Improve Something Today (Page 8)

Facilitation

Using Liberating Structures to facilitate continuous improvement

You’ve gathered everyone together around a problem. Now what?

“Five conventional structures guide the way we organize routine interactions and how groups work together: presentations, managed discussions, open discussions, status reports and brainstorm sessions. Liberating Structures add 33 more options to the big five conventional approaches.”

So much of continuous improvement comes down to gathering a small group of people together (ideally with snacks) and opening a space so that everybody can decide what to do next.

The Lean books and teachers I learned from taught me what needed to happen—the observations, diagrams, analysis, ideas, and plans—but couldn’t convey how to get all this to occur within groups of people who were happy, unhappy, skeptical, annoyed, burned-out, eager, curious, tired, distracted, in pain, lost in thought, worried, hungry, or optimistic.

Facilitation is its own separate skill.

Like the other so-called “soft skills,” it is hard as hell.

But eventually, Liberating Structures gave me the methods I needed.

No new thing under the sun

Each Liberating Structure is a recipe for a small, generative group interaction. Flip through the collection and you’ll find short definitions and plenty of examples, along with detailed, insightful facilitation guides.

As you explore, many of the formats and activities might seem familiar—and for good reason. Very little of this work is original, which is why nearly all of it is useful. For example, the What, So What, Now What? Liberating Structure is one particular expression of a device you might have seen in academic or business writing (as Chris Argyris’ ladder of inference) or in community development (my teachers at the Institute of Cultural Affairs call it ORID, an unlovely contraction of “objective, reflective, interpretive, and decisional”). The point of this particular Liberating Structure isn’t to be innovative, but instead to give just enough structure to help a group to listen and reflect on its shared experience. And it, like all the others, is offered with attribution and links to further reading to satisfy the eggheads.

Most of the Liberating Structures are small, with time commitments beginning at around 15 minutes. As you practice them, you may find yourself planning events by chaining a sequence of Liberating Structures together. There’s even a Liberating Structure for having group plan its own event—what my friend Dan calls choreography, but the Liberating Structure is called Design Storyboards.

And Liberating Structures are a great boost to continuous improvement efforts because they loosen up hierarchies and create new ways for people to learn from one another. This is an important part of Lean, and it’ll happen eventually—but some carefully deployed Liberating Structures can help things along. Some of the structures, like Ecocycle Planning, fit directly into the portfolio planning and management systems that sustain continuous improvement over time.

Getting started

The stuff is available online and is free to use. Read up on the Liberating Structures web site, starting with the LS Menu.

I recommend the excellent, free LiSA app for your phone or iPad. (LiSA also runs on recent Macs.) LiSA is great for quick reference, as well as for working out an agenda using a chain of Liberating Structures.

Beyond that, the very best way to learn Liberating Structures is to watch, do, and teach. (It’s also the best way to learn anything.) For this purpose, my friend Alyssa recommends this monthly international, online meetup.

Big changes, small changes

It’s only fair to let the Liberating Structures folks have the last word. Because what they want is what I want, too:

“We want everyone to learn to foster big changes by inviting people to make small structural changes in how they work together.”

Learning

23 reasons to write online

Write to dispel the curse of knowledge, to find your people & to become.

People write for lots of reasons: To become famous. To make money. To sell. To connect. To join. To have written. To create social proof. To influence. To communicate. To make a world. To right a wrong. To increase the n. Because everybody else is doing it. Because someone else said they should do it.

Today, 23 reasons I think you should consider writing online. Pick one reason, pick them all, make them your own.

