What Does This Make Possible?
In Min Specs, participants generate a list of all potential dos and don'ts for achieving a purpose and then reduce it to the absolute minimum requirements. By eliminating nonessential rules (max spec), Min Specs gives groups more freedom and promotes responsibility. It can also help a group scale up innovations with fidelity. This structure gives life to LS Principle #6, Amplify Freedom and Responsibility.
Structural Elements — Min Specs
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Structuring Invitation
"Based on our direct experience in the field, we will eliminate the clutter of nonessential rules and requirements and determine which rules are truly necessary to achieve our purpose."
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Space and Materials
Groups of four to seven chairs around small tables. Paper for each participant [optional: visual collaboration space].
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Participation Distribution
Roles include host [tech host] and participants. Minimum group size is four. Everyone is invited and has an equal opportunity to contribute.
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Group Configuration
Alone, small groups of four to seven, whole group.
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Steps and Time Allocation
- Intro: Share the structuring invitation and identify a shared purpose for responding to a challenge or new initiative, beginning with "we want . . . ." (1 min.)
- Generate Max Specs: Participants list everything they must do or must not do to achieve the shared purpose. These are the "max specs." (1 min.)
- Form Groups and Combine Lists: In groups of four to five [breakouts], participants combine their lists, being as detailed as possible. (6 min.)
- Evaluate Max Specs: Everyone returns to plenary for instructions and then goes back to their groups [same breakout rooms]. Participants consider each max spec in relation to the shared purpose and cross off anything they can that doesn't achieve the purpose. (15 min.)
- Reevaluation (Optional): Everyone returns to plenary for instructions. The groups go through their lists one more time, looking for any more rules they can eliminate. (10 min.)
- Reduce Lists to Min Specs: Everyone returns to plenary. Each group shares its short list. As they share, consolidate the lists into the final list of inviolable min specs. (15 min.)
- Reflection on First Steps: Participants share ideas about first steps for achieving the shared purpose while putting the min specs into practice. (2 min.)
Tips & Pitfalls
- A clear purpose is essential for evaluating the max specs.
- Be ruthless about dropping max specs and praise groups that drop many.
- Include as many stakeholders as possible and listen to direct experience from the field about what is truly essential or nonessential.
Riffs & Variations
- Do a second round of purpose testing, asking, "If you followed all the min specs except this one, could you achieve your purpose?" (If yes, drop that spec.)
- Reverse the test question: "What must we absolutely avoid?" rather than "What must we do?" (addition, not on the official page)
- Imagine what min specs you would need five years from now. Compare with today.
- Combine with Simple Ethnography to surface implicit, unwritten rules. (addition, not on the official page)
- Use Nine Whys to explore the deeper logic behind each remaining spec. (addition, not on the official page)
- Make the min specs official and live by them as inviolable rules.
Practical Applications
- Drunk-driving legislation: Senator Lynda Bourque Moss used Min Specs with stakeholders to define the must-dos and must-not-dos for sharing responsibility for, and supporting, new state legislation to prevent impaired driving (Montana Senate Bill 29). (addition, not on the official page)
- Organizational transformation: project leaders use min specs to clarify what freedom teams have and which boundaries are non-negotiable.
- Giving and receiving assignments: define what is absolutely required and what is superfluous for a lean, actionable brief. (addition, not on the official page)
- Strategy development: identify the inviolable principles on which new initiatives must rest. (addition, not on the official page)
- Scaling innovation: use min specs to ensure the core of a practice is preserved as it spreads.
Online & Hybrid Facilitation
Min Specs works online with no major adjustments. You can use the chat function to evaluate max specs.
Combining with Other Structures
Follow up with Creative Destruction if people are reluctant to let go of max specs.
Combine with Other Structures
Sources & License
Liberating Structure developed by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless. Inspired by professor Kathleen Eisenhardt and author Paul Plsek (see Zimmerman, Lindberg, and Plsek, Edgeware). French version by Frédéric de Verville / In Excelsis.
Includes content from the Liberating Structures repertoire by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless (2013) and the Fieldbook by Keith McCandless and Nancy White (2026). Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Adaptations and additions on this page are shared under the same licence, CC BY-SA 4.0. Feel free to share your own variation on the LS Commons.
Items in italics are additions that are not on the official Liberating Structures page.
Learn this in practice
Practice Liberating Structures with others: in the Online Fieldbook series (Nov–Dec 2026), the Immersion in Brussels, or tailored for your team.