Liberating Structures

Ecocycle Planning

Analyze the full portfolio of activities and relationships to identify obstacles and opportunities for progress. This structure makes invisible patterns visible by mapping your activities across four natural phases of development, revealing where resources are stuck and where new potential is waiting to emerge.

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Ecocycle Planning

Analyze the full portfolio of activities and relationships to identify obstacles and opportunities for progress.

Analyze Strategize

In person & Online

Group & Solo

95 min.

What is made possible - What it unlocks

Ecocycle Planning helps groups see both the forest and the trees. It exposes activities that are overprotected, undernourished, outdated, or ready for growth—and does so in a way that distributes strategic insight across everyone, not just leaders. It legitimizes stopping things, surfaces renewal opportunities, and brings coherence to fragmented efforts.

When to use it

When reviewing a full portfolio of activities, projects, programs, or initiatives
To identify what to stop, start, accelerate, or redesign
For strategic planning across teams, departments, or whole organizations
When resources are stretched too thin
To address a lack of focus, prioritization, or strategic clarity
When innovation efforts feel blocked by outdated routines
To democratize strategic insight and decision-making
When you want a shared language for lifecycle dynamics (growth, maturity, decline, renewal)

🛠️ The five design elements of Ecocycle Planning

Each Liberating Structure consists of five simple design elements to make participation possible for everyone. By shaping these elements with care, you move beyond rigid control or chaos and create space for people to contribute, listen, and co-create.

1. The Invitation
2. Setup & Materials
3. Participation Flow
4. Group Configuration
5. Sequence & Timing

1. The Invitation

How you frame the purpose or question that sets the focus and energy of the group.

Invite participants to map all ongoing activities, projects, and relationships across the four phases of the Ecocycle:

🌱 Birth → 🎯 Maturity → 🔥 Creative Destruction → 🔄 Gestation.

Ask: “Where is each activity now—and what does it need next?”

2. Setup & Materials

The arrangement of space and which tools or resources are needed to support interaction.

Large Ecocycle template on wall or floor (taped, projected, or on flipcharts)
Sticky notes (one activity per note)
Pens
Space for small groups to move around and discuss
Optional: color coding for teams or activity types

3. Participation Flow

Who gets a voice and how everyone is actively included in the process.

Everyone contributes activities, everyone places items on the Ecocycle, and everyone takes part in identifying traps, opportunities, and next actions.
Decisions emerge collectively rather than through top-down evaluation.

4. Group Configuration

How people are arranged (alone, small groups, or all together) and how this shifts during the activity.

Individuals → pairs → groups of four → whole group.
Final action planning often happens in small groups focused on specific clusters.

5. Sequence & Timing

The step-by-step flow of the activity and the time given to each step to keep energy and focus.

1. Introduction (5 min)
Explain the Ecocycle phases and the concept of the two traps. Use the template sheet from the supporting materials below.

🌱 Birth/Emergence: New ideas, experiments, early-stage projects
🎯 Maturity: Established activities, proven skills, productive routines
🔥 Creative Destruction: Activities that are draining, outdated, or no longer aligned
🔄 Gestation/Renewal: Rest, reflection, exploration without commitment
🕳️ Rigidity Trap (between Maturity and Creative Destruction): Activities that are established but have become inflexible, bureaucratic, or resistant to change
🌩️ Scarcity Trap (between Renewal and Birth): Activities that are stuck in a phase of not moving forward to new beginnings. Ideas but no realities yet.

2. Generate Activity Lists (5 min)
Individually list all of your current activities, projects, commitments, skills or relationships that take real time or energy. Write each item on separate post-it notes or cards.