Reasons

To allow a small number of as-yet-unknown, possibly very consequential people to feel as though they’ve gotten to know you a bit, before you ever speak. (I’m a consultant. 3 out of 4 interviews I have with prospective clients involve them bringing up something they read or listened to from this web site. I enjoy that.)
To make your first conversations with certain new friends immediately engaging and specific, since they will have already apprehended your bullshit and felt there was something there.
To disqualify people who don’t vibe with what you are up to. They will glance off the edge of your atmosphere and float somewhere else.
To sort things out, to somehow make sense of an absurd world, and cram the results into enough of a structure that it becomes hopefully intelligible to at least one other person.
To dispel the curse of knowledge. You know much more about certain things than most people, and your life experiences mean those things have become connected—intertwingled?—in contingent, weird, productive ways.
To dispel the curse of knowledge. You probably don’t realize how much you know about the stuff you know about. Lay it all out on a page and, goddamnit, turns out you know a lot. That in itself is good to know.
To dispel the curse of knowledge. Here is a super powerful capability: to be able to borrow the perspective of someone who doesn’t know the same things as you do, and support them as they develop their own expertise.
To get clear about the language you want to use. And I don’t mean cussing (you must swear at least a bit in your writing so people will know they are dealing with a human being and not some tediously apologetic autocomplete LLM). I mean knowing what things you are thinking about, and what you would like to call each of them.
To identify your lil’ shortcuts, jargons, and irritants.
(For me, these include the words “just” and “here.”)
To find out where you are wrong.
To find out where you are right.
To eventually give each idea its own URL, which is cool.
To take these ideas—now having their own URLs—and e-mail them to those who want to read by email, publish in an RSS feed for those who want to read by feeds, and the like.
To maybe even circulate these URLs across the various algorithmic hellscapes (LinkedIn, ~~Twitter~~, etc.), giving people something to glance at between the advertisements. Your items are errant kibble in the feed, but you can automate the postings and just—see #9—let the machine operate.
To locate the people who are your people. Bring them in, wherever they are. One person a month is fine. This is the real deal.
To have a very slow conversation with a friend over the span of months or years.
To accumulate a “swipe file” you can borrow from when called upon to present, speak, convince, design, etc.
To draft a book, one page at a time, with the garage door up.
To create the conditions for eventually revisiting your old stuff and noticing with horror how your thinking has changed over time.
To get other people to tell you what to read next: this link, this article, this book. You’ll always have a backlog.
To learn.
To practice.
To figure out who you are, so you can become that person.

Continuous improvement

The jewel of resistance

Resistance to change is precious. Here’s how to make the most of it.

When planning a change in the workplace, the topic of resistance always comes up. And when it does, it seems bad—resistance as debris to be cleared away or routed around.

In this way, labelling people “resistant” is a complaint without recommendation. It’s a wish that things were other than they are.

Resistance prioritizes the wannabe change-maker over the people being asked to change.

Resistance is not a problem. It’s a signal

People who resist a change are telling you:

They care about something. What are they afraid of losing? Someone in this state might not be able to articulate their worry. So draw pictures, make models. Once a shared explanation arises, frustration disappears.
You’ve overlooked something. Find the details you’ve missed. Are people burned out after many botched changes? If so, take special care.
They are your future champions. Convince them of the value of the change and they’ll support it wholeheartedly.

The purpose of resistance

Consider this, from Sara Fine’s 1986 study of how librarians resist change:

“Resistance will always exist, … acceptance of a current innovation is no assurance that the next level of change won’t be resisted, perhaps even more vigorously, as people make commitments to what they have achieved and mastered […]. Perhaps the purpose of resistance is to give us pause, force us to slow down, and impel us to pay attention to our basic human needs and values.”

April 15, 2024: edited for length.

Continuous improvement

On doing more with less

More what? Less what? 90 years ago, Bucky Fuller gave his answer. There is a different one now.

2023 is the year of economic headwinds, of the “soft macro,” and the return of an old, wet noodle of a rallying cry:

“We have to do more with less!”

This cliché keeps coming around. I first heard it at my first job after college, where it was issued as a resource for bravery, an utterance that utterly backfired. In the decades since, I keep hearing it.

Each time, something about the phrase makes me want to fill in the blanks—“Do more (of what?) with less (of what?).”

As far as I can tell, the general usage seems to be:

Doing more of this → Making money for the company
With less of this → People

OK, that sucks! But first, wanna know where the slogan came from?

Bucky Fuller’s “ephemeralization”

Back in the 1930s, Fuller coined ephemeralization—which he defined as the capability of technological advancement to do “more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.”

Here it is, on page 279 of Fuller’s Nine Chains to the Moon (1938):

A paragraph excerpted from "Nine Chains to the Moon": "A corollary to the ephemeralizing-toward-pure-energy progression that is taking place throughout all science, and, ensuingly, throughout industry—which simply translates science into bread and butter for people—is that the more abstract the means of accomplishment the more specific the results: Efficiency == doing more with less. Therefore EFFICIENCY EPHEMERALIZES."

