Jenny Clarke's Posts - SOLWorld2024-03-29T09:18:31ZJenny Clarkehttp://www.solworld.org/profile/JennyClarkehttp://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/357573265?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1http://www.solworld.org/profiles/blog/feed?user=fertq6tq68u7&xn_auth=noIs organisational work different to therapytag:www.solworld.org,2012-01-18:2102269:BlogPost:516522012-01-18T16:22:56.000ZJenny Clarkehttp://www.solworld.org/profile/JennyClarke
<p>Carey Glass, one of the editors of InterAction, posed this question to us all after publication of the article in the latest InterAction bt Christine Kuch and Susanne Burgstaller - <span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">Their article is available at…</span></p>
<p>Carey Glass, one of the editors of InterAction, posed this question to us all after publication of the article in the latest InterAction bt Christine Kuch and Susanne Burgstaller - <span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">Their article is available at</span> <span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/sfct/inter/2011">http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/sfct/inter/2011</a></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US">Here is my response:</span></p>
<p><b> </b>The case studies presented in this article make good reading and I would describe them as recognisable pieces of SF work. However, the introduction and conclusion confuse me, especially as I read the article with Occam’s Razor close at hand. I do not understand the importance the authors give to the distinction between the organisation and the people in it – nor what implications they see for SF organisational developers in the future.</p>
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<p>Perhaps this goes to the heart of what is radical about the SF way of thinking, stemming from the interactional view pioneered by Gregory Bateson, John Weakland and the Mental Research Institute.</p>
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<p>In keeping with the interactional view, I challenge the premise that the organisation is “in part independent of the people who are working in it ..... People are relevant for the organisation not only as specific individuals, but also as representatives of their specific roles. The consequence of this description is that individuals are interchangeable.” In SF-land, we take the position that every case is different – and so is every Finance Director! Introducing the idea of the organisation as a separate entity adds an unnecessary element of complexity to our work, one that can be shaved away with benefit to clients and practitioners. People and the way they act and interact ARE the organisation, and the procedures and processes people have devised to further their aims can be changed when they are no longer effective or efficient.</p>
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<p>The literature now contains many cases and descriptions of OD work using SF – see for example previous editions of InterAction, Solution-Focused Management edited by Günter Lueger and Hans-Peter Korn, Daniel Meier’s book Team Coaching with the SolutionCircle and Solution Focus Working edited by Mark McKergow and me. </p>
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<p>In the cases presented by Christine Kuch and Susanne Burgstaller, the authors were asked to help their clients with mediation or conflict resolution. What characterises the SF consultants’ approach is to turn the focus away from what is wrong (interpersonal conflict in these cases) towards what is wanted. Naturally the participants are preoccupied with what is wrong and the shift in focus can take time. This is the art of platform building, an often overlooked tool in the SF tool box, as described in my article in Solution-Focused Management (Lueger & Korn, 357 – 362). </p>
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<p> In the first case, what was wanted was revealed in the second workshop as better preparation of the core meeting; in the second case, the focus was shifted to the task: what are we trying to do here, and how could that be achieved in an ideal world? </p>
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<p>The question “what are we trying to achieve?” is often a good starting point in building a secure platform, especially in mature organisations which tend to take the answer to that question for granted, without regularly checking that it is still relevant and widely understood within the organisation. SF consultants know that time spent in this phase is well spent: it gives clients confidence that they have been listened to and their concerns taken seriously AND that they have some idea of the direction they want to go and the benefits of setting off in that direction. As well as choosing the next small steps in the desired direction, we might spend some time casting back a step or two from the Future Perfect to ask “what do we need to have in place in order to support this?” This is an elegant way of looking at the processes and interfaces as described in the two case studies which does not require any OD “expertise”.</p>
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<p>In summary, I cannot see the added benefit of viewing organisations as somehow separate and different from the people working within them – a distinction which seems to me to be contrary to the SF tradition and, at the very best, redundant in the task of making progress in a desirable direction. </p>
