Tiny monsters aka Tiny demons, Drawing monsters, and Uhuglettes. The metaphor of demons for an activity that’s about fears is on the nose though, and certainly, some of those demons are not tiny! On the other hand, monsters call for curiosity. I’ll go with Tiny Monsters as they were called in Studio.

In practice

I would love to facilitate this activity after the group conducts action planning for something that relies on self-organization and taking the initiative. A good example is setting your learning goals for the year.

Tiny Monsters is grounded in a deeply personal and possibly irrational source of emotion. Transposing fears, concerns and doubts onto irreverent characters that we then chose to befriend is such an elegant way of facing them. It lowers the bar, almost completely to the ground, for us to accept and then share their weighty presence in a way I’ve not seen in any risk management activity. There are echoes of a pre-mortem here but the idea of facing our fears is broader than trying to mitigate the chances of project failure.

See instructions

See riff

This entry is part of an ongoing series of Field notes from my Liberating Structures practice.

LS under development
- Aug 16, 2020 Tiny monsters
- Aug 13, 2020 Narrative reauthoring
- Aug 12, 2020 Spiral journal
- Aug 9, 2020 Mad Tea Party
Microstructures
- Feb 24, 2021 Helping Heuristics
- Oct 4, 2020 Nine Whys
- Oct 4, 2020 Appreciative interviews
- Sep 24, 2020 Ecocycle planning
- Sep 20, 2020 Celebrity interview
- Aug 22, 2020 25/10 Crowdsourcing
- Aug 22, 2020 Open space technology
- Aug 22, 2020 Wise crowds
- Aug 14, 2020 Wicked questions
- Aug 13, 2020 Heard, seen, respected
- Aug 13, 2020 15% Solution
- Aug 13, 2020 Triz
- Aug 13, 2020 Min specs
- Aug 12, 2020 User experience fishbowl
- Aug 11, 2020 Conversation cafe
- Aug 11, 2020 Troika Consulting
- Aug 11, 2020 Impromptu networking
- Aug 10, 2020 1-2-4-All