Book review
Solutions Focus Working: 80 real life lessons for successful organisational change
By Mark McKergow and Jenny Clarke
Published by SolutionsBooks (2007)
This is an interesting addition to the books on appreciative methodologies. It takes the view that you already really know what solutions focus IS and now you’d like to see how people have used it. There are 80 lessons distilled from 14 case studies of organisations across Europe and Canada which are co-authored by the practitioners who worked on them.
The book is practical and pragmatic and, true to its pedigree, focuses on what worked in each situation. I found myself thinking, “I could use that!” or immediately seeing how I could apply a particular idea in current work. It is a pleasure to read – great stories about what work and change can be like if we let them.
For those who aren’t familiar with Solutions Focus, there are three basic rules:
- Don’t fix what isn’t broken
- Find what works and do more of it
- If it doesn’t work, stop doing it and do something different.
It urges practitioners to keep things simple – as simple as possible (but not simpler). If we disengage from looking at a problematic past (which we then extrapolate to a problematic future) and instead look at when things have worked a little bit as we would like them to… we can extrapolate the ‘working a little bit’ into the future, making it ‘working a lot’.
In The Power of One (Chapter 2), Carey Glass coaches a manager to improve motivation across his organisation. He does this in many (~30) different little ways without much fanfare. He tries things out, reflects on what is working. If it doesn’t work, he tries something else. He learns from the areas of the organisation where things are working and tries those things elsewhere.
Another example is Solutions Focus Tackles Complexity (Chapter 9) where Kirsten Dierolf works with Bayer CropScience on a project around the European Union helping to lobby the Commission on the drafting of new legislation such that their interests were taken into account. Solutions Focus was used to help simplify (enough, but not too much) a very complex situation so that people could work productively. One of the lessons here is that being solutions focused is not being problem phobic – it is important to listen to the story of the problem to help join with the clients in the project and also because it is possible to find traces of a solution when you hear the problem being described along with what is wanted, what is useful, what might be seen as strengths, and so on.
In the end, the client was interviewed twice, once six weeks after the workshops and once after 9 months for the purpose of the book. He reflected that what was most useful for the groups was concentrating on what was already working. A very powerful lesson indeed.
If you are at all interested in working in an appreciative way, then I can highly recommend this book. I guarantee that you will read it and find ideas of things you can try in your next intervention. As with the other books by these authors, it is straightforward, easy to use and you can dip in and out. Since a part of Solutions Focus is not to use a $5000 word when a $5 word will do, it keeps things simple. It is an enjoyable read as we all like to see how others handle interventions.