Unleash Your Organizations Potential To Use Liberating Structures With Panarchy

In the article “Reflect Your Usage Of Liberating Structures With Ecocycle Planning”, I described how to use Ecocycle Planning to make visible how you use Liberating Structures and how it helps you to decide what to start, stop, or change.

From experience, we know that changing your usage of Liberating Structures often depends on things happening in your environment. As an individual, you may be enthusiastic about using Liberating Structures in your team, but things that happen within your team prevent this from occurring. And even if your entire team wants to stop using the five conventional structures (‘presentation,’ ‘managed discussion,’ ‘themed brainstorming,’ ‘open discussion,’ and ‘status reports’) and is eager to experiment with Liberating Structures, what about the wider organization? It could be that activities & behavior that take place on the organizational level influence the use of Liberating Structures on the team level as well.

The Liberating Structure “Panarchy” aims to analyze the whole (organizational) system and find opportunities for change across all levels. In this blog post, I describe how to use this structure to unleash the potential of Liberating Structures in your organization.

“The purpose of the Liberating Structure “Panarchy” is to analyze the whole (organizational) system and to find opportunities for change across all levels.”

Panarchy

Organizations are complex systems. They comprise many layers, components, and elements that interact unexpectedly and unpredictably. This interplay guides and shapes our behavior and what is possible. Systems Thinking offers a perspective on how we can influence complex systems. It invites us to look for patterns in the entire system and identify potential leverage points. Once we find the proper leverage points, even a small push can trigger a big change.

Panarchy aims to help individuals, teams, and the wider organization understand how their system works and to find and identify improvements. In panarchy, what goes on at each level in the complex systems is projected onto an ecosystem. The purpose of an Ecocycle is to create and make the full portfolio of activities visible and to identify obstacles and opportunities for progress in a non-linear way. Panarchy offers multiple levels of Ecocycles. This shows what is happening on each level and how the levels are connected. For example, Panarchy may reveal that teams struggle to stop meaningless status reports to management because, on the organizational level, management must deliver these updates to the board of directors.

Steps to use Panarchy

In this example of Panarchy, you reflect on the personal usage of Liberating Structures and the use of Liberating Structures within your team and the broader organization. It’s possible to do this alone. Most likely, you already have a good idea of how it’s used on these different levels. Although it can be helpful as a starting point, our recommendation is to involve members of your team and the wider organization. Not only does this prevent you from making false assumptions, but it also makes it easier to create support for potential improvements and the next steps.

Preparation

As a preparation, draw an Ecocycle on a piece of paper or create an empty canvas on an online whiteboard like Miro, Mural, or simply Google Slides. Next, generate a numbered list of all 33 Liberating Structures or copy all the icons into the online whiteboard.

You can bring large posters with Ecocycles for in-person workshops to gather what is happening on every level. Even better, create Ecocycles on the floor so people can walk around it. You can put everything in a single Ecocycle — the levels will be color-coded — or create an Ecocycle for each level. In my experience, this structure is super easy to use online. It’s easier to spot patterns across the different levels, and you don’t need a large space for the Ecocycles.

Timebox

Make it a 2-hour workshop where you create Ecocycles on all three levels, or turn it into multiple shorter workshops. Each workshop focused on one specific level and maybe a final one to explore the overall patterns. Although both options are perfectly fine, I’ve got a slight preference for the shorter (online) workshops. It enables a strong focus on a specific level, helps participants deal with the potentially overwhelming feeling of Panarchy, and builds in moments of reflection between the workshops.

Step 1 — Create an Ecocycle on the individual level

The first step is to create an Ecocycle on the individual level. Meaning, how you use Liberating Structures yourself. Maybe you haven’t used many Liberating Structures within this organization but have tried them elsewhere. For example, with other teams, departments, organizations, community meetups, your birthday party, etc.

I recommend that everyone creates this Ecocycle at a time and place that suits them best. Some people might be done within 30 minutes, while others need more time. By not doing this together, everyone can pick their preferred timebox.

So, draw an Ecocycle on a piece of paper, create an empty canvas on an online whiteboard, and plot the 33 Liberating Structures on the Ecocycle.

• Renewal: structures you haven’t used yet.
• Birth: structures you recently started using.
• Maturity: structures you’re comfortable using and generate value.
• Creative Destruction: structures you need to rethink/redesign to make them valuable again.
• Poverty/Scarcity Trap: structures you want to use because you see their potential but never use are stuck in the Scarcity Trap.
• Rigidity Trap: structures you keep using but aren’t giving you any value is in the Rigidity Trap.

Also, include the five conventional structures many people, teams, and organizations still use to communicate, make decisions, and develop ideas. These are the ‘presentation’, ‘managed discussion’, ‘themed brainstorm’, ‘open discussion’, and ‘status reports’.

Step 2 — Share your personal Ecocycle with your team

This step could be the first (online) workshop you do with your team. By now, everyone created an Ecocycle that reflects their usage of Liberating Structures. In this step, you take roughly 45 minutes to share findings, observations, and patterns. Consider using Liberating Structures like “1–2–4-ALL”, “Conversation Cafe”, or “What, So What, Now What” for reflection.

