Min specs

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One of the well known Liberating Structures, and possibly the best name and logo!?

In practice

I understand this structure in theory but haven’t had enough opportunity to practice. I’ve gone through a time-crunched simulation and found the rigor of exchange to be lacking - my hunch is that the stakes were too low, which is a learning in itself. The multi-step process is also a little bit complicated, and maybe tiny feedback loops from the facilitator are necessary when doing the activity in breakouts.

I’m most curious to try it in situations where we want to come up with design principles for how a team wants to work together.

Currently, my go-to is an activity that I call “More of this, less of that” where we list the observed behaviors that we’d see more or less of if the principles or objectives were put in place. It was inspired by a thought experiment proposed in Douglas Hubbard’s “How to Measure Anything”

Imagine you are an alien scientist who can clone, not just sheep or even people but entire organizations. […] What do you imagine you would actually observe-in any way, directly or indirectly - that would change for the first organization?

I’m not sure when the next time I’ll have a workshop for this kind of challenge. It would need to be paired with a synthesis and decision-making activity, neither which are in the scope of Min specs. That means 1-1.5 hours for establishing design principles alone, so maybe as part of a project planning segment in a 3-4 day design sprint type of workshop?

My next step will be to try it as a solo activity to scope a personal project. Min specs is def high on my list of LS to master!

This entry is part of Liberating Structures Field Notes, my collection of stories and reflections from the field. It's written for people who already know LS and are deepening their practice. If you're just getting started and looking for activity instructions, you'll find them at liberatingstructures.com..