If you are not fluent in Fullerese, please skip hundreds of pages of turgid reading and know that in his framework “doing more with less” entailed:

Doing more of these things → Curing disease; eliminating infant mortality; providing housing and food for every family on Earth; and increasing the standard of living—and the freedom available for science, for art, for play, for leisure—with no upper limit
With less of these things → Time, space, and energy

What I wonder is… how’d we get from all that—from the translation of “science into bread and butter for people”—to the current jargon, where it means nothing other than “do the work of five people but with 3, even though our company already sheds cash like a housecat made out of money.”

In the 2023 “soft macro” condition of “doing more with less,” the mechanism by which people are meant to actually accomplish this lessening is deliberately undefined. It’s the same old management-by-objective horseshit: “more with less,” but with no material or managerial support, an effort totally unlinked from the value chain.

From five to three—but what of the two?

In lean management, there’s an answer for what to do when people come up with improvements—even improvements so effective that they take the work of 5 people and turn it into the work of three. There has to be an answer, because as soon as an organization starts a serious practice of continuous improvement, it will find improvements like that. Always. Opportunities are just lying around, and the methods will uncover them.

Anyways, the lean management answer is this: OK, three people will now do that work previously done by 5, in a way that is safer, faster, more reliable. This frees up the remaining two to go do something else within the organization. Maybe it’s helping another group get ahead, or helping peers learn continuous improvement. Maybe it’s starting a new project. Nobody loses their job. Nobody is catapulted to the next stage of their career via layoff. And all this gets accomplished in a way that everybody can see the changes in quality, cost, and safety.

It’s critical that management believe in this answer, communicate it effectively, and stick to it over time.

Why? Because that’s what moves an organization:

from the (bad) condition where people worry about working themselves out of a job, or observe that they will be punished and/or ignored for noticing problems at the workplace…
to the (good) condition where people become deeply engaged in noticing problems and designing improvements to their own work.

It may not be Bucky’s Utopian, humanist vision of translating “science into bread and butter for people,” but it does mean helping people get the work done on time, with less hassle, and respecting the wisdom and capabilities of everybody involved. And… at least for now, you know, I’ll take it.

June 13, 2024: Edited for length.

Facilitation

Premortem: before starting a new project, learn why it will end in failure

A walking path through a forested gulch. A neighborhood bridge goes overhead, partially obscured by the trees. — Photo by Brian Kerr.

A simple method for uncovering big, ‘undiscussable’ risks to a project.

Identify project risks using this fun, thought-provoking 15-minute method to capture wisdom from the people who know best—those who will do the work and those who will be affected by it.

It’s the venerable project premortem.

I recommend this method if you’re leading a project in your own organization. And if you’re a consultant, like me, it can be a significant information-seeking behavior at the beginning of a project.

The underlying capability is prospective hindsight. Here’s a definition from Gary Klein, in his HBR piece from 2007 on premortems:

Prospective hindsight—imagining that an event has already occurred—increases the ability to correctly identify reasons for future outcomes by 30%. We have used prospective hindsight to devise a method called a premortem, which helps project teams identify risks at the outset.

The premortem is not a new idea—this 2007 article popularized the technique. However, I keep using it because each time I do, I learn things that are valuable to know at the beginning of a new project—and particularly with a new client.

The power of the premortem is this:

People will just tell you things if you ask them nicely.
And if you ask using prospective hindsight, they will come up with surprising answers, sometimes even mentioning their organization’s ‘undiscussables.’

A few things I’ve learned from premortems

That the current effort was the second attempt, and therefore doomed to failure for the same reasons the first effort failed.
That the current effort was the third attempt, etc.
The existence of a specific policy making the intended change impossible, and that policy-makers were not involved in designing or selecting the project.
That the ongoing budget to support this work had already been allocated to a particular technology, program, or team.
That people don’t trust or believe their leadership, or the project’s sponsors, or one another.
Various discoveries about organizational problems in communication and clumsiness in making changes.

These were all things worth learning quickly—as in, cheap and early—so that possibilities remained for adjustment or better awareness of the environment.

