Five Complex Situations Where…

Some situations keep coming up in a facilitation practice: a board working through a sensitive dossier, a team setting strategy while the future stays unsettled, an organization wanting to look back together at year's end. What they share: there's no answer you can compute in advance. I work through five of those situations below, each with a sketch, the complexity signals that go with it, an example string of Liberating Structures, and what typically changes. For more on that distinction between complex and complicated, see Complex vs. Complicated.

Each string here is an example, not a recipe. Other combinations work just as well for the same situation; which one you pick depends on the group, the time you have, and what's happening in the room right then. These strings show how structures can flow into each other, so you can shift them yourself.

The complexity reasoning follows the essay on this site's complexity page: in a living system, the value sits between people, not in the separate parts. Complex means nobody sees the whole picture, the outcome emerges from how participants react to each other, and you can't calculate the optimal approach up front — unlike something merely complicated, where an expert can actually solve the puzzle.

1. Facilitating a Board Meeting

The situation: A board or executive committee has to discuss a sensitive strategic dossier — a merger, a major investment, a change of direction. The members know each other, but each holds only part of the information, and each has different stakes. The chair doesn't want a rubber stamp on a ready-made proposal. They want a real conversation.

Complexity signals: Nobody around the table sees the whole dossier: knowledge about the market, finances, staffing, and risk is spread across the members. The outcome depends on how members react to each other, not on a precomputable optimum. Whoever speaks first often colors the whole conversation — power dynamics shape the outcome regardless of the content. Whether a decision was good only becomes clear afterward, in how the organization responds to it.

An example string:

Impromptu Networking — members trade what's on their minds about the dossier in quick pairs, before the formal agenda starts.
1-2-4-All — the core question goes individual first, then pairs, then quads, so even those who rarely speak first help shape the conversation.
9 Whys — members surface why the dossier matters to them personally, and where their reasons diverge from their colleagues'.
Wicked Questions — the tension underneath the dossier (say, invest now versus stay cautious) gets an explicit question form, instead of staying unspoken.
15% Solutions — the meeting closes with what each member can already do within their own mandate, instead of waiting for the next agenda item.

What typically changes: More members speak before the first positions lock in, compared to when the chair simply opens the floor. Differences in interest and motivation surface before the vote, not afterward in the hallway. The decision rests on what got collected around the table, not only on what one person had already prepared.

2. A Product Vision and Strategy Session

The situation: A product team — product, engineering, sales, sometimes customers too — has to work out a vision and strategy for the period ahead. There's no ready-made answer: the market moves, technology changes, and nobody at the table knows for sure what will still matter in two years.

Complexity signals: The product's future isn't fixed; it emerges from how customers, competitors, and the team react to each other. Mapping it all out in advance doesn't work: a plan that's right today can be obsolete tomorrow. Knowledge of what works is scattered — sales hears different signals than engineering, and customers know things nobody inside the company knows. An approach that locks in "the" strategy too early shuts out exactly the information that should have adjusted it.

An example string:

Appreciative Interviews — participants tell each other about a moment the product truly worked for a customer, so the vision starts from something that actually happened.
Critical Uncertainties — the group maps its biggest uncertainties and builds strategy for several possible futures at once, instead of for one forecast.
Ecocycle Planning — the current portfolio of features and initiatives goes on the table: what's new, what runs on routine, what needs to stop to make room.
Min Specs — the group cuts down to a handful of non-negotiable limits for the strategy, and deliberately leaves the rest open.
15% Solutions — each team leaves with a first step it can already take this week, independent of the next quarterly plan.

Anyone who wants to run the whole session as one fixed format can also use Strategy Knotworking. That structure bundles a series of Liberating Structures around six questions, from the deepest reason for being to the very next step, and involves everyone who will have to execute the strategy in making it.

What typically changes: The vision rests on concrete examples instead of abstract ambition. The team accounts for several scenarios instead of one line that collapses at the first surprise. The strategy locks in what must not shift, and leaves the rest adaptable.

