Blog - The Solutions Focus

Let's get the conversation going | Paul

15/1/2020

We’ve been at a conference in Leuven, Belgium, and our European colleagues tell us that more and more organisations are turning to Solutions Focus as their preferred method of change - for individuals, teams and even the organisational culture as a whole.

They like the focus on what’s wanted (rather than endless analysis of problems), the harnessing of resources (which is fast and economical) and the rapid progress with small, experimental steps (rather than a cumbersome three-year plan that’s daunting to implement and out of date before the ink is dry).

If you think you might be a suitable client to work along those lines with us, here are three good questions to decide which project will most benefit from our collaboration:

What burning issues do you have, that you suspect a solutions-focused approach might well help with?
Is this an issue really worth working on, so that the benefits of progress will outweigh the effort it’s going to take?
Who do we need to get involved to make an engaging start?

Let us know your answers, and we’ll get the conversation going...

How to do a Success Analysis | Paul

15/1/2020

When was the last time you did something well and greeted it with a Success Analysis?

Here’s how to do a Success Analysis when you have a team with accomplishments to its name.

Gather everyone around, and share stories of when this success happens. The stories will ideally touch upon:

What prompts it?
What’s each contributor doing?
What conditions are helping to maintain this success?

Then task the team to work together to generate a list of 10 (home grown) tips you could give to a new member of the team so that they will also know how to do this.

We tend to over-rate how much we can learn from mistakes and failures - mostly, the learning consists of ‘Don’t do that again'.

But the real gold of knowing what to do (instead of the mistaken behaviour) is only found when we discover what works. Then we can analyse and re-apply it.

Sleeping with President Trump

16/2/2017

One of the most important ideas in Solutions Focus is that the problem is not necessarily related to the solution. And this notion seems odd to many people. They wonder how can you get to a solution if you don't start with a problem.

A first step may be to imagine various issues where there is no problem.

Great talent, poor attitude | Janine

5/9/2016

What do you do as a coach or a manager when there’s a mismatch between talent and attitude? An HR director called me in to coach Lucy, an experienced senior manager in a city IT and software company. He said she was excellent at her job, but her attitude was terrible. While she was good at what she did, the pressing problem was that she was rude to people. She had a poor attitude towards company initiatives and so she was continually overlooked for promotion. If it didn’t improve, regardless of how much they valued her skills, it would be time for her to move on.

6 Dos and Don’ts for Resilience post-Brexit | Janine

15/7/2016

Some say that the UK Brexit vote on 23rd June was a vote against the establishment, a statement of general dissatisfaction with the way things are, a distrust of our politicians and a desire for more control, more democracy and independence. Others argue that it was ill-informed, driven by xenophobia and those seeking personal gain.

Not only has the vote divided the country, it’s caused ructions at work, families to fragment and a rise in reported racist incidents throughout the UK.

Whatever our views on the outcome of the vote, one thing is for sure: the ability to be resilient in these times of change and uncertainty will put us in good stead for whatever comes next.

So what exactly is resilience? Here are some descriptions that you may find helpful.

Clever people, stupid organisations | Paul

14/3/2016

A great paradox of leadership is that we seem to have clever people in stupid organisations.

Perhaps that’s because we usually view wisdom as a property of the individual. But if we face big collective problems, how about seeking and creating wisdom in a collective approach?

An element of wisdom is the ability to see beyond the obvious. Good leaders notice patterns. They discern signals amongst noise and get a sense of what’s going on. They bring the gift of making even complex circumstance more tractable.

Leaders working effectively together in an organisation (or society) can use this skill to determine from the myriad of activities and sets of information available what to pay attention to and what to overlook.

This guides the practice of colleagues – helping to clarify aims and decide where to apply effort. In your next meeting, how can you increase clarity with your colleagues and generate collective wisdom?

What can we learn from a crisis?

8/2/2016

There is a common misconception that in Chinese, the sign for crisis is the same as for opportunity.

If not through these symbols, how can we create opportunities from our crises?

Well, we can learn more about our resources and resilience. And we can learn more from those than we can learn from our mistakes and failures.

Mistakes are events you would rather have not happened (at least at the time), because the intention was to do something different, and the immediate consequence is most often unfavourable.

I like this story of a crisis handled by Hans Zeinhofer, who I met at a conference where delegates were discussing the application of solutions-focused ideas in organisations.

What VUCA means for SF leaders | Paul

3/12/2012

It's good to stay abreast of buzz words, and the buzziest right now could well be VUCA. We'll get to what it means in a moment, but how do we know it's so current? Well, VUCA came up in the first two presentations at the launch of the Centre for Progressive Leadership this week at London Metropolitan University - in itself a buzzy place to be.