“You are probably experiencing it: a fractured, often uncivil society. Our natural world is precariously unraveling amid unprecedented political and economic disruptions. Trust is eroding among neighbors and colleagues and nations.”

Yes indeed! Though I wasn’t expecting this in a book about facilitation. The authors, Keith McCandless and Nancy White, continue:

“True progress demands both widespread local action and massive global shifts.”

McCandless and White argue, and I totally agree with them, that the conventional ways of clarifying the problem, developing solutions, making decisions and collaborating aren’t working.

Think of all the endless meetings and workshops that people feel they have to attend, but rarely result in any obvious benefit or progress - certainly not the step change we need in the polycrisis.

Part of the problem is the structures that shape the ways in which we work and make decisions. McCandless and White call them:

• Macrostructures: like strategies, organisational structures, core operating processes etc, and

• Microstructures: like group composition, meeting room arrangements, rules for how people engage in discussions etc.

While macrostructures can’t be changed easily or cheaply, microstructures can – even from one event to the next, or even in the moment.

And changing the microstructures, is one important way of changing the macrostructures, opening the possibility of wider transformative change. In fact, I’d argue that changing the microstructures is essential.

But how do you change them? How do you do meetings, decision making, planning etc differently?

McCandless and White make a bold claim that you don’t need to be an experienced facilitator to design and run meetings differently and get significantly better results:

“We have assembled and continue to curate a menu of practical methods that everyone can use to make progress on challenges by shifting the way we interact. They are simple to learn, select, use, adapt, and share with others.“

These methods “are relatively easy to put into practice without lengthy training or expert oversight”.

Really?!

I’ve been honing my skills as a facilitator for around 30 years. Is it really possible to facilitate meetings just by following instructions in a book?

Actually, yes! The methods, and the way of writing them up and describing them for non-specialists, have been developed over 10 years, field tested in a range of situations.

Because of this, anyone who’s prepared to be a bit brave and try something different, can use these approaches to start making conversations, meetings, workshops etc, more relevant, meaningful, impactful – and indeed much more enjoyable!

All the methods are available to use free of charge under the a Creative Commons licence.

I also highly recommend their recently published book “The Liberating Structures Fieldbook” which gives covers the development and philosophy behind the approach, and gives more detail on using and adapting the structures.

Check out Liberating Structures.

If you use any of the Liberating Structures methods, I’d love to hear how it goes.

Also: Join me this Thursday (16th July) for Circular Economy Netwalking, The Meadows, Edinburgh:

• Connect with people across the circularity community

• Share experiences and insights to learn and inspire

• Explore opportunities to grow the circular economy

In collaboration with the Edinburgh Circular Economy Network.