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In group: Liberating Structures in healthcare

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  • Matthew Mezey posted an update in the group Liberating Structures in healthcare 3 years, 10 months ago

    Two more oppportunities to learn more Liberating Structures – free for NHS

    At least 33 Q members joined a great LS Immersion workshop last week with Happy Ltd/London Liberating Structures User Group. (One Q member called it ‘fabulous’!).
    They are running the full day workshop again on 19th June: https://www.happy.co.uk/leadership-and-personal-development/live-online-interactive-learning/liberating-structures-online-immersion-workshop/

    There’s also a two hour workshop on 14 May (covering Mad Tea (Breakout version), 1-2-4-All, Conversation Cafe and Troika).

    They are free for the NHS. (Message Henry from Happy Ltd on Twitter and he’ll tell you the code to use to get a free place): @happyhenry

    Don’t miss this opportunity – it’s a very engaging day!

    • Thanks Matthew, I’ll definitely try and attend one of these. I’m specially interested at the moment to learn what LS techniques might work best virtually. I have a regional team and whilst we have for many years used VC it doesn’t lend itself well to idea development as we often need that physicality in the room to help us relax to spark ideas etc. Would anyone have any suggestions of techniques that could be used virtually for a team of 6/7 to help us generate ideas on how we can work best now as a virtual team.
      thanks!

      • Given last Thursday’s great immersion training, it seems like most Liberating Structures work surprisingly well online. Troika, TRIZ, Ecocycle, What? So What? Now What? etc.

        Some like ‘Mad Tea’ (and ‘Liquid Courage’) can be done in Zoom either via the chatbox, or via break-out groups. People are fairly evenly split on which they prefer. Breakout rooms are a bit more engaging really, though take slightly longer.

        I’m afraid I don’t know what ‘VC’ refers to.

        Zoom breakout rooms are certainly great for getting into pairs or other small groups – very easy to do.

        A bit less automatic would be merging two pairs into a 4 (in 1-2-4-All) rather than getting random gps of 4, which is easy.

        My guess is that 1-2-4-All would work well to get everyone relaxed and involved in thinking about this. You’d need to go 1-2-All because of the low numbers.

        Any other suggestions from people on good online LS to use to generate ideas on how to work as a virtual team?

        Perhaps using some parts of Purpose-to-Practice would be good….?

        If it was face-to-face 25/10 Crowdsourcing is really effective and fun – but I’m not sure how to do it online. The moving around is half the fun, and randomly passing cards around isn’t something I can immediately thing of the online method for.

        A nice warm-up before you get to work might be to do some ‘Impromptu Networking’ using the Liquid Courage questions:
        “Invite each person, in their pair, to finish these open sentences in 1 minute or less: If only…. They make me… I have to… … that’s just the way it is. If they would ____ then I could ______!

        Or do some ‘Mad Tea’ – pick the best Qs for your group:
        “Mad Tea Open Sentences:
        What first inspired me in this work is…
        Something we must learn to live with is…
        An uncertainty we must creatively adapt to is…
        What I find challenging in our current situation is…
        Before we make our next move, we cannot neglect to…
        Something we should stop doing (or divest) is…
        What I hope can happen for us in this work is…
        A big opportunity I see for us is…
        If we do nothing, the worst thing that can happen for us is…
        A courageous conversation we are not having is…
        An action or practice helping us move forward is…
        A project that gives me confidence we are transforming is…
        Something we need to research is…
        A bold idea I recommend is…
        A question that is emerging for me is…
        When all is said and done, I want to…
        Something I plan to do is…”

        Ask David Heath @dghealth21 (London LS user group), if none of the suggestions you have seem quite right yet!

      • BTW, the Liberating Structures app enables you to sort all the Liberating Structures to find the ones that are about generating ideas, and you can specify how much time you’ve got too.

        I just downloaded it. Great…

        (Kind of prefer tangible thing slightly myself. There are LS Cards too!).

    • Thanks Matthew, these are all great suggestions. My team has been together for 14 plus yrs so it’s finding something that doesn’t perhaps come across as too contrived. But yes I have the App and the Q Design Method Cards are also good but great to get some suggestions that might work to aid discussion about effective team working that can be done through virtual conferencing (VC).
      Now you’re challenging my zoom skills to operate breakout rooms, must look into that!

      • Maybe everyone thinking on one’s own for a minute or two about the challenge, then getting into pairs in breakout rooms would work – and you could open up the zoom whiteboard (or a slide you’ve made) and each pair could later type their best ideas/suggestions onto there. Then close the breakouts and all discuss commonalities/priorities as a whole group, looking at the slide of people’s ideas?

        You could even give everyone votes to help prioritise suggestions (eg you can use stamps from the same annotate menu as the typing option is in).

        The host can easily set up Zoom rooms – specifying the number of people and the number of minutes. Zoom then quickly allocates people randomly. Find a couple of people and test it if you want to be sure how it works.