Associate Faculty Community Initiative

Liberating Structures: Critical Uncertainties

Develop Strategies for Operating in a Range of Plausible Yet Unpredictable Futures 
 

When: Wednesday, November 9, 2022 at 3:00-4:30 p.m. PST / 6:00-7:30 p.m. EST (Online)

Register
 

The workshop will: 

• add a Liberating Structure – “Critical Uncertainties” – to your facilitation toolkit 

• take the next step in initiating a joint project 

• create meaningful connection among associate faculty 

This workshop provides a professional development opportunity while continuing to collaboratively develop the Associate Faculty Community Initiative (see below). 

All associate faculty are welcome.
 

A peek at the larger project  

The main objectives of this Associate Faculty Community Initiative are to create opportunities for meaningful connection among associate faculty along with professional opportunities. 

These opportunities could take the form of, for example, a book, a journal edition, or some other form of collective output. Each project will be organized around a theme; the theme will be negotiated with those that come forward. Different levels of participation – in terms of time commitment and forms of engagement – will be possible to accommodate different levels of interest.  

The Initiative offers several tiers of engagement:  

1. Core initiative team: The core group of collaborators engaged in planning, developing, and supporting one or more collaborative project(s). This team would provide the organizational frame for the initiative as a whole and would be responsible for developing and integrating the other tiers of engagement. 

2. Project team participants: A group of interested associate faculty who would be regular participants to delve into the subject matter and investigations around a project theme and collectively produce the project output(s).

3. Community circle: Opportunities for individual associate faculty to join project activities at any time to experience the collaboration and participate meaningfully at any given time. Various methodologies and formats might be used to facilitate their participation meaningfully in a way that would not require on-going commitment.

More about Liberating Structures 

Liberating Structures offer an alternative way to approach and design how people work together. They "productively disrupt conventional patterns in how we work together” by introducing “tiny shifts in the way we meet, plan, decide and relate to one another."  

The workshop will introduce one of the 33 Liberating Structures:

Critical Uncertainties: Develop strategies for operating in a range of plausible yet unpredictable futures 

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated. – James P. Carse 

What is made possible? 
You can help a diverse group quickly test the viability of current strategies and build its capacity to respond quickly to future challenges. This Liberating Structure prepares a group for strategy making. It does not produce a plan to be implemented as designed but rather builds resilience: the capacity to actively shape the system and be prepared to respond to surprise. This means being better able to see different futures unfolding, better prepared to act in a distributed fashion, and more ready to absorb disruptions resiliently. 
 

Please join us 

This is an associate faculty-led proposal developed by an initial team of three associate faculty members – Maria Anderson, Rita Egizii, and Theresa Southam, with the support of Isabel Cordua-von Specht, manager of Faculty Affairs. 

If you are an associate faculty member and are interested in finding out more, please register for the workshop below. Please also consider becoming part of the core team that co-creates this initiative.

Register