One day in the late 1990s, a friend sent me a link to a new search engine called Google. Up until then, I had used Yahoo to find what I was looking for by diligently clicking through the myriad menus and submenus. It was laborious and frustrating, but what option did I have?
Google changed all of that. It was clean, simple, and fast. This is incredible! I never returned to Yahoo–not even once.
Now, imagine you could experience an equally dramatic shift with meetings.
Yeah, I know, it’s hard to imagine. In most organizations, we stick to old habits and settle for mediocre results.
Sure, we might occasionally call in a professional facilitator for an offsite retreat but then we head back to our old ways. What other choice do we have?
This week’s guest, Keith McCandless, has an answer to that question: liberating structures.
Liberating structures are novel, practical, and non-nonsense methods to help you increase innovation while keeping everyone engaged. And when I say “you,” I mean everyone reading this. Keith and his colleague, Henri Lipmanowics, have taken the best conversational practices from organizational development, chunked them into simple usable morsels, and invented some of their own.
This stuff is so practical and “sticky” that I started using it within days of purchasing their book The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures.
There’s no turning back.
Highlights
- 9:00 Keith is physically restrained from repeating old habits
- 12:00 Brainstorming and open discussion become a “goat rodeo”
- 21:00 People’s breath is taken away
- 25:00 “1-2-4-All”
- 34:00 “TRIZ”—curmudgeons get creative
- 39:00 “15%” Solution—do what’s in your power
- 48:00 “What I Need From You (WINFY)”
- 56:00 Keith’s “stopping doing” list gets tested at a top business school
Listen to the Podcast
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Read the Transcript
transcript-of-keith-mccandless-interview
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Through 1-2-4-All, people handle decisions they usually would kick upstairs
–Keith McCandless Tweet this quote
Explore Additional Resources
- The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless
- Menu of liberating structures
- 1-2-4-All
- TRIZ
- What I Need From You (WINFY)
- Keith’s “Stopped doing” list
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