some differences,but primarily but one of the
original liberating structuresmade it into the online repertoire.
And I think they producevery nearly the same results.

(33:40):
so you do it is similar.
Like what we're doing, we'replaying around with time.
First by yourself, a minute.
Get out a pen even though you're online.
Get out a piece of paper and get apen, and l- let's make it tactile.
For this minute, you have a chanceto jot down some thoughts about
how we're-- what we might do nextor what you think is going on.

(34:05):
Then you're gonna go in a breakout roomwith one other person, and then we're,
and you're just gonna share your idea.
And then you may really like thatperson, but you're, now you're gonna
be thrown for a couple minutes andthen a breakout room with four, and
there's gonna be two more ideas.
And suddenly this the world in whichyou're trying to figure out what's

(34:30):
going on is enriched in the sameway that if you created little…
If you had people in chairs and apair rotated to a group of four.
So as long as you have atech host doing the work.
And now you come back to the main roomand those groups of four, you can have
400 people or 800 people, doesn't matter.
The groups of four, something spectacularhappened in their room, an insight

(34:54):
or an action they're invited to itinto and you have a record of that
you can immediately scan up and down.
All the participants, p- participants can,can see the insights or the actions that
were generated by groups of four So the--I'm talking about the upside of online

(35:18):
interactions it is more challenging.
I'll tell you that the reality of itis in generating momentum and action.
Like, so what we want, and the reasonliberating structures have spread
around the world, is because theygenerate engagement, they generate

(35:39):
resolve, and they generate action.
So if you're-- if you want the resolve andthe action, not just the engagement, but
also everybody brings their imagination.
They start to decide, thisis-- We-- I need to do this.
I need to make my little move in theneighborhood, you know, my, my adjacent

(36:00):
possible option, and I'm gonna do it.
So if you can get that, it won't matterto you whether it's online or face to face
You just reminded me, , Istarted my business during COVID.
A- and w- that's what I was doing.
I was doing this stuff.
I didn't have the language for it, but Iprobably am showing a personal preference

(36:23):
here of the, the one thing I feel likeit was great that those sessions went
well, but, like, you're- you emit anenergy, and I think people can feel
that better when you're , in a session.
But when you're talking aboutlots and lots of people, maybe
online engages people more.
Certainly, some people prefer it,I think, where they'd rather that

(36:44):
than actually being in a breakoutroom, rather than being actually
in a physical room with people.
But you triggered one here for us.
So you preempted a liberating structure.
So just I want to remind our audienceagain, liberating structures are
almost like letters of the alphabet.
They can be used to trigger habitchange inside an organization,
not bottom up, not top down,widespread across the organization.

(37:07):
One of them, and it was used actuallyin my research, apart from reading the
book and our rehearsal episode we did, Iwas-- I listened to you interviewed by a
former guest on the show, Aaron Dignan,and he has a business called The Ready,
and he talked about the fact that theyuse one of these liberating structures.
They l- they loved your work, andthey brought it into the organization,

(37:29):
and it's the idea of 1-2-4-All.
And if there's nothing else anyone elsedoes from this episode, it's do this one,
because this one, as long as you have, youknow, y- you're either facilitating or you
have that many people in your business,you can't do it if you're on your own.
But 1-2-4-All is an easyone to get started with

(37:51):
I'm gonna give context to it.
I was in Paris in a corporate headquartersand we're walking down the hall with
my co-author, Henri, and a s- a projectmanager comes and says, "Come and fix
our meeting." know, it's a nightmare.
It's been going on for two years.
The project managers, there's 20 of us.
We're in a room.
It's beyond imagination what's going on.