Potential invitations for the various rounds are:

• “What do you notice about your own personal Ecocycle? What facts and observations stand out?”
• “So what does this mean to you, personally? What does this tell you about your usage of Liberating Structures?”
• “Now, where do you go from here? What next steps make sense for you?”

Step 3— Create an Ecocycle at team-level

Now that everyone has reflected on their usage of Liberating Structures, it’s time to shift the focus to the entire team. How are you using Liberating Structures as a team? What Liberating Structures haven’t you used at all? Which ones are you comfortable using? And what structures are stuck in the Scarcity or Rigidity Trap? These are the questions to explore with your team. As a preparation, make sure to have individual Ecocycles available (or simply ask them to draw one) and create one large, shared Ecocycle (physical or within a digital whiteboard).

Invite everyone to draw an Ecocycle on their paper for personal reflection. Give them time to silently distribute the Liberating Structures across their drawn Ecocycle based on where they think they are for their team. Also, make sure to include the five conventional structures.

Then, invite your team to share reflections and to place the 33 Liberating Structures + 5 conventional structures on the shared Ecocycle to reflect those patterns. Consider using a 1–2–4-ALL for this. Encourage people not to overthink it; you’re looking for broad patterns. So, if most people put “UX Fishbowl” in “Maturity” in their personal Ecocycle, then place it in the shared Ecocycle for this group.

Now, use a quick “1–2–4-ALL” to ask the people in each group to reflect on their group’s Ecocycle. Ask: “What do you notice about the distribution of Liberating Structures in our Ecocycle? What jumps out?”. You can help draw patterns by noticing where most structures appear, whether or not the Ecocycle is balanced, and which items appear in the traps.

Optionally, invite your team to use “Impediment cards” to mark the 3 Liberating Structures most impeded for their team. A structure is impeded when some blockades or problems make it hard for them to use this Liberating Structure, but that lie outside of their control to resolve. For example, maybe the team wants to use Shift & Share during the Sprint Review to gather feedback, but management doesn’t allow you to run this session in such a way. The impediment cards are part of our latest product kit, but you can also create your own.

Step 4— Create an Ecocycle on the organizational level

This third and final Ecocycle shows how the 5 conventional structures and the 33 Liberating Structures are used in the wider organization. Obviously, the organizational level is a very broad perspective. Look for patterns, and don’t focus too much on the details. Roughly, how would you distribute the various Liberating Structures and the conventional structures given your team’s experience with other people, teams, and departments? Creating multiple Ecocycles for different parts of the organization is possible if it makes sense.

• Renewal: structures nobody in the organization has used yet, or at least not that your team is aware of;
• Birth: structures certain people, teams, or departments recently started using;
• Maturity: structures others in your organization are comfortable using and generate value.
• Creative Destruction: structures your organization needs to rethink/redesign to make them valuable again.
• Scarcity Trap: structures your organization wants to use because you see their potential but never use are stuck in the Scarcity Trap.
• Rigidity Trap: structures your organization keeps using but aren’t giving you any value are in the Rigidity Trap.

Ask your team members to create an Ecocycle on the organizational level for themselves first. Next, combine everyone’s ideas into one shared Ecocycle and discuss patterns and findings.

Potential findings on the organizational level might be:

• “Most of the five conventional structures are stuck in the Rigidity Trap.”
• “Our organization hasn’t tried many different Liberating Structures so far because most are in the Gestation phase.”
• “Shift & Share is a structure multiple departments use, and we’ve heard good experiences, so that’s in Maturity.”

Step 5— Reflect on the entire outcome

As a closing step, it’s time to reflect on all the three Ecocycles that were created. Invite everyone to take a (virtual) step back and look at the various Ecocycles. While they do so, ask everyone to silently reflect on how the levels might interact: “What patterns do you see across the Ecocycles? Where do the levels connect, strengthen, or impede?”.

Then, use “1–2–4-ALL” to invite people to identify opportunities for change across levels. Ask:

“Where do you see opportunities for the patterns in one Ecocycle to strengthen or reinforce those in another?”

“Where can the elements of one Ecocycle positively disrupt what is happening elsewhere?”

Capture the most salient opportunities with the whole group. Use a final “1–2–4-ALL” to capture improvement actions. Ask:

“What actions can we take immediately to invest in these opportunities?”

Ask each group to share the 2 or 3 most promising and actionable ideas with the whole group. Optionally, you can use a Liberating Structure like “Shift & Share,” “1–2–4-ALL” or “15% Solutions” to develop action plans to work on the selected items.

Potential findings on the organizational level might be:

“As a team, we get lots of value from UX Fishbowl, it’s still in Gestation on the organizational level, so why don’t we suggest using it during the next company-wide gathering?”

“It seems that the conventional presentation is still stuck in the Rigidity Trap on an organizational level. Why don’t we work with management to suggest an alternative?”

“We’ve noticed that team member “XYZ” tried a Liberating Structure we haven’t even used as a team. Let’s give it a try during our next team meeting so we move it into Birth”

Closing

In this blog post, I described how to use Panarchy to make visible how you use Liberating Structures individually, as a team, and in the broader organization. Panarchy helps to decide what to start, stop, or change. Hopefully, it encourages you to keep innovating your usage of Liberating Structures. Let’s see if you can move all 33 structures from ‘renewal’ to ‘maturity’ and try to replace the five conventional structures with more powerful Liberating Structures. You can do it!