Facilitation & Liberating Structures iceberg
This is about my private facilitation & Liberating Structures iceberg. A journey down the rabbit hole of facilitation and related disciplines, so to say. Take from it whatever may interest you.
I’ve divided the iceberg into 4+1 tiers:
Above the surface — things that are easy to find and relatively not that much time-consuming
Shallow waters — things that you may find with some minor effort or that are a bit more time-consuming than the previous ones
Deep dive — things requiring some more digging to find and some effort to process, yet worth your while IMO
Mariana trench — deepest topics, specialized areas of knowledge, requiring lots of effort to process and rather hard to find quickly. Sometimes it’s not even available publicly, or there are only breadcrumbs of the topic here and there
Free-floating stuff— some ideas, concepts, approaches, etc. that I do not know much of, just heard the name. I do not see them as part of my iceberg as I don’t know them. This may change with time. Dig deeper if you will.
Above the surface
https://www.liberatingstructures.com/ — well, a pretty easy find. I’d say that half of the 33 structures are “pick & use”, not much preparation is required. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Fun to use, and fun to practice.
Youtube materials, blogs, etc. — most of the materials of this kind related to basics are very easy to find. Just type the query in your favorite browser and clickety-click a bit.
Visiting a local or online group of practice — yep, pretty easy, sign up, remember to be excellent to each other, and well, have fun.
Liberating Structures Slack channel — https://join.slack.com/t/liberatingstructures/shared_invite/zt-1q3qbpykz-8QyobDoaJ2gR1bbXZY~TXA — there are lots of useful materials and conversations there
Idealogue — there’s this book — “Beyond Brainstorming — Idealogue” by Pepe Nummi for 3$ or so. Well, it’s one technique revolving around “stealing” good ideas… and that’s that. I don’t really know what more to add here — it’s a description of one technique with some twists for 3$ or so. I almost forgot to add it to the list.
Brainstorming by Alex Faickney Osborn and various variations of it — well, I can say that when it comes to idea generation “brainstorming” is rather intuitive as you just sling around some ideas, more or less abstract, more or less related to each other or the problem at hand. This is not really efficient. Interesting thing is that the brainstorming process originally created by Osborn has some rules assigned to it. Maybe if used this way it would make more sense?
Lean coffee — https://leancoffee.org/ — this format is pretty popular and easy to use. Not very efficient though for detailed conversation on topics requiring technical knowledge of low abstraction level. Good for lightweight generic conversations or for ordering topics on a perceived scale of importance.
Shallow waters
The other half of 33 structures I’d say are a bit more demanding, not that much though. You’d need to sit up, read about a particular technique, prepare a bit and then run it.
Liberating Structures focused groups of practice — with a bit of digging you can find some themed groups of practice like Tamotsu San’s group focused on Positive Deviance — take a look at QiqoChat (subscribe to a newsletter, and you’ll get notifications about events).
Immersion workshops — you can participate in usually paid (though some may be free) full-day Immersion Workshops where you’ll learn Liberating Structures by practice.
Generic books on facilitation — you can find lots of those at your favorite online store.
Running some public events/meetups — at some time some people like to run an event, maybe not a whole User Group, just one or two events to see how they fare with facilitation with Liberating Structures.
Liberating Structures training & courses — OK, I’m a bit biased here as I’ve recorded my Liberating Structures course on the Udemy platform, yet such things do exist if you want to learn more from any particular trainer or instructor.
Youtube materials, blogs, etc. related to more advanced aspects of Liberating Structures and facilitation — well, you’d need to look them up by yourself. Such materials do exist, sometimes on channels that are not that popular or on some less-known bulletin board type of medium.
Impromptu Networking is like Speed-Dating woohoo — kind of, but in general — sure.
Shift & Share — read about poster sessions & Chris McCarthy works & the Innovation Learning Network
Deep dive
BrainSwarming by Ph.D. Tony McCaffrey — originally described in Tony’s book “Overcome Any Obstacle to Creativity” — https://www.amazon.com/Overcome-Obstacle-Creativity-Tony-McCaffrey-ebook/dp/B07B6GT66C
Though you can find materials on BrainSwarming here and there over the Internet. I highly recommend this technique.
Facilitation books based on scientific research — e.g. “Effective Collaboration” by Dr. Gwendolyn L. Kolfschoten
https://www.communicatiereeks.nl/effective-collaboration
It’s also available in Dutch.
Running your own Group of Practice — for some people there comes a time when they want to move from being a “user” to being an “admin”. That’s a great adventure, rife with unexpected situations, lots of possible contacts for your personal life, and some at least minor renown (if you’re looking for that kind of stuff, why not).
Practicing all 33 structures — if you’re using Liberating Structures more often than not then at one point in time you’ll come to this stage where you’ve practiced all 33 structures. Now the real deal end-game begins! It’s not an end goal in itself IMO, it’s more about the journey.
Open Space Technology by Harrison Owen & people who practice this approach — maybe you’ve been to an event with this Open Space thingy formula. Maybe DevOps Days? Maybe something else. Anyways — there are people who focus on this particular approach. Once I co-hosted a “Flourishing Futures” Open Space online event with 300+ participants online. It was a blast so to say. If you’re into this particular approach then I’d recommend either reading about Open Space or contacting people who do that kind of stuff in your local area or online.
Positive Deviance approach — a very powerful approach, more here https://positivedeviance.org/background
Appreciative Inquiry approach — you can find materials all over the Internet, books, research papers, blog notes, etc.