3. Placement Process (40 min)

Individual: place activities in the Ecocycle (10 min)
In small groups (2-4 persons): refine placements (15 min)
Full group: place sticky notes on the wall-sized Ecocycle (15 min)

4. Pattern Recognition (15 min)
Whole group steps back and looks for:

Activities stuck in the rigidity trap (overprotected, outdated)
Activities stuck in the scarcity trap (promising but under-resourced)
Imbalances between phases
Bottlenecks and opportunities

5. Action Planning (30 min)
Small groups create next steps for:

What needs to be stopped (creative destruction)
What needs more support (scarcity trap)
What is ready to scale (maturity)
What needs space to emerge (gestation/birth)

Total time: 95 minutes

Online version

Adapted for virtual use, with the same impact

Use a virtual whiteboard with several sections/slides so that every participant can creates or add to an Ecocylce.

Use break out rooms for the small groups to work together

Explain the Ecocycle phases and the concept of scarcity traps and rigidity traps. Share your screen with an empty template sheet (see the supporting materials below).

Total time: 95 minutes

Solo version

Adapted for individual use and personal development

1. Prepare Your Ecocycle Map (5 minutes)
Draw or print (see free worksheet below) the Ecocycle with its four phases and two traps. Label each quadrant clearly.

2. Brainstorm Your Activities (10-15 minutes)
Write each of your current activities, projects, commitments, skills, or relationships on separate post-it notes or cards. Aim for 15-25 items to get a comprehensive view.

3. Map Your Activities (15-20 minutes)
Place each post-it note in the appropriate phase of the Ecocycle. Ask yourself:

Birth: Is this new and energizing? Am I experimenting with it?
Maturity: Is this established and performing well? Does it provide consistent value?
Rigidity Trap: Is this established but inflexible? Am I doing it out of habit rather than purpose?
Creative Destruction: Is this draining my energy? Is it time to let this go?
Scarcity Trap: Have I been trying or wanting to let this go but feel stuck or unable to move forward?
Gestation/Renewal: Is this helping me rest and recharge? Am I exploring without pressure?

Don’t overthink the placement—trust your gut instinct about where each activity belongs.

4. Analyze the Patterns (10-15 minutes)
Step back and observe your completed Ecocycle map. Reflect on things like what the placement tells you. Where are many items and where are few? What is stuck? Is it a lot? Where is the energy flowing?

5. Make Decisions and Create an Action Plan (10-15 minutes)

Based on your analysis, identify specific actions:

What to Release: Choose 1-3 items from Creative Destruction to actively let go of or complete
What to Disrupt: Identify items in the Rigidity Trap that need conscious change or renewed purpose
How to Escape Scarcity: If stuck in the Scarcity Trap, commit to small Renewal activities to rebuild energy
What to Nurture: Identify 1-2 items in Birth that deserve more attention and resources
What to Maintain: Acknowledge what’s working well in Maturity
What to Add: Consider what you need to add to Renewal for better balance

Write down concrete next steps for each decision.

6. Schedule a Review (5 minutes)

Set a date to revisit your Ecocycle (recommended: every 3-6 months). Activities naturally move through phases, and regular reviews help you stay aligned with your evolving priorities.

Total time: 55-75 minutes

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All Liberating Structures in 1 e-book

All Liberating Structures (44!) including explanations, visual step-by-step guide, and worksheets in a handy workbook for € 11,-

Simple methods for big changes
Have interactions that truly matter
Build a culture of innovation step by step
Involve and activate everyone in the group

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Proven over decades

🧠 Why it works

Liberating Structures are not magic tricks—they work because they tap into how people naturally think, connect, and collaborate. Each structure is carefully designed to unlock participation, spark creativity, and build trust, using principles grounded in social science and human interaction.

Attribution: Adapted by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless from professor Brenda Zimmerman and ecologists (see http://www.resalliance.org).

Lifecycle Logic

Everything—projects, relationships, programs—moves through natural phases. Making those phases visible turns intuition into shared strategic insight.

Systemic Visibility

Mapping the whole portfolio in one view reveals traps, imbalances, and interdependencies that are impossible to see from inside siloed structures.

Collective Intelligence

When everyone participates in evaluating the portfolio, blind spots shrink and better decisions emerge. Strategy becomes a shared skill, not a leadership privilege.

