#060: Keith McCandless: Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash a Culture of Innovation

Join Host Dr. Krister Lowe and today's guest Keith McCandless--the Co-Founder of Liberating Structures--for this week's episode of The Team Coaching Zone Podcast! In this episode Keith introduces listeners to "Liberating Structures." LS are powerful microstructures or simple rules that help groups unleash a culture of innovation. Keith is the Co-Founder of Liberating Structures (www.LiberatingStructures.com) along with his colleague Henri Lipmanowicz. They are both co-authors of the book "The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash a Culture of Innovation." Keith works with a diverse array of public and private organizations to help people take on complex challenges and innovation efforts. He specializes in unleashing everyone to work at the top of their collective intelligence. He calls himself a structured improvisationalist. He holds a Master's in Management of Human Science from Brandeis University in Boston and a B.A. from Evergreen State College in Olympia Washington. Some themes explored in this podcast include: why planned change efforts tend to fail in organizations; the origins of liberating structures and why they help groups, teams and organizational systems develop new habits and culture; avoiding the extreme poles of top down change efforts on one end to the anarchy of open discussion and consensus-building and brainstorming on the other; reference to a number of the 33 structures; a compelling story of how Liberating Structures were used to transform a leadership team and whole subsidiary of a global company in Venezuela; how groups can very quickly in less than 20 minutes leverage their collective intelligence to innovate, make decisions, solve problems and more; the un-learning that is required to use Liberating Structures as a organizational consultant or pro facilitator and more. Keith also provides a brief overview of how listeners can quickly get up to speed on using Liberating Structures by visiting the website at www.LiberatingStructures.com, by reading the book and/or by attending an "immersion workshop" which are available in different places around the world. Liberating Structures provides all team coaches with a powerful shift in mindset as well as a set of tools that help teams unleash their collective intelligence and that can unleash innovation as well as organizational change and transformation. This is an episode that all team coaches will surely not want to miss!