New blog posts on my SOLWorld ning group page Mark - 19:17 17/6

The SOLWorld community has a splendid new Ning group website at solworld.ning.com. One of the features of Ning is a well-specified blog for exery member, and I am now posting my blogs there - it's possible for readers to add comments etc directly.

The latest post is some recent thoughts on the differences between explanation-focused and progress-focussed approaches. I argue that position SF as a progress-focused approach is a good way to distinguish it from other methodologies. Go and read it for yourself.

For the full list of recent blogs from me, click here.

J-SOL One - the first Japanese SF conference Mark - 9:33 1/5

You can read my full report of the event by downloading the pdf at www.solworld.org/downloads/J-SOL1.pdf.

Balancing scales Mark - 18:03 6/2

I was running a workshop yesterday at a UK bank. One of the participants told a story about a way of using scaling which I really liked, and hadn't heard before in this way. So I thought I'd pass it on.

The manager was working with a colleague who was having relationship difficulties with some - but not all - of her reports. Issues of support and challenge seemed to be part of the situation. The manager invited the colleague to scale, for each report, how much challenge she was giving them, and how much support. This she did.

What emerged was most interesting. Where the relationship was going well, there seemed to be a good match in terms of similar levels of challenge and support. In the stickier cases, however, there was a clear imbalance. The colleague was able to quickly reassess the situation and take action to change things.

For me, this is a reminder of the brilliant way in which scales help us to work with intangible concepts. If something can be given a name, it can be given a number on a scale. Of course, it may not always be the case that a balance of challenge and support is what's wanted - but scaling is a fantastic way to explore these concepts quickly and effectively.

Personal power Mark - 12:19 18/11

This is part of the OnGrowing Weekly Blog Challenge started by Donna Steinhorn. The question for this week is ?Who are you giving your personal power away to and how are you going to take it back??. Donna's partner Donna Karlin says - ?We can either choose our future or let someone else do it for us. Which would you prefer??

I don?t think this is an either/or - more like a both/and. Yes, of course we can make our choices. And there are usually things some happening that we don?t like or would not have chosen - however ?good? our choices were. British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan famously referred to these ?events? (as he called them) as his biggest challenge.

I like the quote by biologist/geneticist Stephen Rose - he concludes his book Lifelines by writing ?We have the ability to construct our own futures, albeit in circumstances not of our own choosing.? which seems to sum it up for me.

Personally I like to be careful about ?not going back?? not getting reinvolved in something I already moved on from, unless there is a REALLY good reason and/or things have changed significantly. Even though you can't step in the same pond twice, it seems to me to be better to try something different - even if only a bit different.

I am tagging fellow SF bloggers Coert Visser, Michael Hjerth and Kirsten Dierolf to respond and build on this - find the links to their blogs on the links page.

Do GOALs put you in GAOL? Mark - 12:58 11/10

At last week's European Brief Therapy Conference in Bruges I was pleased to attend a workshop by Roger Lowe, senior lecturer in counselling at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. Roger teaches SF to his counselling students. He recounted a story of how one day he set out to write GOAL on the board, and found he had written GAOL instead!

This summed up something I have been thinking about and trying to say for years. Just about all self-help and management books stress the importance of goals. "Write down your goals" is a mantra in the world of personal development. Some like to have SMART goals - specific, measureable, timed etc. And yet...I wonder if this is always as helpful as it might be.

In conventional thinking, the way to make progress is to set a goal and then create a plan to work towards it. You measure success by how close you are to achieving the goal on the desired date. No doubt this can be effective - but is it the only way? Indeed, just this morning the British press is filled with the story of a hospital which was so focused on its goals of reducing waiting lists etc that staff neglected basic hygiene and an outbreak of the c. difficile superbug caused 90 deaths.

Some people describe SF as goal-oriented. In a way I think they are right - in that progress is the objective as opposed to understanding. In other ways, I disagree. The customer's goal is a part of the platform - the basis for change. It helps to clarify the issue at hand. However, in general once the Future Perfect/preferred future/whatever is described, then the goal seems to fade into the background.

