# Ecocycle Planning

Participants map their group's portfolio of activities onto an infinity-loop life cycle, identifying stalled or rigid routines to stop and starved initiatives to fund.

**Time:** 95 minutes. Directly matches the 95-minute Liberating Structures sequence.
**People:** 4 to 24. Individual reflection, pairs (with one trio if odd), quartets (or groups of 3 to 5), then whole-room mapping and action planning

## Choose this exercise

**Purpose:** Sort a portfolio of active initiatives across developmental phases to determine what to stop, renew, scale, or sustain.
**Use it when:** Use during strategic resets, annual planning, or team retrospectives when a group is overextended and needs to clear legacy tasks to make room for new initiatives.
**Skip it when:** Skip when planning a single short project, when participants do not share an operational domain, or when leadership cannot alter existing workloads and commitments.

## Materials and tools

- One printed Ecocycle Planning Worksheet per participant
- One wall-sized Ecocycle poster or taped whiteboard diagram (infinity loop with 4 phases and 2 traps marked)
- Self-adhesive sticky notes (3x3 inch, 2 pads per small group)
- Dark felt-tip markers (one per participant)
- Wall-safe masking tape (if hanging paper poster sheets)

## Before participants arrive

1. Draw or tape a large infinity loop across a wide wall space, labeling the four phases (Renewal, Birth, Maturity, Creative Destruction) and the two traps (Scarcity Trap between Renewal and Birth; Rigidity Trap out of Maturity).
2. Arrange seating in tables or clusters of four with clear walking paths to the wall poster.
3. Distribute one worksheet and one marker to each chair, with pads of sticky notes placed in the center of each table.

## Say this to open

Today we will map our shared work across four life-cycle phases: Renewal, Birth, Maturity, and Creative Destruction, as well as two common bottlenecks: the Scarcity Trap and the Rigidity Trap. No program or task stays at peak maturity forever. Sustainable teams deliberately compost expired routines to liberate attention and money for new ideas. Let us examine where our time and effort actually sit today.

## How to run it

### 1. Introduce framework and record individual items (10 minutes)

Read the opening script. Explain the 4 phases and 2 traps. Distribute the worksheet. Have participants spend 5 minutes in silence listing 5 to 10 concrete routines, projects, or meetings currently occupying their working time.

### 2. Compare in pairs and write notes (10 minutes)

Have participants turn to a neighbor. If the group size is odd, form exactly one trio. Partners compare lists, debate where each task belongs on the loop, and write agreed activities onto separate sticky notes using clear block printing.

### 3. Consolidate into small groups (15 minutes)

Combine pairs into quartets. If group counts leave uneven numbers, form groups of 3 or 5 so no one works alone. Groups compare their placements, remove exact duplicates, resolve placement debates, and finalize one shared set of sticky notes for their cluster.

### 4. Assemble the whole-room map (15 minutes)

Call tables up one at a time to place their sticky notes directly onto the wall map in the corresponding quadrants. When all notes are placed, ask everyone to stand back together in silence for 2 minutes to take in the overall distribution.

### 5. Draft action steps to prune the Rigidity Trap (15 minutes)

Point to the items placed in the Rigidity Trap and Creative Destruction. Instruct small groups to pick at least one activity to stop, prune, or restructure. Each group records a specific first step, an accountable owner, and a target date directly on their worksheet.

### 6. Draft action steps to escape the Scarcity Trap (15 minutes)

Point to items sitting in the Scarcity Trap between Renewal and Birth. Instruct small groups to pick one high-potential project starved of attention and designate how resources freed from Step 5 will be reallocated to move it forward.

### 7. Examine divergent items and debrief (15 minutes)

Identify notes where people strongly disagreed on placement. Invite up to 3 short comments on what differing placements reveal about organizational friction. Conduct the whole-group debrief.


## Debrief questions

- Looking at the whole room map, what does the balance of items reveal about where our group directs its energy?
- Which discontinued or pruned item produces the greatest relief for team capacity?
- What is the immediate next step to get our starved Renewal initiatives into active Birth?

**Finished output:** A comprehensive wall map of active initiatives positioned across the Ecocycle, alongside written first-action commitments to stop obsolete activities and fund starved projects.