3. An Organization-Wide Day Retrospective

The situation: At the end of a project or work year, the whole organization — multiple teams, different functions — spends a day together looking back. Two risks lie in wait. The day turns into a venting session: frustrations surface, but nobody leaves with something they can actually change themselves. Or it falls into the other usual traps of a retrospective: a series of presentations delivering the official version of the year, the loudest voices setting the narrative, blame aimed at other teams, and action items nobody follows up on.

Complexity signals: What actually happened doesn't live in one report — it's spread across dozens of individual experiences that sometimes contradict each other. Patterns only become visible once those experiences sit side by side; no single team sees them alone. A large, mixed group also carries its own dynamic: whoever talks loudest quickly decides which version of the year "counts." Venting feels safe and familiar, and pulls the group along easily; facilitation has to keep bringing the group back to what it actually controls.

An example string:

1-2-4-All — the opening question ("what worked this year, and what held us back?") goes individual first, so the first answers don't come from the loudest voices and complaints don't fill the whole picture.
Shift & Share — in small groups, participants move through stations run by other teams and hear stories from outside their own bubble.
25/10 Crowdsourcing — the whole room writes and rates insights across five rounds, so the strongest insights surface without a long plenary debate.
What, So What, Now What? (W3) — the fixed order of facts, meaning, action keeps the group away from venting: every frustration has to become a fact first, then a meaning, and only then a next step.
15% Solutions — the day closes with what each participant can do themselves tomorrow, without permission or extra resources, so no action list is left behind that nobody follows up on.

What typically changes: Patterns that only one team knew about surface for the other teams too. The day's conclusions rest on what got collected in the room, not on the first impression the day opened with. Frustrations get named, but they end in steps participants take themselves. More people recognize the picture on the table at the end, because they helped build it.

4. Starting and Running a Community of Practice

The situation: A group of peers within or across organizations wants to start a community of practice — around a theme, a discipline, a shared challenge. Nobody has formal authority over anyone else; everyone participates voluntarily. Before long, the same handful of people carry the meetings: they bring the topics, they talk, the rest listens.

Complexity signals: A community of practice has no hierarchy dictating who does what — it only holds together if members recognize something of themselves in it. What the group needs only becomes clear while it works together, not on paper beforehand. A setup imposed from above usually misses exactly what members would have contributed had they helped build it.

An example string:

Purpose-to-Practice (P2P) — members build purpose, principles, participants, structure, and practices together, instead of having them handed down.
Appreciative Interviews — members interview each other about a strong professional experience, so expertise and connections become visible right away.
Social Network Webbing — the group maps who already works with whom, who's missing, and how new members find their footing.
Wise Crowds — one member brings a real question, the others consult in turn — a recurring format for every future meeting, with a different member as the presenting client each time, so the same core group doesn't always hold the floor.

What typically changes: The community's setup rests on what members themselves contributed, not on a template from outside. Connections between members who didn't know each other yet become visible and usable. The group gets a recurring format it can keep organizing itself with, even without an outside facilitator every time.

5. Reviving a Stalled Community of Practice

The situation: An existing community of practice still exists on paper, but attendance is dropping, the agenda repeats itself, and more and more members quietly drift away. What's left is a small core carrying everything and everyone else just watching. There's no clear trigger — the community has simply faded out.

Complexity signals: Why a community stalls is rarely one cause you can pin down from above — it's spread across individual reasons nobody says out loud. A new calendar or a call for "more energy" doesn't fix anything: the information about what specifically stopped working sits with the members who left, not with whoever's still there. A relaunch that repeats the same setup often stalls again for the same unspoken reason.

An example string:

Creative Destruction (TRIZ) — the group first names honestly what's actually holding participation back, before adding anything new.
Heard, Seen, Respected (HSR) — members who drifted away can say what didn't work, without it needing to be fixed on the spot.
Purpose-to-Practice (P2P) — whoever remains rebuilds purpose, principles, and practices together, because the old setup fit a different group than the current one.
15% Solutions — the restart begins with one small step members control themselves, instead of a big relaunch that stalls again.

What typically changes: Reasons for leaving that were never said out loud finally come out. The new setup fits whoever's still there now, not whoever was there once. The restart begins small, with less risk of stalling again.

Do you recognize one of these situations in your own practice, and which string would you pick?