The Need
“The cost of cultural change in the UK is a broad concept; but poor culture costs businesses over £23 billion annually in lost productivity, with bullying alone costing £18 billion per year” (source: Google AI). HR Magazine states that a staggering 70% of culture change programmes fail.
At the outset, let me be clear that there is no ONE solution in the form of a specific methodology, or psychometric intervention, that can deliver organisation-wide, cultural transformation forever. There are too many critical variables. However, I do believe the SF approach has some key benefits, which I’ll address later in this blog.
History
Solutions-focused work emerged in the early 1980s. It began as a therapeutic (“brief therapy”) approach, developed originally by Insoo Kim Berg, Steve de Shazer and colleagues at the Milwaukee Brief Family Therapy Centre. It is a pragmatic and disciplined approach where language is important and carefully used. Its roots are broad and include Buddhist thought, Wittgensteinian philosophy, Milton H Erickson’s work, Gregory Bateson’s work, systems thinking, and other influences. Over the years as SF’s usefulness and ease of application became well established, it spread into diverse fields including management, business, conflict resolution, mediation, coaching, education, parenting, policy and project management. It has been proven to work in any setting where people do work together.
Solutions Focus
Another key clarification - SF does not mean a blind insistence on “no problem talk” or rushing into “solutioning” without factoring in nuance, context and nested layers of interdependencies. This clarification is helpful at a time when economic and geo-political instability is growing. SF is often highly effective in complex situations where one small change can lead to other distributed positive effects. SF works on small parts of the system at a time while traditional methodologies usually seek to fully understand the whole system – and by the time a complex report is produced, the variables may have changed again.
So, consider SF an approach rather than a set-in-stone methodology – a light-footed, responsive, highly observant way of engaging and being in the numerous interactions we encounter daily in life. The SF approach has some key principles, and it complements other methods like Appreciative Inquiry, Non-violent Communication, Psychological Safety and
others. SF can work with psychometrics that give data and evidence, surfacing small steps, actioning the findings and evaluating the resulting changes.
Active communities of SF practice have sprung up in different parts of the world, which point to the ease of applying this across cultures – geographically and organisationally. Japan and India, for example, both have thriving networks of practitioners sharing what works and doing more of it.
The Solutions Focus Principles
What, then, are some of the key principles of SF? Let’s start with the most widely acknowledged ones:
- If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it! SF likes to work with people who want positive change and are prepared to do something about it.
- If it works, do more of it. Observation, listening, eliciting examples are important. By noticing what’s working we’re naturally drawn to doing more of it.
- If it’s not working, do something different. I enjoy the ‘experimental’ approach that SF takes, the “minor gesture” that shifts something big, tweaks and adjustments along the way. Fear of failure reduces.
- Small steps can lead to big changes. As above!
- No problems happen all the time, there are always exceptions. Our job is to draw out these exceptions and to have the client notice them and make useful experimental adjustments, which change as the context changes.
Since SF is far more practice based than theoretical, it helps to know some of the critical variables to focus on. We –coach, consultant, therapist – are not the expert on the client’s situation – the client is! Hence co-developing the ‘solutions’, the small steps, is never a top-down teach-in but always a co-creation, gentle signposting to notice strengths, resources and exceptions and amplify those. The SIMPLE acronym below is one of many useful tools that help both new and more experienced practitioners keep in mind some key SF ways of working.
Keeping things SIMPLE
In the SF world, a favourite saying is along the lines of “Change is happening all the time... our job is to find useful change and amplify it”.
'Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.' Albert Einstein
Solutions - not problems
In-between - the action is in the interaction
Make use of what's there - not what isn't
Possibilities - past, present and future
Language - simply said, easy to grasp
Every case is different – check your assumptions and your favourite theories of change!
In some of the best examples of culture-change work, a small experiment gains traction by conversational techniques. Positive gossip is another SF technique – people talk about stuff anyway, both problems and what’s working. Positive gossip helps useful actions to spread, gain momentum and become more widely used within a team, a department, an organisation.
So, try asking some SF questions at your next meeting. Notice the results, keep refining your questions, experiment. Happy to set you up on your SF journey – just reach out!
References
More than Miracles: Steve de Shazer, Yvonne Dolan et al – 2007, The Haworth Press
The Minor Gesture – Erin Manning – 2016, Duke University Press
The Solutions Focus: The SIMPLE Way To Positive Change – Paul Z Jackson & Mark McKergow – 2002, Nicholas Brealey Publishing
https://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/content/comment/culture-change-is-broken-heres-how-to-fix-it/
