Collaboration Facilitation

Five elements define the underlying design of all facilitation microstructures—conventional or liberating. We call them design elements because you can make choices about them based on what you want to accomplish. The five design elements for a conventional presentation or lecture are illustrated below:  

• a structuring invitation (listen to me);
• how the space is arranged and what materials are needed (rows or U facing presenter, screen, projector and PPT slides);
• how participation is distributed (nearly 100% of total time for presenter);
• how groups are configured (one group, one presenter); and,
• a sequence of steps and time allocation (presentation for most of time; possibly Q&A for balance of time).

Liberating Structures are designed with variations on these five structural elements. The elements are the minimum specifications (Min Specs) or essential foundation required to generate results with each Liberating Structure. Understanding this foundation helps you prepare when leading and facilitating with LS.

Meetings, for example, are often run by sitting participants around a conference table. This format is convenient, since most conference rooms are pre-equipped with a large central table - and moving it is often difficult. Though readily-available, these standard conference rooms are not conducive to productive brainstorming.
We are often not aware that a simple change in the structure of how a meeting is operated can lead to vast different set of interactions between the participants, and that these formats can be identified and planned for. Changing the environment and and using collaborative capturing techniques can increase productivity by an order of magnitude.