The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash A Culture of Innovation (49 page)

           
Lanham, Holly Jordan et al. “How Improving Practice Relationships among Clinicians and Nonclinicians Can Improve Quality in Primary Care.” Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety 35 (September 2009): 457–66.

           
Kelso, J. A. Scott, and David A. Engstrom.
The Complementary Nature
. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.

           
Kimball, Lisa. “Liberating Structures: A New Pattern Language for Engagement.” OD Practitioner 43, no. 3 (2011): 8–11.

           
Lipmanowicz, Henri, and Keith McCandless. “Liberating Structures: Innovating by Including and Unleashing Everyone.”
Performance
2, no. 4 (2009): 6–19.

           
Macy, Joanna, and Molly Young Brown.
Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World
. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society, 1998.

           
Malone, Thomas W., Robert Laubacher, and Chrysanthos Dellarocas. “Harnessing Crowds: Mapping the Genome of Collective Intelligence.” Working paper 2009-001, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, 2009.

           
McKnight, John.
The Careless Society: Community and Its Counterfeits
. New York: Basic Books, 1996.

           
Morgan, Gareth.
Images of Organization
. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997.

           
Oshry, Barry.
Seeing Systems: Unlocking the Mysteries of Organizational Life
. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1995.

           
Owen, Harrison.
Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide
, 3
^rd
ed. (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2008).

           
Palmer, Parker J.
The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life
. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998.

           
Pascale, Richard, and Jerry Sternin. “Your Company’s Secret Change Agents.”
Harvard Business Review
, May 2005.
http://hbr.org/2005/05
, your-companys-secret-change-agents.

           
Patton, Michael Quinn.
Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use
. New York: Guilford Press, 2010

           
Schein, Edgar H.
Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help
. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2009.

           
———.
Organizational Culture and Leadership
. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004.

           
Singhal, Arvind, Prucia Buscell, and Keith McCandless. Saving Lives by Changing Relationships: Positive Deviance for MRSA Control and Prevention in a U.S. Hospital. Positive Deviance Wisdom Series, no. 3. Boston: Tufts University, Positive Deviance Initiative, 2009.

           
Stacey, Ralph D.
Complex Responsive Processes in Organizations: Learning and Knowledge Creation
. London: Routledge, 2001.

           
Suchman, Anthony L. “A New Theoretical Foundation for Relationship-Centered Care.” In supplement 1,
Journal of General Internal Medicine
21 (January 2006): S40–S44.

           
Surowiecki, James.
The Wisdom of Crowds
. New York: Anchor, 2005.

           
Torbert, William R.
The Power of Balance: Transforming Self, Society, and Scientific Inquiry
. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1991.

           
Weick, Karl E., and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe.
Managing the Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty
. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007.

           
Weick, Karl E., Kathleen M. Sutcliffe, and David Obstfeld. “Organizing for High Reliability: Processes of Collective Mindfulness.”
Research in Organizational Behavior
21, no. s 81 (1999): 81–123.

           
Westley, Frances, Brenda Zimmerman, and Michael Q. Patton.
Getting to Maybe: How the World Is Changed
. Toronto: Random House of Canada, 2006.

           
Wheatley, Margaret J., and Myron Kellner-Rogers.
A Simpler Way
. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1996.

           
Zimmerman, Brenda. “HIV/AIDS in the Developing World: The Brazil Story.” In “Complicated and Complex Systems: What Would Successful Reform of Medicare Look Like?,” by Shalom Glouberman and Brenda Zimmerman, discussion paper no. 8, York University,Toronto, July 2002, 16–20

           
Zimmerman, Brenda, Curt Lindberg, and Paul Plsek.
Edgeware: Insights from Complexity Science for Health Care Leaders
. Irving, TX: VHA, 1998.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless have partnered since 2002 to develop Liberating Structures. They have worked with organizations ranging from neighborhood groups to global business enterprises in more than thirty countries. Updates on their ongoing work are reported on their website
www.liberatingstructures.com
.

Henri Lipmanowicz
is the former president of Merck’s Intercontinental Region and Japan and a cofounder of the Plexus Institute.

My previous passion was building organizations all over the world where people thrived and were successful beyond their wildest expectations. My current passion is the development of Liberating Structures and their dissemination across all five continents. One passion follows naturally the other since Liberating Structures make it possible for people to build organizations where they flourish and succeed beyond their expectations
.

I enjoy mentoring people and seeing them grow. I love asking questions and looking at issues from unexpected angles. I thrive on complexity and take pleasure in challenging senior leaders
.

Liberating Structures is a labor of love and I am excited about their present and future contributions. Coaching people about their use has been invariably rewarding and has convinced me that everybody can benefit from learning how to use them. That is why I hope that more and more students will start learning about Liberating Structures in educational settings so that they can be better prepared to use them at work
.

Henri retired from Merck in 1998 after a thirty-year career during which he progressed from managing director in Finland to president of the
Intercontinental Region and Japan (the world minus the United States and Western Europe) and a member of Merck Management Committee. In 2000, Henri cofounded the Plexus Institute and served as chairman of the board until 2010.

Born in Carcassonne, France, Henri holds a MS degree in industrial engineering and management from Columbia University and a MS degree in chemical engineering from France. His career gave him the opportunity to live in seven countries and made him a perpetual world traveler. He resides in the United States with his Finnish wife; their joy in their two daughters and seven grandchildren is beyond their wildest expectations. While in France, he drives around in a 1961 Citroen 2CV.

Keith McCandless
is cofounder of the Social Invention Group.

I help people in organizations innovate and manage complexity by working with groups to unleash creativity, discover opportunities, and build on momentum
.

I am a founding partner of the Social Invention Group since 2000, and my eclectic skills are grounded in organization development, complexity science, business strategy, and graphic facilitation—all with an improvisational twist
.

It was kismet that I met Henri while serving on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Plexus Institute. We shared a hunch that complexity science had practical applications and could be accessible to everyone. My keen interest in transformational learning and planning methods clicked with Henri’s business acumen as we fielded early prototypes. Over twelve years, our hunch metamorphosed into a powerful repertoire for changemakers. Gleefully, we cut across academic disciplines, tapped spiritual practices, roamed the planet, and deepened scientific insights along the way
.

What delights me most is the range of challenges, big and small, where this work can have a positive influence. Professional, functional, and interpersonal boundaries seem to dissolve when using Liberating Structures. I love creating the conditions for social inventiveness to flourish and to help people to take on their most entangled challenges with newfound confidence
.

From 1992–2000, Keith led executive learning initiatives for the Health Forum (HF) in San Francisco. He was responsible for working with field-based learning collaboratives and managing education and research efforts. Prior to the Health Forum, Keith founded and served as the executive director of the Foundation for Health Care Quality in Seattle. The foundation brought together business and health leaders in a unique partnership to improve value in health care.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, he holds a master’s in management of human services from Brandeis University in Boston and a BA from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Keith lives in Seattle with his wife, Anne, and Deacon, a whippet with talent to amuse.