# Dancing on a Slippery Floor

Small groups examine living-systems metaphors across four operational lenses, identify where the analogies fail, and design low-risk work adjustments.

**Time:** 30 minutes. Source indicates 30 to 60 minutes. Sized here to 30 minutes for a focused workshop session.
**People:** 4 to 24. Subgroups of 3 to 5 participants. For counts like 7, form one group of 3 and one group of 4. Spare participants join an existing group up to 5.

## Choose this exercise

**Purpose:** Evaluate workplace practices against living-systems analogies to identify where standard formulas fail and test practical adaptations.
**Use it when:** Use when teams face volatile conditions or organizational friction and need practical alternatives to rigid, top-down control formulas.
**Skip it when:** Skip when the immediate task is executing strict technical compliance standards with zero tolerance for procedural variation.

## Materials and tools

- One printed worksheet per participant
- Pens or pencils (one per participant)
- Timer
- Digital whiteboard or shared text document for remote or hybrid cohorts
- Display screen for hybrid viewing

## Before participants arrive

1. Print copies of the worksheet for all participants.
2. Arrange seating into tables of 3 to 5 people.
3. Set up a shared digital document if running in remote or hybrid formats.

## Say this to open

Working in shifting conditions feels like dancing on a slick floor. Living systems adapt without rigid master plans, but metaphors are thinking aids, not natural laws. Read the framing text on your sheet. In small groups, examine four lenses: connections, context, resource use, and adaptation. Pick one lens, spot where the analogy fits your work, name where it breaks down, and draft a low-risk test.

## How to run it

### 1. Introduce lenses and read framing (5 minutes)

Distribute worksheets. Read the opening script aloud. Give participants two minutes of quiet time to read the framing passage and scan the four lenses. Offer a neutral example: under the context lens, applying a uniform meeting cadence across four timezones fails, so the team tests asynchronous check-in threads.

### 2. Analyze lenses in small groups (13 minutes)

Direct groups of 3 to 5 to choose one or two lenses on the worksheet. Group members discuss concrete workplace examples of that lens. They record one current situation, note one limitation where the nature analogy does not apply to human organizations, and design a concrete, low-risk experiment to test within two weeks.

### 3. Share group insights (7 minutes)

Bring the room together. Invite a spokesperson from each group to share their chosen lens and proposed experiment in 45 seconds or less. With up to 6 groups, all can speak briefly. Any group that prefers not to present aloud posts their test on the shared board or hands in their notes.

### 4. Individual debrief and commit (5 minutes)

Facilitate a short room debrief using the stated prompts, taking two or three volunteer replies. Give participants two quiet minutes to write one personal commitment on their sheet: a routine they will alter or an assumption they will test next week.


## Debrief questions

- Where did the living-systems metaphor clarify a real problem, and where did it break down?
- What information does friction provide in your current project instead of being treated as simple resistance?
- What is the risk of continuing rigid formulas when project conditions change rapidly?

**Finished output:** Completed worksheets containing concrete workplace examples, identified metaphor limits, and small operational experiments.

## Remote

Distribute digital copies of the worksheet. Place participants into breakout rooms of 3 to 5 for 13 minutes. Each team records their examples, analogy limits, and small tests on a shared digital board. Reconvene in the main room. Call on spokespersons to share tests in turn, or allow teams to post summaries directly into the chat.

## Hybrid

Form separate all-remote breakout groups and all-in-person pods. Provide remote participants with digital text worksheets and in-person pods with paper. Project the shared digital workspace on the physical room screen. Remote and in-person groups take equal alternating turns during the sharing phase.

## Access and participation choices

- Offer digital screen-reader-accessible text sheets and large-print handouts.
- Participants may contribute via written notes or chat rather than speaking aloud.
- Passing or keeping workplace examples confidential is fully permitted.

## If the session gets stuck

**Participants treat nature metaphors as literal scientific proof that central planning is unnatural.**

Remind the group that analogies are thinking aids for perspective, not scientific proofs or binding biological laws.

**Groups design sweeping reorganizations instead of manageable tests.**

Instruct groups to scale down their plan to an action one person can test within two weeks without requiring broad approval.


## Terms used here

- Complex adaptive system: A network of interacting parts that respond, learn, and adjust together without total centralized control.

## Participant material: Dancing on a Slippery Floor: Systems Thinking Worksheet

Reading (Kathleen Allen concept summary):
Living systems survive by adapting to their local environments, building mutual relationships, and treating feedback as essential guidance. Traditional management often treats organizations like machines, applying uniform formulas from the top down. But on slippery, shifting ground, rigid rules fail. Viewing organizations through living systems highlights connections, local context, resource use, and continuous adaptation. Resistance is not just friction; it is vital information about how the system currently functions.

Instructions:
Select at least one lens below. For that lens, document:
1. Concrete workplace example: Where does this show up in your current work?
2. Limit of the analogy: Where does the living-systems metaphor fail or mislead in a human organization?
3. Small experiment: What low-risk adjustment can you test within two weeks?

Lens 1: Connections (Relationships, informal networks, and information flows across boundaries)
- Workplace example:
- Limit of analogy:
- Small experiment:

Lens 2: Context (Local environments, unique conditions, and moving beyond one-size-fits-all formulas)
- Workplace example:
- Limit of analogy:
- Small experiment:

Lens 3: Resource Use (Circulating energy, attention, and assets rather than hoarding or burning them out)
- Workplace example:
- Limit of analogy:
- Small experiment:

Lens 4: Adaptation (Treating friction and resistance as data to learn from rather than errors to suppress)
- Workplace example:
- Limit of analogy:
- Small experiment:

Individual Commitment:
One small adjustment I will test in my daily routine next week:

## Sources and adaptation

Observed in Relationship Makers Handbook (pages 127-131), citing Kathleen E. Allen's chapter 'Dancing on a Slippery Floor: Transforming Systems, Transforming Leadership' in 'The Transforming Leader', edited by Carol S. Pearson (2012).

Retained the core mechanic from the Relationship Makers Handbook: small-group reflection applying living systems versus machine models to 21st-century leadership. Because the original proprietary worksheet page was not recovered, UWT constructed a four-lens worksheet grounded in Kathleen Allen's chapter concepts (connections, context, resource use, adaptation) and added explicit analysis of metaphor limitations to prevent overextended scientific claims.

[Kathleen Allen](https://kathleenallen.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Dancing-on-a-slippery-floor-transforming-systems-transforming-leadership-1-17-18.pdf)

Current run sheet: https://unitedwetransform.com/exercises/dancing-on-a-slippery-floor/