SF-Management meets "Classic" Management

Dear SOLutionists,

below is what I wrote in my workshop proposal, about my intention of it.
Attached is my handout. It repeats the invitation to see the workshop not only as an end, but rather a beginning, and a means towards an end: to continue to share ideas about how "traditional", or "classical" management tools, jargon, and practices can smoothly be merged and linked to SF toos, jargon, and practices.

So if you come across, or invent yourself some links / connexions / translations between classic and SF management, let me (and the SF community) know. Some space was already reserved for your idea(s) on the handout!

Any comments and extensions are welcome!
My e-address is: doc.ks@web.de
Thanks in advance!

"Metaphors be with you!", or so they say ...
(but was that in classic management? ;-)

Klaus

Workshop Intention (as described in the proposal abstract):

Clients from management contexts don’t look for some strange “solution focused (’SF’) methodology”, but rather for “solutions” for their perceived “problems”! And they buy those from external consultants, SF or otherwise, only if their own tool box doesn’t already provide them with what they’re looking for. You may dislike that and wish for it to "go to hell" - or welcome the "heavenly" opportunity. Either way, for a consultant insterested in offering the benefits of SF to a management clientele it is probably a prerequisite to be familiar with traditional management tools and “jargon”, and to know how “classical SF”-tools can be renamed, or modified where necessary, to fit to the background as well as to the perceived needs of his customers-to-be. Sometimes SF is best applied when it is not called SF …

Typical management tools comprise methods called “SWOT”, “Boston-Consulting-Portfolio” or “McKinsey-Matrix”, “PDSA-cycle” or “FMEA”, “fishbone” or “scatter diagram”, “360° feedback” or “risk analysis”, to name but a few. They are applied to analyze competitive environments, strenghts, weaknesses, strategic options, to identify sources of defects, manage quality or employees, break down complicated networks into manageable smaller bits and pieces, define responsabilities and sometimes scapegoats.

For many, if not all, of these applications, SF-related tools do exist already or could be invented easily. To map company skills to market needs (SWOT) the “solution matrix” from CORFU can be applied. A management heuristics like the PDCA-cycle can be SF’d with Bergmann’s “Solution Cycle”, Michael Hjerth’s “PLUS” or Coert Visser’s “POWERS”. The “fishbone” mutates into a “wishbone” and the “FMEA” into “SMEA” (success modes and effects analysis). Toyota’s “5-why” converts into a more future-oriented “5-what-for” - or culminates in the good old miracle question. Project “milestones” are reflected in “steps of the scale” and the search for scapegoats “deteriorates” into Ben Furman’s “positive paranoia” …

The workshop is supposed to collect (or modify, or invent, or …?) more tools from both worlds, and brief descriptions of how they work and what they can be useful for. One outcome might be an expanded list matching the tools in pairs, for easy comparison as well as for “translating” them from one jargon into the other. That list could be published in the conference proceedings or on the SOLworld-website for others to utilize whatever benefit it might offer. By this, the workshop would provide additional connections even to those who couldn’t participate!