(38:15):
And, you know, in France it's, a littlediff- there's a cultural thing going on.
But we go into the room, thelights are turned way down.
There's one person in the frontdroning with a, projection on a
screen, and everybody else has theircomputers open part way, and it
looks like they're all doing email.
And so we're, we, we've beeninvited to fix the meeting, and this

(38:38):
has been going on for two years.
It's, it's deadly.
First thing, you know, "Can we turnon the lights? Can we…" You know and
what we suggest, let's do a 1-2-4-All.
What's wrong with this?
So the invitation to thewhole group is do you diagnose
what's wrong with this meeting?
And first think for yourself,talk to your partner, they're

(38:58):
all in a square configuration.
Then a group of four, andcome up with the things.
So it's one minute by themselves, twominutes in a pair, group of four, come
up with, with the key things that arewrong, you know, that, that are wrong.
And so there were four groups, Iguess, maybe five groups, and they
all identified the same thing.

(39:20):
You know, the, the four, the fourminutes and then all was just took
two or three minutes to find outthat they all had the same diagnosis.
Said, "Okay, well, let's doanother." And this is an interesting
thing about 1-2-4-All, repetitionis a source of innovation.
So we're just like, "Well, let's doanother one of those, but let's do it
about what would be some moves you couldmake immediately to solve the-- to change

(39:43):
the character of this tedious projectmanager meeting?" So they did another
1-2-4-All in that sequence, one minute,two minutes, four minutes, and the all.
And group, there was one uniqueidea, but there were three ideas
that every group had, and they allagreed, and like they were doing it.
They immediately… Every voice hadbeen heard they had three really

(40:09):
solid solutions to the problemand they were ready to do it.
And in this entire experience in the roomwith the group, in about a half an hour,
Henri and I felt cont- confident that wecould leave the room that they had forever
changed that meeting something productive.
so that's, that's 1-2-4 all.

(40:30):
One of the things I thought was soimportant and that it, it speaks
to what we spoke about earlier onwas you have a leader in the room.
The leader cannot disguisetheir preference for an idea,
and maybe it's their idea.
And as to your point earlier on, yousaid, like, for example, you're kind
of looking for cues from the leader.

(40:51):
"Well, I, I need to say what they want.
I need to be on board.
I can't be the person who's,like, the na- seen as the naysayer
but could be the gainsayer.
So don't speak up becausewe know what happens.
The last time people went missing," right?
And you're, like, going, "Okay, if if Ido one, two for all, I'm spending time
on my own first to actually come up withmy own genuine ideas, if I have them."

(41:16):
And in there, it defeats anchoring,so this anchoring that happens
inside organizations to anchoraround what idea is deemed the best
by everybody else, 'cause these arereally important biases that prevent
people from innovating all the time
The CEOs or senior leadersthat I've worked with all
wanted to change the dynamic.

(41:39):
They knew that something waswrong and their groups were
dysfunctional in one way or another.
And That was a refreshing andmind-blowing for them to let go of that
experience that they'd had that, thatthey needed to come up with the idea,

(42:01):
then they needed to push that through.
And so I guess emotionallythe habit was harder.
They had all the desire and ambitionto change it more than other people,
but the actual habit of not havingtheir idea make it to the top I

(42:22):
had to have empathy for them often.
not always because a, a typicalthing that we do would be… I'm
gonna describe another liberatingstructure briefly called the eco-cycle.
And you, you put all of your strategieson a a chart that has things that

(42:43):
are being birthed, things that aremature, strategies that are delivering
results, things that need to becreatively destroyed or stopped, and
then those that are in gestation orthey're a seed rather than a birth.
on either side, there's a trap a povertytrap where the seeds don't turn into
birth, and a rigidity trap on the otherside where the strategy that did work that

(43:09):
isn't working anymore doesn't get stopped.
You keep using it past its prime.
so when the whole group is involvedin placing individually that each
place where these strategies, thecurrent strategies fit and the
new strategies and strategies thataren't-- are just seeds at the moment.
They put them all up on the where theyare and start to talk about priorities

(43:33):
and all that kind of thing And then thesenior leaders are, "Oh my, now I see
all of these in a context." And I'm--know that it's a really new context for
them, and they have really big ideas.
And we sort of move, move thatconversation from where things are
now to where they might be, and whatwe might do to move our strategies

(43:57):
forward through birth to maturity,what needs to be creatively destroyed,
and what needs to be m-more investmentto get a seed to a, a birth.
And that kind of thinking is somethingthat an individual has usually done
by themselves or a, a senior leaderhas done by themselves or just with

(44:17):
a few people in the senior team.
And suddenly it's all there foreveryone to see, a much larger group.
And it's breathtaking, and it'sbreathtaking because… And I'll
often ask the leaders privately on theside, "Well," with a smile kinda, "You
knew that, right?" You knew that Theydidn'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.
And again, the pattern of interactionwas there were more voices included,
more insight, and the thinking that younormally attach to the senior leadership
group was dramatically improved.

