History of Liberating Structures

Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless spent over a decade in consulting and coaching, discovering and refining one Liberating Structure at a time. Influenced by complexity science scholars and a community that formed around the Plexus Institute, they began testing rough prototypes in healthcare settings around 2001–2002, followed by more serious field testing in Latin America and the US in 2002 and 2003. From a series of hunches and iterative tests came thirty-three practical methods grounded in ten core principles, published in 2014 as The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures, making the methods widely accessible for the first time.

Since then, Liberating Structures has grown into a global movement, implemented across organizations, social movements, and academic disciplines, with materials translated into dozens of languages. Early adopters known as Maestros adapted LS to diverse domains, the justice system, community development, ecological restoration, and software development, and invented new structures to address emerging needs. This decentralized, open-source community is held together by shared principles and practice rather than formal governance. The 2026 Liberating Structures Fieldbook by McCandless and Nancy White represents the next chapter, expanding the repertoire to forty-three structures, sharpening advice for developing a repertoire,  and extending guidance for online application.

  • Henri Lipmanowicz

    Henri retired from Merck in 1998 after a 30-year career during which he progressed from Managing Director in Finland to President of the Intercontinental Region and Japan (the world minus the US and Western Europe) and a member of Merck Management Committee. In 2000 Henri co-founded the Plexus Institute and served as Chairman of the Board until 2010.

    Born in Carcassonne, France, Henri holds an MS degree in Industrial Engineering and Management from Columbia University and an MS degree in Chemical Engineering from France. He has lived and worked in more than seven countries and has a passion for building organizations where people can thrive beyond their wildest expectations. He can see complex issues from unexpected angles and enjoys challenging leaders to reach their full potential.

    ‍Keith McCandless

    Keith McCandless was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. After earning an MA in management of human services in Boston, he went on to found and serve as executive director of the Foundation for Health Care Quality. McCandless also worked for the Health Forum in San Francisco, where he led executive learning and innovation initiatives, and cofounded the Social Invention Group. He currently lives in Seattle with his wife and family. His eclectic skills are grounded in organization development, complexity science, social innovation, business strategy, and graphic facilitation — all with an improvisational twist. It was kismet that he met Henri Lipmanowicz while serving on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Plexus Institute. They shared a hunch that complexity science had practical applications and could be accessible to everyone.

    Over twelve years, their hunch transmogrified into a powerful repertoire for people making change and their book, The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures.

  • The unique effectiveness of Liberating Structures (LS) stems from its roots in complexity science and ecological principles, which fundamentally challenge traditional, industrial-age management. Since the Industrial Revolution, organizational life has been dominated by the metaphor of the machine—the belief that an organization should run like clockwork, controlled from the top down and full of predictable, reliable parts. However, this mechanical approach routinely fails us when facing complex challenges, prompting early LS pioneers to look for a better way to structure human interaction.

    Instead of rigid machines, ecological thinking views groups and organizations as complex living systems that behave and evolve like ecosystems. In these vibrant systems, the most critical information resides in the relationships between the parts rather than within the individual parts themselves. Order isn't manufactured by a central authority; it self-assembles locally from the ground up, much like the weather, stock markets, or a sudden spark of insight in a team. The resulting patterns are open-ended, distributed, and naturally filled with creative surprises.

    LS was born from the bold hypothesis that scientific breakthroughs in how biological and physical systems self-organize could be translated into social relations. Over a decade of fieldwork tested, refined, and codified these complexity insights into practical, everyday principles and microstructures. Rather than trying to artificially engineer complexity away, LS makes it possible for any leader to work with complexity, tapping into a group's natural capacity to adapt and innovate.