**4. Liberating structures**

As mentioned, the remaining part of this chapter will be devoted to introducing the specific tool that helps leaders in social work equip communication processes for a better organizational environment and performance that is *Liberating Structures* (L.S.s) [73].

#### **4.1 L.S. Overview**

Although we want to be better in daily performances as a member of social organizations, including private or public, we are not good at making changes. We are in the loop of "habits," and it is difficult for us to escape from it. Habitual practices in the organization, which are being followed by the majority of members, are thought that there is no other way even though there are other ways. One of the typical habitual practice examples is the communication style. On the public occasion, we commonly use five styles of communication, which are presentations, managed discussions, status updates, brainstorming, and open discussions) (**Figure 1**) [74].

They point out the unintended consequences of following the conventional styles include exclusion, suffocation, unjust participation with over-or under-controls and inability to yield ideas for next steps and the future. Those styles often limit space for good ideas to emerge, be shared, merged, and refined. Thus, they will never produce creativity and innovations. We tend to blindly practice the styles because they are thought to be the only way, although they get frustrated with the consequences. Lipmanowicz and McCandless (2020) point out that huge costs are spent working the way in efforts to fix the problems, which actually creates or exacerbates them [74].

To make real changes in organizations, which are sustainable and habitual with good causes, all levels of individuals should be involved. Involvement means not only participation but engagement as change agents, which requires change methods everybody can use, and those methods should be routinely used in daily living [74].

Lipmanowicz and McCandless (2020) suggest the importance of paying attention to "microstructures" of communication styles, which matter to the quality of communication processes, which are the essence of L.S.

They point out that the requirements for small-scale changes are similar to the requirements for large-scale systemic changes. The caseworker who wants to improve the quality of care for the client, the manager who wants to improve department performance, the teacher who wants to engage students, the doctor who wants to improve teamwork, and so on, all need and are benefitted from methods that are very simple, quickly learned, easy to use, and endlessly adaptable. They listed the key attributes for such methods include, 1) *versatile* (being useful in many different situations, regardless of a person's profession, position, culture, or purpose), 2) *easy to learn* (requiring no extensive training), 3) *expert-less* (requiring only a few minutes to introduce), 4) *results-focused* (generating tangible results so quickly that people will sustain the effort), 5) *rapid cycles* (being short enough to fit in the existing cycles of work and to be repeated quickly to improve results, 6) *multi-scale* (being useable with varied group sizes for everyday tasks, projects, or strategy and goal setting, and 7) *enjoyable* (having participants experience working together as pleasurable and satisfying rather than the usual drudgery).

*Communication Strategy for Organizational Leadership and Relationships: Liberating Structures DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105806*

**Figure 1.**

*Big 5 conventional micro-structures. (Source: Lispmanowicz and McCandless, 2020 [74]).*

Equipped with those features, L.S.s are the simple change methods that everybody can use to improve or change the way work supposedly gets done. There are 33 structures in which everybody is included and invited to participate in shaping the group's shared future (**Figure 2**). The detailed descriptions of 33 structures are freely and publicly available [75]. Because most L.S.s take only 10 to 30 minutes, they can be used for daily communication processes, including meetings in the organization.

## **4.2 Theories behind L.S.s: complexity science**

L.S.s have been developed from the founders' deep interests in complexity science theories [76]. They took close looks into living how those theories could inform the nature and functioning of human organizations. Quo and McCandless (2020) explained the organizational life using metaphors (**Figure 3**). They argue that we need to take an ecological metaphor rather than a machine metaphor to understand the organization's life. The machine metaphor is the one we have believed since we got machines in the time of the industrial revolution. It explains that a good organization is supposed to work like a clock. A system is made of interconnected reliable parts (people, functions, and systems), directed and controlled from the top, and designed to produce predictable results. However, organizations are not machines but complex living systems that behave and evolve like ecosystems.

**Figure 4**, which was modified based on the idea by the complexity science scholars [77], presents how to organize activities based on a more conventional machine metaphor and on a complexity-theory-based ecosystem metaphor [76].

#### **4.3 Microstructures**

While being easy to understand from the theoretical standpoint, it will pose a question in the practical aspect. That is how organizational members are supposed to manage their operations, make decisions, solve problems, manage people, and so on with such a worldview.

The L.S. founders originally collected methods that allowed people to routinely use to manage in a complex way rather than manage in a mechanistic way [76]. As they accumulated collections, they started simplifying the approach, not requiring the understanding of the complexity theory and terms to use the methods [76].

#### **Figure 2.**

*33 L.S. menus. (Source: Lipmanowicz and McCandless, 2020 [74]).*

Such processes of simplifying the methods yielded the aforementioned microstructural elements. There are five elements of microstructures, and they are the following [73].

1.*Invitations*: They are tightly connected to the purpose of each L.S., but they leave all participants fully in control to generate responses and contents.

*Communication Strategy for Organizational Leadership and Relationships: Liberating Structures DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105806*

#### **Figure 3.**

*Comparison of machine and ecosystem metaphors: Images. (Source: Fisher and McCandless, 2020 [76]).*


#### **Figure 4.**

*Comparison of the machine and ecosystem metaphors: how to organize activities. (Source: Fisher and McCandless, 2020 [76]).*


For example, one of the most basic L.S.s "1–2–4-All" is best designed to generate and exchange many ideas from group members in a short period of time. It can be used as an alternative to brainstorming and status reports and is often used within other L.S.s. Taking it as an example, micro-structural elements are like the following [76].