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<p>Jenny Clarke, sfwork, UK Contact <a href="mailto:jenny@sfwork.com">jenny@sfwork.com</a></p>
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<p><b>References</b></p>
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<p>Lueger, G. & Korn, H-P. (2006). <i>Solution-Focused Management.</i> Rainer Hampp Verlag</p>
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<p>McKergow, M. & Clarke, J. (2007). <i> Solutions Focus Working.</i> Solutions Books</p>
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<p>Meier, D. (2005). <i>Team Coaching with the SolutionCircle. </i> Solutions Books</p>
<p></p>EBTA 2011 Philosophy Frametag:www.solworld.org,2011-10-03:2102269:BlogPost:465672011-10-03T13:03:33.000ZJenny Clarkehttp://www.solworld.org/profile/JennyClarke
<p>I was privileged be the moderator for the final morning of this year's EBTA conference, Frames and Beyond, where Ken Gergen and Gale Miller were invited to be key note speakers "Looking from a philosophy perspective". Here are my notes from their talks.</p>
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<p><b>Ken Gergen – Co-Founder & President of the Board of the Taos Institute </b></p>
<p>The Taos Institute is a community of scholars and practitioners working at the intersection of post-constructionist theory and…</p>
<p>I was privileged be the moderator for the final morning of this year's EBTA conference, Frames and Beyond, where Ken Gergen and Gale Miller were invited to be key note speakers "Looking from a philosophy perspective". Here are my notes from their talks.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><b>Ken Gergen – Co-Founder & President of the Board of the Taos Institute </b></p>
<p>The Taos Institute is a community of scholars and practitioners working at the intersection of post-constructionist theory and practice. Prof. Gergen sees the SF community as part of the same movement - one of global significance, challenging 300 years of western culture and thought. This movement challenges the privilege of experts, questioning who has the right to define knowledge and asking why knowledge isn’t seen as perspectival and contextual. There is a multiplicity of views about what is “real” and what is “good” – there is no stone tablet which tells the truth. This idea invites humility and openness<br/>about where you stand – and to be curious about where others stand. </p>
<p>Everything we say and do emerges from a complex, indeterminate array of relationships, past and present. Meaning emerges, in conversation, from the collaborative moment – and this is always in flux. When we shift the form of talk, we shift how we think. Talk is a form of action, but it is limited to what happens in the therapy room. What happens next is indeterminate: language doesn’t determine action, although it may be related to action. We can forget causality and forget about assessing “the effects of therapy” (although the modernist world may still demand this). </p>
<p>And so the ability to stay in motion – to move across the sea of constant change – is the ultimate life skill. We are always improvising and being mindful of this improves our practice. </p>
<p>This thought leads to the main message of the talk (to this listener anyway): If you don’t deliberate about practice, it dies. When you solidify practice, it dies. You have to keep going, morphing and developing; you have to allow experiment, expansion and the presence of other voices, or it dies. Adding voices adds to the array of possibilities. Open up to other voices or you will be digging your own grave.<b> </b></p>
<p><b>Gale Miller – Research Professor at Marquette University (the man behind the mirror at the BFTC)</b></p>
<p><b> </b>Gale Miller’s theme was also about emergence and flux. Starting from complexity theory, he posed the question “where do we find the future?” His own answer is “as potentiality in the present”, adding that there are few assumptions more basic to SF than that. The future unfolds within social interaction, a self-organising activity with processes which <b>could</b> bring about transformation at any step. This is what Gale Miller and Mark McKergow have called “narrative emergence”. He illustrated how storylines emerge within social interactions with reference to 3 scenarios of children playing, captured in transcript in William<br/>Corsaro’s book “We’re Friends , Right? Inside Kids’ Culture”.</p>
<p>Gale called these scenarios “It is”, “It Can’t Be” and “ It’s OK”. The first – It Is - is illustrated by a game in which the children accept whatever the others say and work with it. This is what the BFTC was doing in the early days: asking what was happening in the therapy room and recording it. This tells us that change can happen in an uncritical environment. The second – It can’t be - is illustrated by a child refusing to accept a move one of the others made “because ....” This is where SF practice is today: with trainings, certification, books and conferences, which all add up to “becauses”: this is who we are (and by extension who we are<br/>not). The third – It’s OK – illustrated by children changing the rules during the game - widens the frame. This is where the subversive side of Steve de Shazer played; doing SF under the radar in the modernist world.</p>
<p>None of these forms of change is the “best”. Gale wanted to emphasise that there are numerous potential futures in what we do – every case is different and there is always the possibility of transformation in whatever we do . Hence the need for mindfulness.</p>