Creative Destruction

Most organizations struggle to stop things. Ecocycle Planning legitimizes letting go—freeing resources, attention, and energy for renewal and innovation.

Riffs and Variations

Start with creative constraints to learn this structure and then... go liberate yourself and try some variations.

Relationship Ecocycle: Map key partnerships instead of activities
Personal Development: Use Ecocycle Planning to map your personal growth and stagnation
Dual Ecocycle: Compare two portfolios side by side (teams, years, products)
Panarchy Extension: Add higher/lower-level cycles to reveal cross-scale dynamics
Digital version: Use Miro, Mural, or another digital whiteboard-tool for distributed groups
TRIZ → Ecocycle: Use TRIZ first to identify what belongs in creative destruction
Timeline Overlay: Add duration to show how long activities have been “stuck”

Tips

Lessons learned from other facilitators.

Make everything visible. Include all activities—big, small, half-dead, unofficial, legacy leftovers. These reveal the real patterns.
Work individually first, then in pairs, then in small groups. This prevents early convergence and groupthink.
Use actual behaviors and time spent as the basis for placement, not official descriptions or intentions.
Embrace differences. Disagreement about placement often reveals more insight than the final decision.
Focus on the traps. Activities in the rigidity trap and poverty trap hold the biggest opportunities for change.
Let everyone participate in stop-decisions. Shared ownership leads to real strategic clarity and follow-through.
Look at the system, not just the parts. The overall pattern is the real data.

Traps

Don't make the same mistakes.

Don’t rationalize or defend. Ecocycle Planning is about honest observation, not selling your work.
Don’t place too many items in maturity by default. Many activities look mature but are actually stalled or declining.
Don’t insist on perfect evidence. The Ecocycle is a sensemaking tool, not an audit.
Don’t turn it into an evaluation or performance review. It’s meant for collective insight, not judgment.
Don’t let hierarchy decide what’s “true.” Once leaders dictate placement, the system view collapses.
Don’t try to fix everything at once. Pick a few leverage points and act on them.
Don’t skip the creative destruction phase. If nothing is stopped, nothing will truly change.

Try it with…

The real power of Liberating Structures emerges when you combine them into "strings." Link different structures together to build on insights and create more powerful results. Here are some nice combinations:

TRIZ: Perfect for surfacing what must be destroyed before the Ecocycle
25/10 Crowd Sourcing: Generate bold ideas for the Birth quadrant
15% Solutions: Identify immediate actions for high-potential activities
Purpose-to-Practice: Align portfolio decisions with shared purpose
What, So What, Now What? (W3): Process Ecocycle insights and commit to next steps
Panarchy: See how your Ecocycle sits within larger systems

Field stories

To get to know Liberating Structures without having used them yourself, it helps to see familiar situations from real-life practice. Chances are that you or your team have faced one of these challenges before. Discover how to approach these kinds of situations in a fresh and engaging way.

Learn by Failing Forward

Learn by Failing Forward with Liberating Structures – Ecocycle Planning. A Field Story about how a team coach used Ecocycle Planning to create overview, make work patterns visible, and integrate learning into daily collaboration.

Never start without a clear purpose

Never start without a clear purpose – 9 Why’s. A Field Story about how a leader used the Liberating Structure ‘Nine Why’s’ to uncover the deeper purpose of a project and thereby restored focus, ownership, and calm.

Practice Self-discovery Within a Group

Practice Self-discovery Within a Group with Liberating Structures – What, So What, Now What? (W3). A Field Story about how a leader used What, So What, Now What? to stop explaining and create space for collective self-discovery and ownership.

Emphasize Possibilities: Believe Before You See

Emphasize Possibilities: Believe Before You See with Liberating Structures – Troika Consulting. A Field Story about how Troika Consulting as a peer-coaching structure increased confidence in the collective wisdom of a team and made possibilities visible.