Chaordic Stepping Stones approach — search for works done by Dee Hock & Chris Corrigan
Heuristics in general & Design Heuristics
Logic & critical thinking, cognitive biases & logical errors in thinking — logical thinking is a beautiful thing, the same as critical thinking. At one point in time, you may observe that you and other people do follow some patterns when discussing things. I’d say it’s easy to grasp the basics of e.g. first-order logic and get to know about cognitive biases and logical fallacies, yet to be truly proficient it takes practice and lots of questioning your own assumptions. You may want to dig deeper into why is it happening and what you can do about it. Whether or not you’re a religious person, theism v atheism discussions contain a lot of various apologetics & logical thinking that you can use outside of religious debates.
Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT) — described in the book “Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results” by Drew Boyd & Jacob Goldenberg — SIT is a simplified permutation of TRIZ. As this is not an article on TRIZ & permutations, I’ll leave the research up to those people who want to know more. Anyways — SIT is a very approachable way to approach creativity, innovation & problem-solving.
TRIZ basics — well, a shallow dive will get you results of about 40 inventive principles, maybe the 9-windows technique, the su-field analysis, and similar. Maybe even Pavel Livotov's 12 General Principles — https://triz.trisolver.eu/eng/
Wicked Questions can be used for breaking down technical contradictions!
The “Ladder of Inference” concept — Reasoning, Learning, and Action: Individual and Organizational by Chris Argyris
Mariana trench
https://www.researchgate.net/ & similar sites — Those are your friends and guides in this journey of knowledge seeking
ThinkLets & ThinkXels — there’s this very strange story about a set of techniques that are very, VERY, similar to Liberating Structures, yet they have not been published openly… for reasons unknown. You can find snippets of that here and there, on Researchgate and over the Internet yet it’s very mysterious why such a set of techniques have not surfaced years ago. I don’t know — ask the authors if you’re curious, they’re still here. I once asked on the LS slack channel about ThinkLets and not that many people actually got any hint of that. Maybe it’d be a mystery left unsolved, I don’t know.
Heuristics in particular — once you’ve familiarized yourself with how heuristics work, you may want to go deeper into what heuristics actually help you and others in their particular journeys.
Social engineering — there’s a grey area between being a manipulative *quack* and knowing how some people, often unwillingly, use some manipulation techniques. I can say this — it’s dark arts, some people call it dark psychology for a reason. It’s good to know that in order to be cautious and to defend against some cheap manipulation, yet be sure to watch out for that siren’s call of a false sense of power. Like in that Dorian Gray story — be sure to consult your mirror from time to time and ask whether society needs another ghoul.
Also, I’d say NLP goes into this category, but the problem with NLP is that there’s hardly any evidence to prove it’s something scientific, and not a made-up thing. Caveat emptor…
TRIZ proper — I got into the TRIZ set of methods & tools sometime after I practiced Liberating Structures TRIZ (where in reality it’s called “subversive action” in the TRIZ set of methods & tools). TRIZ is a very powerful set of methods, techniques, and tools that boost creativity, innovation, and problem-solving capabilities. It may not be for everyone — the entry-level is rather steep for non-technical people, yet there are some TRIZ entries that are more business-oriented like some works by Darell Mann, like the business matrix, etc..
USIT or “Unified Structured Inventive Thinking: How to Invent” by Ed N. Sickafus — in short, this is another permutation of TRIZ. The author has passed away some time ago, and the book is not available in PDF or other formats. I’ve got my copy for 200$ for a used copy ordered from some Japanese bookshop — this is not for bragging purposes here, it’s just how it is with availability. You can find some snippets of knowledge over the Internet, mostly here https://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/eSickafusMemorial/Sickafus-BooksTutorials.html
Who knows how it’d be if Mr. Ed would be more popular? Maybe we’d have TRIZ v USIT debates nowadays?
Anyways — a deep dive into inventiveness.
Free-floating stuff
Ok, going back to the surface once again, now I’ll post some names of ideas, concepts, approaches, etc. that I do not know much of, just heard the name, here and there, some are from LS Slack, some are hmm, randomly found. Maybe it’ll spark your interest?
“A theory of participation” — you can find some materials on Researchgate
Some websites containing “random” sets of activities like — https://www.playmeo.com/
https://retromat.org/
https://www.mindtools.com/
etc., there are lots of such websites with varying levels of quality when it comes to materials, some are OK, some are a waste of time
Nonviolent Communication (NVC)
Human systems dynamics — HSD
The book —” Coping with Chaos: Overcoming Stress and Anxiety”
Deep Democracy
The Work That Reconnects & Deep Ecology
Cybernetics — I’ve read something on the topic some time ago… and that’s that. I recall a book on Cybernetics by Marian Mazur and it’s in the Polish language, but try your luck on Researchgate if you’re interested.
Ancient Wisdom Council & Wisdom Councils
Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process
DFMA — Design for Manufacture & Assembly
Exnovation
The Four-Fold Way
LoMo meetings
Myndset
Presencing Institute
ProHEAL— Programme for Working out Invention Tasks and Solution Approaches
Technology of Participation
Training from the Back of the Room
Wardley Maps
World Cafe
Transactional Analysis
Social Presencing & Social Presencing Theater: The Art of Making a True Move
Theory U
Gamestorming
Street Epistemology — there’s a website and a book by Peter Boghossian
nni Dialogue
Art of hosting
PechaKuna (Astrid Klein + Mark Dytham, 2003+), also Science Fair & Poster Session format
And possibly many, many, many more… If you know about something — please send me a message, and I’ll add it to the list.
Thanks for reading and if interested check my Udemy page www (dot) udemy (dot) com/user/maciej-jarosz-5/ for various courses.
MJ
