Nancy's LS Activity

Nancy's LS Activity

by Nancy White -
Number of replies: 5

Scenario: A group of LS practitioners are working on ways to better "string" and use LS for strategic planning in complex situations. Aka "knotworking." We want to meet once a month online synchronously on Zoom to advance this practice. Everyone will be familiar with both LS I'm proposing, so I won't need to do a lot of explaining of the steps. 

Purpose:

Instead of just talking about using LS, use LS for our own learning community on a regular basis. Use at least 2 LS per meeting, one focused on the relational aspects of our learning group, and one to make progress on our work. This design is for the June meeting. 

Selected Liberating Structures:

1. Appreciative Interviews to identify where we are having success even TALKING about this strategic planning approach and in the process, get to know each other better by actively listening.

2. Ecocycle: Identify where our current knotworking practices are.

3. What, So What, Now What to debrief the meeting.

Invitation:

1. Appreciative Interviews:  Where are we having success in introducing knotworking? Why? 

2. Ecocycle: Where are our individual and current knotworking practices? 

3. WWW: to surface the lessons from Ecocycle (and maybe AI too?)

For AI:

  • Slide with instructions
  • Zoom breakout room prepared for pairs
  • Google doc for note taking

For Ecocycle: 

  • Google slides w/ ecocycle diagram, one slide for each person with prepped "electronic" post its
  • Zoom breakout rooms for trios or pairs (depends on group size)

For WWW:

  • use chat to capture

Participation distribution:

1. AI: Everyone is included

2.  Ecocycle: Everyone is included

3. WWW: Everyone is included

Group configuration:

1. AI: Pairs then fours if big group, otherwise all

2. Ecocycle: 1-2 All or 1-3 - all

3. 1:All

Sequencing & Time: (I'm running out of time to finish...)

  • AI: 20 minutes
  • Ecocycle: 45 mins . 1. First, alone, think of  your knotworking practice. What is in maturity? What needs creative destruction? What is emerging and what is in the process of being born. List your current KW activities/practices, then place them on your Ecocycle slide. Put your name in the title box. You have 4 minutes. 2. In a moment, you will be put into pairs/Trios in zoom breakout rooms. Share your Ecocycles and use this time to get clearer on your own practice AND see it through the eyes and practices of another practitioner. Note areas of similarities and differences. You have 10 minutes - then we'll use WWW to debrief.
  • WWW: 10 mins 1. First alone, then all:  What happened when you created and shared your knotworking ecocycles? Harvest into chat. Probe for data, feelings, observations. 2. So What? How do you/we interpret this data in terms of our knotworking practices? Now What?  Identify our next steps as a CoP based on what we learned. 

In reply to Nancy White

Re: Nancy's LS Activity

by Susan Glynn-Morris -

Hi Nancy

I love the idea of regularly using a couple of LS to talk about LS strings. It makes me think about how trying out different LS at our weekly team meetings could feed to birds with one seed - more engagement and an introduction to new LS! (I wonder which LS would work well for updates?). I also like that you are targeting a combination of LS that emphasize relationships and progress. 

I like the combination of using breakout rooms, google apps and the Zoom chat feature to mix things up. 

Under 'Group Configuration' it says Ecocycle will be 1-2-all or 1-3-all. Is the third LS (WWW) how you achieve the 'all' of Ecocycle? (Maybe this is how strings work?) 

I have a couple logistical questions: 

  • For the AI activity, would everyone view the instruction slide before going to the breakout room (or would it be visible in each breakout room)? If it is a Google slide, is this something you can share a link to in the chat and participants can open in the breakout rooms?
  • In AI and Ecocycle, are participants working from the same google doc/slides and does. As above, does the facilitator paste the link in the chat or how do participants access it? I obviously need to become more familiar with the suite of Google apps!
I think this is a great example of a LS string in an online environment.


In reply to Susan Glynn-Morris

Re: Nancy's LS Activity

by Bettina Boyle -

Hi Nancy and Sue,

I love the stringing exemplified with this activity here. I've used AI and WWW, but not Ecocycle before, but seeing it in this context aligned with the purpose it makes total sense. 

I'm getting a bit stuck on how this would work logistically, especially for the ecocycle and sharing individual slides in Zoom. While doable, would it be challenging for pairs/triads to bring back the slides to the breakout rooms and to shift between them? How might it impact the activity (and the ability to note similarities and differences) if pairs added to the same slide (maybe with different colours)?

I noticed a maybe for including AI in the WWW debrief/surfacing lessons. My sense would be it would deepen the experience and learning to do so. Linking AI lessons to the findings from Ecocycle could reveal more valuable insights.

Other LS options...if the purpose of the group is to make progress on their work and advance the practice of "knotworking" an LS such as TRIZ might be really fun to do. I love TRIZ because it never fails to bring forth surprises - and laughter. Perhaps there are obvious things each practitioner needs to stop doing to make progress...

In reply to Bettina Boyle

Re: Nancy's LS Activity

by Nancy White -

Now that we are done, and you know this is Troika Consulting, I'll break the rules and comment!

1. Using Google sides where everyone can edit has worked out really well. If everyone creates a slide, everyone can just look at the Google slide or we can slide share in the main room. I find people like the control of going directly to the Google slide. Then they can move between slides at THEIR pace. So each person could have a slide, or pairs, etc. Lots of flexibility!

In reply to Nancy White

Re: Nancy's LS Activity

by Susan Glynn-Morris -

I have only used a few different Google apps but it sounds like I need to do some playing around! Google slides sounds similar to a Google docs where you would share a link. It is great to have a simple way to be able to work in the breakout rooms and share back to the larger group. Thank you for flagging this Nancy!

Sue

In reply to Nancy White

Re: Nancy's LS Activity

by Bettina Boyle -

That sounds great re. Google slides. Will definitely try this!