Liberating Structures and thing

Let’s go back to 2019. The majority of companies was not yet working with video conference tools and electronic whiteboards. Kai and me were both acting a lot in multi-site scenarios with the teams we were working with. After a Liberating Structures Immersion Workshop Kai was flashed and frustrated at the same time. Flashed because he really experienced the value in these structures - playing in the field between autonomy and enabling constraints. And frustrated because with the tools at hand - earlier versions of Zoom, Teams and Webex - it was hard to impossible to bring the lightness of the structures online.

In January 2020 we experimented with automating Zoom through its API, resulting in the conclusion that we needed something else. A couple of experiments, prototypes and ideation sessions later thing was born.

Some of the next Liberating Structures we will support in thing:

Fishbowl

Taking the idea of spatial a bit further a fishbowl conversation is a perfect example for how technology can support based on your behavior within the space. If you enter the center speaker circle the system makes sure that you get heard (microphone enabled) and seen (your video preferred over others) by the audience. If you leave the speaker circle towards the listener circle you get muted.

Troika Consulting

This microstructure has an embedded flow, quickly changing roles of 3 participants between being a consultant and a client. thing supports with conversation templates, clear step instructions and a timer.

Over time, we want to make sure that not only facilitators are able to work with Liberating Structures online. We want to considerably lower the barrier to have well structured meetings, so eventually everyone should be able to use them. And we’re not the only ones thinking along these lines. The Liberators recently published a great article about Liberating Structures Are Skills To Be Learned By Users, Not Facilitators.