Liberating Structures Global Gathering – photo from Lisanne Lentink Flickr stream – http://bit.ly/Lisanne_Lentink.

In August of 2018 Keith McCandless sent out an email notifying the community of the first Liberating Structures Global Gathering, to take place March 13-15, 2019 in Seattle Washington.  This would be my second immersion into Liberating Structures in person, and I did not want to miss this chance to deepen my exposure to this rich collection of processes, all in service to unleashing our potential as individuals and in organizations.

In putting together our final newsletter for 2019, I began reflecting on my path to Liberating Structures.  Somewhere in the misty history of the origins of Yámana Science and Technology (our original organizational name), I had heard about Keith McCandless and Henri Lipmanowicz’s work.  The broad network of leadership and groups in social innovation processes that I, and we as an organization, belong to is tending towards self-connecting – though lately, I have been surprised to discover groups I had never heard of.  Perhaps all the more reason to become curious about how my own exposure and adoption process has been with this particular test case…..perhaps it can inform us, at ReImagine Science, on how we can accelerate and form critical mass for change processes at what seems to be either a tipping point or a pause point.

My path to liberation started quite a bit earlier than I had remembered off-hand — in fact, my first exposure was 2009.  I had forgotten it was that long ago!  And, remarkably, I still have an original powerpoint presentation shared by Keith McCandless and Henri Lipmanowicz after I had seen them present online for the Plexus Institute (I’ve included that original announcement here at the bottom of this blog).

Slide from 2009 Plexus Institute presentation by Keith McCandless and Henri Lipmanowicz on Liberating Structures – ‘culture eats strategy for lunch’ is a  meme I first heard in the Agile/Scrum community, I think from Dan Mezick.

How did I know about the Plexus Institute webinar?  An engineer/entrepreneur named Geoff Wing shared many great resources and emergent practices with me in the years 2008 and 2009.  Geoff has a degree in Cell Biology and Genetics, and has deeply studied different work cultures (eg Japanese, Chinese, American).  Geoff is also an Agile Coach and Scrum Master – two other communities I have been closely connected with (I find Tobias Mayer and Daniel Mezicks’ work to be particularly fruitful, and both are good friends).  Henri speaks of this 2009 powerpoint today as follows: “Your sending this 2009 PPT was a real treat to make us travel back 10 years, so much that is good in it still today even as we have evolved a lot since then.”  Keith’s estimation seems to indicate a longer arm of evolution.  His response on seeing this old presentation was:  “That is a vintage PPT.  Oh my.  Not sure it captures where we are now.”  For me, I still see the ringing of true notes that made a great point back then, and that still ring true today.

This definition, from Henri and Keith’s 2009 Plexus Institute webinar on Liberating Structures, still rings true today.

OK, so I dug a little deeper.  Where did I meet Geoff?  It was at Betsy Burroughs’ Focus Catalyst salon, in the SOMA district of San Francisco.  Remarkably (to me, at least) this daisy-chain of connections seems to have begun with me reaching out to a group at UCSF, in the earliest days of forming ReImagine Science as a nonprofit (this was before we even had our name-of-origin, ‘Yámana Science and Technology’).  And through Rebecca Smith at UCSF, who in later years became a major mover and doer for the Bay Area Science Festival, I was introduced to Simona Neumann, who traveled with me to Iowa in 2008 to present a poster entitled

CREATING A NEW CONVERSATION ON HOW SCIENCE GETS DONE

at the ADVANCE conference there.  And Simona had told me about Betsy’s salons for creative interaction, held at her loft in San Francisco.  And that is where I met Geoff.  And Geoff is where I first heard about Liberating Structures.

When I worked in major universities (Georgetown, UMass Medical Center, UCBerkeley) or organizations (Celera Genomics, Livermore and Los Alamos National Labs, Joint Genome Institute), I was part of a grapevine where word spreads quickly regarding computer programs, platforms, and equipment.  For example, Apple Computers did very well in the biochemistry departments I worked in, from the days of the very first Mac and continuing to this day.