(45:04):
And I want this-- When I'm workingwith a group, I want that experience,
although it's hard, right?
you're not alone.
You got the whole groupto think strategically.
Do you wanna do more of that?
And the again, I had to learnthese lessons in the field.
I had one of these bigmaps on a piece of paper.
You know, I like working in face-to-facetoo a big healthcare group, and we

(45:30):
spent a couple days on their strategydoing this work I just described.
And I didn't go back for another yearto work with them, and they unrolled the
same piece of paper, and there'd beenhundreds of dirty looking Post-it notes
and replacements and arrows and commentsmade on this piece of paper, which was
crumpled, and it was just a big mess.

(45:51):
But they'd used it every quarter sinceI w- they'd used it four times to rework
this magic that was, wow, together asa lar- an expanded leadership group
was so much smarter than the group, afew people at the top by themselves.
So it kind of like, okay And Iwant you to notice that that was
something you didn't know, andthat might be a little difficult.

(46:14):
But if you wanna continue with this work,you need to recognize that the group gonna
be more creative and adaptive the larger--more people we can include in it, the more
chance we're gonna do really smart things
I think that's one of those hangoversfrom the post-world wars world where many

(46:34):
of the leaders who got into positionswere rewarded with those positions
because they were m- generals in thearmy, and you didn't have access to
the, to the field, to the battlefieldto actually get that information.
Or, or you didn't want it becauseyou didn't have time or you could be
sending people to certain death andyou didn't wanna know who they were.
But that idea of the organizationa- as everybody's empowered as

(46:58):
sensors to detect danger, to spotopportunities is, is a shift that is
not really taught in business schools.
And I think that this is where we'retalking about the ignorance, that
it's not stupidity, it's ignorance.
It's, it's not knowing thatthese options are there.
And like you said, when they, theleader themselves, has the psychological

(47:21):
safety to go, "Actually, it was Keith insector 7G who came up with that idea,"
and you're talking in the boardroomand you're telling your board that
y- yeah, we've empowered the wholeorganization, that's a brilliant story.
Like, you don't need to have allthe information as the leader.
And it brings us to actually chapterfour of the book, which is called

(47:42):
Liberating Leadership, and this isabout how leaders can avoid perpetuating
the problems they complain about.
And you open up this chapter bysaying, "Leaders don't purposely set
out to demotivate employees or todiscourage them from speaking up.
They don't want to discourage cooperation.
They don't want thousands of uselessmeetings conducted in their organizations.

(48:03):
It's the contrary.
They live with these frustrationsbecause they don't see any other
choice." So maybe we'll share someways leaders can actually lean into
this, some ideas they can employ.
One I'll just wanted to br- remind you ofis earlier on you talked about the idea
of a new leader acquires a company, sothis organization acquires another one.

(48:28):
They're, they're the co-company that's being merged.
Of course, there's hugefear, huge resistance there.
He goes and he has one meeting,conducts that meeting, total bomb site.
It was terrible.
But he goes a second time, and thistime he just sits among everybody else.
That's all, the only change.
This is a liberating structure in action.
Tiny change, dramaticallydifferent impact.

(48:50):
So with that, I'll tee you up totalk about liberating leadership.
Well it's a big thing to movefrom I'm commanding to guiding on
the side and, um Uh, two things.
One is a, a little story.
A field let's say VeteransAdministration hire to run their

(49:14):
hospital and hospital system.
So this particular guy I'mthinking of, , his name was Clyde.
He sets up field hospitals and worked inAfghanistan and a senior military leader.
And he moved over tohospital work in the US.