## Remote

Set up a shared digital whiteboard with the Ecocycle loop diagram and pre-created sticky note areas. Run Step 1 individually in silence on personal scratch paper. For Step 2, send participants into paired breakout rooms (or one trio for odd numbers) to draft digital notes. Merge pairs into breakout rooms of 4 (or 3 to 5) for Step 3 to prune duplicates. Bring everyone back to plenary for Step 4, where each table moves their digital notes onto the master loop. For Steps 5 and 6, assign each breakout room to draft prune and launch actions using standard digital sticky notes placed in dedicated action boxes on the board. Reconvene in plenary for Step 7.

## Hybrid

Set up the wall map in the physical room and a mirrored digital canvas online. The co-facilitator or a designated participant producer acts as digital scribe, typing physical wall notes onto the digital board as in-person tables post them, while reading aloud digital notes from remote tables to place physical copies on the wall. In-person participants work in physical pairs/quartets; remote participants work in remote breakout pairs/quartets directly on the digital canvas. Position a room camera toward the wall and share the digital screen on the physical projector so both audiences view the identical aggregate portfolio.

## Access and participation choices

- Provide a tabular text version of the Ecocycle categories on the worksheet for participants who prefer linear writing over visual mapping.
- Participants may decline plenary speaking roles and contribute exclusively through note writing or small-group discussion.

## If the session gets stuck

**Participants hesitate to classify legacy projects into Creative Destruction because they fear offending colleagues or leaders.**

Clarify that Creative Destruction is natural composting required to nourish new growth, not a declaration of failure. Ask: If our resources were cut by 25 percent tomorrow, which of these mature efforts would we willingly pause?

**Colleagues disagree sharply on whether a program belongs in Maturity or the Rigidity Trap.**

Do not force an immediate consensus. Make a duplicate sticky note and place one copy in Maturity and one in the Rigidity Trap, then examine the root difference during Step 7.


## Terms used here

- Creative Destruction: The deliberate winding down, pruning, or dismantling of routines and systems that no longer produce sufficient value.
- Rigidity Trap: A state where once-valuable operations become rigid habits that consume capacity without yielding original benefits.
- Scarcity Trap: A bottleneck where promising new ideas fail to transition into implementation due to lack of time, money, or sponsorship.

## Participant material: Ecocycle Planning Worksheet

ECOCYCLE PLANNING WORKSHEET

Name / Table:
Operational Domain (Team, Department, or Program):

Phases and Traps Reference:
1. RENEWAL: Researching, discovering concepts, early experimentation, finding partners.
   [SCARCITY TRAP]: Promising ideas stuck due to lack of time, funds, or executive support.
2. BIRTH: Active investment, pilot execution, scaling up, testing models.
3. MATURITY: Efficient, established, valuable operational routines and core services.
   [RIGIDITY TRAP]: Mature routines kept out of habit; declining return; blocking change.
4. CREATIVE DESTRUCTION: Pruning, ending, redesigning, or composting obsolete work.

Individual Inventory:
List 5 to 10 activities, meetings, or projects that consume your time:
1. __________________________________________________ [Phase: _________]
2. __________________________________________________ [Phase: _________]
3. __________________________________________________ [Phase: _________]
4. __________________________________________________ [Phase: _________]
5. __________________________________________________ [Phase: _________]
6. __________________________________________________ [Phase: _________]
7. __________________________________________________ [Phase: _________]
8. __________________________________________________ [Phase: _________]

Pruning Action Step (Rigidity Trap / Creative Destruction):
- Activity to halt or prune: ___________________________________________
- Concrete first action: _______________________________________________
- Responsible owner and date: _________________________________________

Advancing Action Step (Scarcity Trap / Birth):
- Starved initiative to advance: _______________________________________
- Resource or time freed from pruning: _________________________________
- Concrete first action: _______________________________________________

## Sources and adaptation

Observed in Liberating Structures (Keith McCandless and Henri Lipmanowicz), which cites Brenda Zimmerman and resilience science ecology research for the foundational Ecocycle model.

Preserves the 95-minute timing, developmental phases, traps, and 1-2-4-All sequence from Liberating Structures evidence. UWT specified group management for odd counts, clarified the hybrid digital scribe protocol, replaced undefined canvas action cards with standard board sticky notes, and added concrete participant worksheets.

[Liberating Structures](https://www.liberatingstructures.com/31-ecocycle-planning/)

[Liberating Structures](http://www.liberatingstructures.com/31-ecocycle-planning/)

[SessionLab](https://www.sessionlab.com/methods/ecocycle-planning)

Current run sheet: https://unitedwetransform.com/exercises/ecocycle-planning/