Liberating Structures

Strategy Knotworking

Develop strategies for operating in complex, unpredictable environments by continuously exploring the interplay between action and intention. Strategy Knotworking transforms strategic planning from a rigid, top-down annual ritual into a living, distributed practice where everyone shapes the future together. It’s strategy-making that embraces surprise, learns from the present, and acts its way into what’s possible now.

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What is made possible - What it unlocks

Strategy Knotworking opens up a radical alternative to conventional planning: neither a single monolithic plan (over-controlled) nor reactive chaos (under-controlled), but a middle path of distributed, adaptive sense-making. Participants discover that they can continuously shape direction without controlling outcomes, respond to emergence without losing focus, and include every voice in strategy-making without drowning in complexity. The result is a compelling strategic narrative that everyone owns and operates—not a document to implement, but a living practice woven into everyday work.

When to use it

When your organization operates in rapidly changing markets or contexts where traditional forecasting fails
To shift from annual strategic retreats (where a select few decide) to ongoing strategy-making (where everyone contributes)
When you need to balance multiple plausible futures rather than betting everything on one predicted outcome
To break out of either/or thinking and embrace paradoxical challenges that require holding tensions productively
When you want to build organizational capacity to act-and-sense simultaneously, probing possibilities while shaping next steps
To create strategic alignment without top-down control—letting direction emerge from local-global interactions
When evaluation and action need to be integrated from the start, not bolted on afterwards
To transform strategic planning into a continuous practice that embraces surprise and serendipity as sources of innovation

🛠️ The five design elements of Strategy Knotworking

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 everyone with a stake in your organization’s future to explore six essential questions that, together, reveal a strategic narrative:

PURPOSE: What is the fundamental justification for the existence of our work? Why does it matter?
CONTEXT: What is happening around us that demands creative change?
CHALLENGES: What paradoxical challenges must we face to make progress?
BASELINE: Where are we starting, honestly?
AMBITION: Based on what we discovered, what seems possible now?
ACTION & EVALUATION: What are our next steps and how will we know we are making progress? (How are we acting our way toward the future, evaluating what is possible as we go?)

2. Setup & Materials

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

Large wall space with tapestry paper or multiple flip charts for the Strategy Knotworking visual canvas (download free worksheets below)
Post-it notes in multiple colors (to track different types of insights and allow for movement/reorganization)
Markers for writing and drawing
Blank paper or worksheets for each of the six questions (see worksheets below)
Explanations for the Liberating Structures you choose to do within Strategy Knotworking (see worksheet for structure suggestions per question)
Timer for keeping energy high and moving between structures
Documentation tools (camera, scribe, digital capture) to preserve the evolving narrative
Online: Digital whiteboard (Miro, Mural) with Strategy Knotworking Template and spaces for all six questions
Optional: Complexity and systems thinking reference materials for deeper dives

3. Participation Flow

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

Everyone involved in the work—from frontline to leadership—participates as equal contributors
The six questions are explored sequentially (1→2→3→4→5→6) but answers loop back and inform each other non-linearly
Each question is explored using specific Liberating Structures matched to that question’s nature
Participants move between individual reflection, pairs, small groups, and whole group synthesis
The visual canvas grows organically as insights emerge, with post-its added, moved, and clustered
Regular check-ins allow the group to notice patterns, connections, and tensions between answers
Different voices take the lead at different moments—the process distributes authority naturally

4. Group Configuration

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

Minimum group size: 8-12 people (allows for diverse perspectives while maintaining intimacy)
Ideal size: 15-40 people (critical mass for rich dialogue without losing coherence)
Can scale to 100+ with careful facilitation and parallel small groups that weave together
Can be done in:
- Sprint format: Full day (6-8 hours) to work through all six questions intensively
- Module format: Six 90-minute sessions (one per question) spread over weeks/months
- Retreat format: 2-3 days for deep exploration, including time for experiments and iteration
Recommended rhythm for ongoing practice: Quarterly full reviews + monthly mini-cycles on Action & Evaluation
In group settings: pairs or small groups can share patterns discovered
Optional: Facilitator invites reflection on what’s emerging across the spirals

5. Sequence & Timing

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

Before You Begin (15-30 min)

Introduce the Strategy Knotworking approach and the six questions
Set context: This is about building a living strategy, not producing a static document
Establish working agreements for the process

Step 1: PURPOSE (60-90 min)
Choose one of the recommended structures to dig into question: “What is the fundamental justification for the existence of our work? Why does it matter?”

Step 2: CONTEXT (60-90 min)
Choose one of the recommended structures to dig into question: “What is happening around us that demands creative change?”

Step 3: CHALLENGES (60-90 min)
Choose one of the recommended structures to dig into question: “What paradoxical challenges must we face to make progress?”

Step 4: BASELINE (60-90 min)
Choose one of the recommended structures to dig into question: “Where are we starting, honestly?”

Step 5: AMBITION (60-90 min)
Choose one of the recommended structures to dig into question: “Based on what we discovered, what seems possible now?”

Step 6: ACTION & EVALUATION (60-90 min)
Choose one of the recommended structures to dig into question: “What are our next steps and how will we know we are making progress?”

Integration & Synthesis (30-60 min)
Step back: Look at the full canvas with all six questions answered, reflect and debrief together. You can also try to harvest the story: Can someone tell the strategic narrative that connects all six questions?