(49:34):
So was pretty intrigued andcounterintuitively in the
military, you really do need alot of intelligence from the field
immediately shared back and forth.
And so we were doing really early workwith liberating structures and his--
there were 90 people in a big room,and they were trying to figure out how
to do referral patterns or something.

(49:56):
I don't remember the content very well.
But we were using a liberating structurecalled User Experience Fishbowl, where
a few people were talking about, it, andthey could ask people around the outside.
These 90 people were in groups, andthey were generating ideas, too.
And partway through this leader, wecouldn't-- Henri and I couldn't tell

(50:17):
if it was meaningful or w-what wasgoing on, but this leader just threw up
his hands And said, "This is the bestconversation, the most action-oriented
conversation we've ever had together.
All the decisions we just made," andI didn't hear any decisions at all,

(50:39):
"are final." He got so excited aboutthis exchange from people closer to
the field with the leadership decisionsthat he needed to make as a, a whole
organization That he was ready inthat moment to just like, "Okay, those
are decisions." Now, that's too fastand too soon, and all kinds of things

(51:02):
were-- made me uncomfortable about it.
But that's the relief that a leader canfeel when they can rely on more people
and have some patterns to use to relyon more people to generate direction.
Now the other s- a littlestory I wanna tell you.

(51:23):
can't tell you how many senior leaderswould say to me, when I retire,
the thing I wanna do is what you'redoing." it just made me think, well,
why aren't you-- Wait a second.
Why-- You could be doing it right now.
I'm not… I'm, you know, I swish in,I help you, and I'm, I, I go away.
could do that every day here,and it, there's still some

(51:46):
hesitancy, so some clumsiness.
Aidan, I think you called it.
be a little clumsy whenyou first start, right?
You'd have to do one minute, andthen two minutes, and you need to
switch groups, and then you know,there's all this stuff comes out.
How do you make sense out of that?
So it does take a little practice.
But I think they could ask for helpfrom some people in their organization

(52:08):
to get this going, and I've seen plentyof CEOs the work needed and enable
the work needed to make it happen.
So that's… It's not insurmountable,but you're gonna start somewhere, and
it's not gonna be… It can be veryemotional, but you need to keep it going.
It's not just oh, we're gonnause it at the special event, and

(52:32):
then we're gonna stop using it.
It's actually an everydaykind of habit everyone.
So it's, you get into it, you'llget the best results if you can
do it everywhere with everyone
Amazing.
I think it's a, a lovely way to,lovely place to leave it actually,
and we'll encourage people to get thebook because really we couldn't do it.

(52:56):
It'd be like drinking water fromthe hose pipe to go through all
43 liberating structures today.
And the new book is just out, thenew field book as well is just out.
For you, Keith, where is the bestplace to find that book, to find
you, to find the work that youdo with Liberating Structures and
your colleague and co-author Henri?
Yeah.
The best place is a, a websiteand well, an app as well.

(53:22):
If you're a phone user at least 33 of theLiberating Structures are available on
your phone and you can just search for it.
You'll find it.
Website just created to match the newbook is at www.liberatingstructures.com.
And the book's available Amazon andLightning Source and you can find it

(53:48):
anywhere in the world and it's calledthe Liberating Structures Field Book
It's been a pleasurehaving you on the show.
Before I thank you and sign offwith you, I wanna thank our sponsor,
Kyndryl, who runs and reimagines thetechnology that runs the infrastructure
for the world's best businesses.
Some of them you mentioned,healthcare, banking.
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(54:10):
of AI-powered consulting built onunmatched managed service capability.
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Sounds a little bit likeLiberating Structures does as well.
You can find out more about Kyndrylat K-Y-N-D-R-Y-L, kyndryl.com.
And finally, I wanna thank our authorand our guest, author of The Surprising

(54:33):
Power of Liberating Structures, KeithMcCandless, thank you for joining us
Aidan, my pleasure.
Thank you