Here’s how it’s done: running your premortem

Before the meeting, write a simple scenario. Something like: “It is December and our project has failed spectacularly. As the first snow falls, we gather together and ask—what happened? Why did this fail?” Be precise about the future date: maybe 2 months after the presumed project completion; link the date to some major event or local seasonality.
Schedule 15 minutes in a project kick-off meeting to run the premortem.
At the start of the premortem, state the scenario and ask the question.
Allow 1-3 minutes for individual reflection.
Offer an anonymous feedback form and invite participants to provide their responses. Clearly state how you will use these, for example, that individual responses remain anonymous, but you will share themes and takeaways with the group and with project sponsors.
After the individual reflection time is complete, open up for a brief discussion across whatever participation modes are available. Acknowledge and thank people for their responses. Do not attempt to problem-solve or diagnose right now, but make it clear you’ll be doing so later. If project sponsors, execs, etc. attend, you will have to coach them on this behavior in advance, the message being: we’re listening now, we’ll problem-solve afterwards.
Close with sincere thanks and by telling people where and when you’ll share takeaways from the premortem—ideally with planned remediations for each.

An encouragement

The project premortem concept may seem a little weird. It is.

But it’s a great way to show up and listen. The simple act of listening to people and adjusting based on what you hear is wonderful.

And, almost as a side effect, the things people mention might be the things that doom the project to failure—or the things that, adjusted and kept in mind, might make it a great success.

October 7, 2025: Edited for length & added new photo.

Continuous improvement

Merely being the person you are

An iron gate is open on both sides of a gravel road heading down into a thick forest. — Photo by Brian Kerr.

The consulting advice that made me a better person & a more effective consultant.

A passage from Jerry Weinberg’s The Secrets of Consulting:

Your ideal form of influence is first to help people see their world more clearly, and then to let them decide what to do next. Your methods of working are always open for display and discussion with your clients. Your primary tool is merely being the person you are, so your most powerful method of helping other people is to help yourself.

I first read Jerry Weinberg around 15 years ago, at a time when I was comfortable working as an independent consultant, but remained deeply uncomfortable with existing in the world as a human being. I wasn’t yet ready to take seriously the projects of caring for myself, or for others, or understanding what it was like to be a person.

That passage really stuck with me. Let’s read it together.

“Your ideal form of influence is first to help people see their world more clearly, and then to let them decide what to do next.”

The best job description for my kind of work that I’ve ever seen. It opens questions like:

Which people? Who is excluded yet should be included?
What constitutes their world?
How do they make that world intelligible to themselves or to others?
How might they (as a group) produce explanations, find consensus, or make a decision and stick to it?

“Your methods of working are always open for display and discussion with your clients.”

If we’ve worked together, you know what this is like. The garage door is up, where somebody is always making a mess and then cleaning it up so it shines.

As a consultant, I will come and I will go. After I’m gone, I hope some of the methods of working I demonstrated might be retained. This is why I enjoy cycling through approaches, methods, and techniques. At the start of an activity, neither you nor I know what will work best, but we can hope to uncover it together.

“Your primary tool is merely being the person you are, so your most powerful method of helping other people is to help yourself.”

It’s only in the last few years that I’ve come to recognize myself as an object truly capable of being helped, much less being worth the effort. Weinberg’s words gave me an important, early reason, which I now see as evidence of how deeply damaged I was (and still am) as a subject of capitalism. But that’s fine: you’ve got to go at the rate you can go.

These days, I work to keep things quiet in my head, so I can listen carefully to others. I sit still on my cushion so I can get up and move skillfully. I practice kindness so I can act kindly. Would it be better if I had come to these on my own, or earlier? Certainly. But I am grateful they came when they did.

No two go by one way; this one was mine.

Thanks, Jerry.

Improve Something Today

Posts on page 8

No new thing under the sun

Getting started

Big changes, small changes

Reasons

Resistance is not a problem. It’s a signal

The purpose of resistance

Bucky Fuller’s “ephemeralization”

From five to three—but what of the two?

A few things I’ve learned from premortems

Here’s how it’s done: running your premortem

An encouragement

“Your ideal form of influence is first to help people see their world more clearly, and then to let them decide what to do next.”

“Your methods of working are always open for display and discussion with your clients.”

“Your primary tool is merely being the person you are, so your most powerful method of helping other people is to help yourself.”