Running them well

• The room

  Set it up before anyone arrives, the way the structure asks. People who walk into the same layout as their last meeting behave as if they’re still in it.

• The moves

  The set is built from the same handful of moves, so practising one of them improves several, and the place to practise is a room that owes you a favour. The escalation, alone to pairs to foursomes, borrowed wholesale from 1-2-4-All (opens in a new tab). The timeboxed argument that then lands, with contested stickies marked so the wall remembers what was fought over. The overlay, where nothing moves and a second question gets asked of the same objects. The stand back: one question, silence, then everyone writes before anybody speaks. The claim, where somebody who can act without permission takes one thing, tells one person outside the room, and names no date. And naming the exposure at the start rather than at the reveal, because some of the work on these walls was planned, imported or built by people standing at them, and saying so in the first minute is cheaper than repairing it in the last. When a move is going badly it is going badly in three places at once.

• The sceptic

  Somebody in the room did not choose to be there and thinks this is a waste of a morning. In most of these that person is an asset rather than a problem. The sort questions reward exactly their instinct, and at a wall a cynic is usually the most accurate person present. The one to watch is Smaller Than That, which asks for disclosure, and its invitation gives them a way in.

• The most senior person

  Watch the most senior person instead. They’re usually the one who most needs to hear what the wall says, and the one most likely to stop it saying anything. Everyone’s stickies weigh the same on the page; they don’t weigh the same in the room. So talk to them beforehand. Ask them to write alone like everyone else and to speak last when the room comes together. If they start explaining the wall back to the group, go straight to the stand back. If they can’t manage any of that, run it without them and show them the photograph.

• Timings

  The numbers on each step are what it takes when a room is warm and nobody is being difficult, which is not most rooms. Hold them anyway. The sort will always ask for more, and the timebox is what makes it land. The overrun comes between the steps. Moving people between pairs, foursomes and the wall costs a minute or two every time, and the round of noticings at the stand back costs ten seconds a head. Budget more than the page says and expect to use it. If you are short of time, drop a structure rather than compressing one, because a rushed sort produces a wall nobody in the room believes.

• Online

  They work online, and online is often all you’ve got. But the same holds here as for every Liberating Structure I’ve used: most of the magic happens in an actual room rather than a Zoom room, and it’s worth some travel to get one. A wall works partly through peripheral vision. You see where other people are putting their stickies while you place your own, and the room reads itself as it goes; a shared whiteboard gives you your own cursor and not much else. Silence doesn’t survive a call either, where a pause reads as a technical fault.

  So name what’s missing rather than calling it a swap, then compensate. Smaller Than That ports nearly intact, with the card in each breakout’s chat. Several At Once needs the envelope to become a form only the facilitator can open. The three walls want a shared whiteboard with the zones drawn on it and breakout rooms for the pairs and foursomes. Put each step in writing before you send people out; they can’t hear you in a breakout, and they forget the instruction on the way in. When you reach the stand back, say out loud that you’re going to sit with it for ninety seconds, put a timer where everyone can see it, and mute yourself.

• Afterwards

  Photograph the wall before anyone touches it, then again close enough to read the handwriting. The dots and the contested marks are the finding, and a wall peeled into a bin bag at five past twelve takes the finding with it. Online, export the board before anyone closes the tab. The envelope from Several At Once needs the same care, since it’s the only record of what the room expected.

Go and find out.