Make Strategy Knotworking an ongoing Practice
See the Try it with section for structures to do this with

Schedule monthly mini-cycles focusing on Action & Evaluation (Ecocycle + WINFY)
Quarterly: Full review of all six questions to refresh the strategy
Between sessions: Use 15% Solutions and 1-2-4-All to keep strategy-making woven into daily work
Update the canvas as new insights emerge—treat it as living artifact

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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: The six essential questions that anchor Strategy Knotworking were developed by Keith McCandless and Johannes Schartau, first published in their 2018 monograph “Liberating Strategy: Surprise and Serendipity Put to Work.”

Note: As a Liberating Structure in Development, Strategy Knotworking hasn’t been tested in all possible scenarios and doesn’t always deliver predictable results yet. This simply means it’s still being refined through practice and feedback from facilitators worldwide.

Distributed Intelligence

Including everyone in strategy-making taps into frontline knowledge and diverse perspectives that leadership teams can't access alone—collective intelligence beats individual brilliance in complex contexts.

Present-Moment Grounding

The six questions root strategy in current reality (baseline, context) and present possibilities (ambition, action), avoiding nostalgia (using past as future) and fantasy (unrealistic predictions)—you act into insight rather than overthink.

Embracing Paradox:

Wicked Questions and the Ecocycle framework normalize tension and contradiction, helping groups hold opposing truths simultaneously rather than choosing false either/or solutions—essential for navigating complexity without clear "right answers."

Continuous Feedback Loops

The six questions interact non-linearly, creating natural iteration: new baseline data reshapes ambition, evolving context clarifies purpose, action experiments surface new challenges—strategy becomes a living conversation, not a static document.

Riffs and Variations

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

Quick Start Interview Approach: Before full group work, conduct 1-on-1 interviews using the six questions to gather initial insights and build stakeholder buy-in
Micro-Cycles: Use just Ecocycle + WINFY in monthly 90-minute sessions to keep strategy alive without full-day retreats
Visual Harvest: Bring in a graphic facilitator to create a rich visual map of the emerging strategic narrative as it unfolds. Or create something yourselves.
Action Research Mode: After initial strategy development, designate “scouts” who test ambitions as small experiments, reporting back to refresh the canvas monthly
Sector Adaptation: Use different Liberating Structures for different sectors—nonprofits might lead with Appreciative Interviews, tech companies with Simple Ethnography, community groups with Social Network Webbing

Tips

Lessons learned from other facilitators.

Start with Purpose: Don’t rush this—a powerful purpose statement makes everything else easier and more meaningful. Use the full 9 Whys process.
Keep the Strategy Knotworking Canvas visible: Put it at the center of the room from the start so participants can always circle back/forward and zoom in/out
Embrace messiness: The answers will loop back on each other. This is good. Let the group notice when something in Step 5 changes their understanding of Step 2.
Document as you go: Take photos, capture quotes, record the artifacts—this becomes your strategy story, not a separate document written later
Name the strategy paradigm shift: Be explicit that this is neither “big plan from the top” nor “no plan, just react”—it’s a third way
Use the language: Say “knotworking” to emphasize that strategy involves working through knots, not implementing smooth plans
Build facilitator capacity: Train multiple people in your organization to facilitate these structures so strategy-making can be distributed
Link to daily work: After the retreat, use 15% Solutions and 1-2-4-All in regular meetings to keep the strategy mindset alive

Traps

Don't make the same mistakes.

Rushing to answers: Strategy Knotworking is not about producing deliverables fast—it’s about building shared understanding. Don’t skip the divergence phases.
Letting experts dominate: The power of this approach is distributed sense-making. If the usual voices still dominate, you’re not doing it right.
Treating it as one-and-done: If you only do Strategy Knotworking once and then go back to business as usual, the strategy will die. Build ongoing rhythms.
Producing a static document: The canvas is the strategy, not the slide deck you make afterwards. Keep it alive, visible, and evolving.
Ignoring the Rigidity Trap: Organizations love to add new initiatives but hate to stop old ones. Creative destruction is essential—force the conversation.
Skipping the baseline: Groups want to jump to ambition and action. But without honest baseline (WINFY), you’re building on fantasy.
Forgetting psychological safety: Some of these questions (especially Wicked Questions and WINFY) can surface tension. Establish safety first or people won’t go deep.
Over-facilitating: Once the structures are clear, let the content emerge from the group. Your job is to hold the container, not control the content.

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:

Make Strategy Knotworking an ongoing Practice

Schedule monthly mini-cycles focusing on Action & Evaluation (Ecocycle + WINFY)
Quarterly: Full review of all six questions to refresh the strategy
Between sessions: Use 15% Solutions and 1-2-4-All to keep strategy-making woven into daily work
Update the canvas as new insights emerge—treat it as living artifact

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.

Practice deep respect for people and local solutions

Practice deep respect for people and local solutions with Liberating Structures – Appreciative Interviews. A Field Story about how a team coach used Appreciative Interviews to surface local knowledge and turn respect into action—discovering that solutions were already present, just waiting for the right structure.

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Download the PDF explanation incl. worksheets

Would you like a clear, well-designed visual explanation of Strategy Knotworking? It’s yours!

This download also includes 2 worksheets: two different versions of a blank Strategy Knotworking to fill in yourself, one with different suggestions for Liberating Structures to do in each stage.

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