My grapevine for the last decade has seemed to mostly consist of people who have left technical or scientific career tracks, to create what they saw as missing in the world of the workplace as it exists currently.  This ‘outsider’ grapevine taps into a slightly different set of platforms and tools – perhaps more risky and entrepreneurial.  But, I notice that my path to Liberating Structures actually began at UCBerkeley, when I connected with people involved in big things at another University of California school (Rebecca Smith and Bruce Alberts, both at UCSF).

In 2011, I was forwarded a link to Plexus Institute for the second time, when Kathryn L. Reed of Arizona State University sent me their newsletter announcing their 2012 CHANGE event:

Plexus CHANGE 2012
Patterns, Processes & Possibilities

Join Plexus Institute March 16-18, 2012 in Silver Spring, MD (just outside DC) for lively interactions in a mash up of modes including Liberating Structures, Open Space, PechaKucha, and TEDTalk-style catalyzing input for our conversations. We’ll welcome a diverse community of thinkers, practitioners, educators, leaders, learners, researchers, change agents and idea junkies for three days of interaction, conversation, and fun!

Interestingly, each of these (Open Space, PechaKucha, TED and TEDx) have become central parts of our work, arriving via very different channels.

I have also archived a wonderful Plexus Institute 2015 newsletter, giving me another touchstone to Liberating Structures, which I had been trying to study and understand from afar.

Finally, in 2016, I had my chance.   Someone from the group Evolutionary Leadership sent an email to the community announcing a Nov 2016 workshop in Oakland California.  I participated, and was very excited to meet folks in the Liberating Structure community in person.  I had been conducting interviews and having conversations with various leaders in that domain, besides Keith and Henri (such as Fisher Qua and Charley Haley – always always asking ‘who in science is using this?’ and ‘what do you think about this in academia?’).

It made a difference to see the work, and experience it, first hand.  In spite of this, I’m still a shy user of Liberating Structures, and am playing with the idea of starting a local meet-up in Silicon Valley to practice the tools of Liberating Structures.

Then in August of 2018 Keith McCandless sent out that email that invited the world to the first global gathering.  That was too good to miss.  I appreciate the backgrounds of both Keith and Henri – healthcare for one and Merck international for the other.

And two implementation domains of great interest to me and the work of ReImagine Science – use of Liberating Structures in academia, with scientists and engineers, and a professional development/learning journey lead by Katy Grennier, who made a special effort to reach out to anyone wanting to have a conversation before the in-person meeting via a virtual coffee meet-up.  Katy and DSIL are pushing the edges learning complexity in their executive course Leadership Immersive (if you look at this website you may even catch a glimpse of me in one of the featured photos).

It was an offer I took up eagerly, as I feel long overdue in launching our own learning journey, iterating from our u.lab work but marrying in the excellent theory, approaches, processes, and zeitgeist of the Connected Learning Alliance and specifically the key inputs and mentoring of Howard Rheingold.  The Connected Learning Alliance community displays brilliant insights combined with deep dedication to the educational and learning processes, meaningful connections (including with self), and collective wisdom of a combined total that adds up to (likely) thousands of years of hands-on experience as educators in all settings of learning.

This retrospective has left me with a couple of questions for myself and for the larger context of systems change processes.

1.  Why do I still feel the need for more experience, the right conditions, and proper back up before utilizing Liberating Structures whenever there is a place for them?  What can this reticence tell me about others’ adoption rates of new approaches?  Why would I expect others to embrace the co-learning and other offerings that ReImagine Science has, and will in the future, offer to academia and beyond?
2. What about that long tail of persistence exemplified by Keith and Henri – years of evangelizing, sharing, evolving and co-creating Liberating Structures?  What gave them the courage and stamina?

The proof of Liberating Structures is in the pudding.  As with all experiential learning processes.  One must do the work to get what it is about, and unleash potential – both for themselves and within the system they belong to.

-Kennan Kellaris Salinero

Dec 2019