So, is the Future Perfect a goal? I think not - it works in a different way. Although specific, it has no time dimension and may seem to be far from achievable. After all, it's a miracle! It's a step in a conversation towards linking the future with the past - the search counters, resources etc and 'when does this happen already?'. This then leads to some kind of small steps in the right direction, and then the emergence of 'what's better'.

This is a very fluid and emergent way of working. It picks up and builds on progress which cannot be predicted in advance, rather than making a plan. So it is very responsive to changing circumstances and above all helps those involved to keep their eyes on what's happening, as opposed to the things that should be happening in the plan.

So - do goals put you in gaol? I think we may be coming to the end of the great goal-rush - goals sometimes seem to me to be a constrained and imprisoning way of working. SF offers a very coherent way to work with the emerging and unknowable future.

Transforming the transformers Mark McKergow - 15:26 7/8

I was invited to join in 2005, and have attended three meetings so far. In January 2007 I was invited to present to the group on the subject of SF, which was well received. Just before I spoke, Jack had been talking about his favourite improvement strategy, which was to ask 'Where are you on a scale of 1-10', and then follow up with 'And how are you going to make it a 10'? When I offered the SF version of this - 'how come it's that high and not lower' - there was an audible gasp from the group. It seemed like a totally new idea, and I wasn't sure at the time how it had been received.

I need not have worried. Several people, including Jack and BNI business networking founder Ivan Misner told me how they uad used this idea in practice and how well it had worked. In fact, Jack now mentions SF in his presentation, which should be good for the visibility of our field.

I have been thinking about Jack's question, 'How are you going to make it a 10'? Is this a usefulquestion or not? I think it all depends on whether it's answerable or not. If it's answerable, then the answers will surely be useful (even if they might not yet be small steps). However, SF was designed for use in stuck situations - where people have absolutely no idea of how to go on, and where this question would make no sense. It seems better than 'What's stopping you from getting to 10?' at any rate. Jack talks about there being power in both questions, and I agree - it depends on the situation.

Constructing the future - a challenge to the SF community Mark McKergow - 19:15 5/7

Gale Miller and I presented a workshop in Karlstad in May 2007, about Simple Complexity or Complex Simplicity. As we developed ideas for the event, Gale and I figured that this was not only an interesting topic for a workshop - it was also a way of embarking on an endeavour to connect SF practice with 'neighbouring' fields - which are different, but not too different. We think that complexity science is one such field. It seemed to us that there is an opportunity to bolster knowledge and profile of SF in the world of ideas as well as practice.

During the session in Karlstad we put this idea to the group, and were somewhat stunned by the positive reponse. So we have produced a paper including ideas from the group which both puts forward the connections between SF and complexity and also encourages those who are interested to get involved in a discussion, initially at the EBTA conference in September (also, coincidentally, in Bruges).

Click here to read the paper.

SF at Canon in Japan Mark - 18:29 17/5

We're just back from the SOLWorld international conference, which was this year held in the wonderful medieval city of Bruges in Belgium. One of the themes was Swarm Intelligence, and guru and author Jim Kennedy was on hand to tell us about his work and talk about connections between the interactional worlds of SI and SF.

One of the most interesting sessions for me was run by Yasuteru Aoki from Japan. Aoki-san is a great friend and colleague of ours, and visited our recent SF Professional course in the UK. He has been working with Canon Fine-Tech, part of the famous Canon group, in Japan. They wanted to enhance the workplace to develop a 'place where we wanna to to work every day'.

What made this session particularly interesting was that Aoki had brought two of the managers from Canon with him, to share their experiences and show us what they had achieved. He also showed video interviews with senior managers from Japan (with subtitles!) and film of the SF training sessions in action. The session was very effective in conveying the exciting work and the commitment of all involved. Here is the team in action in the workshop.

And here they are in full cry at the conference cabaret!

SF and Jazz Improvisation Mark McKergow - 14:36 9/2

We held sfwork's opening event on home soil yesterday - an afternoon to introduce Solutions Focus and explore some of the connections between SF and jazz improvisation. Some of the links were about

• Frameworks and flexibility
• What you don't want and what you do want
• Make use of what's there
• Every case is different

I shared the stage with Alex Steele of Improwise, who is a fine pianist as well as an environmental consultant who uses SF ideas in his work. We were honoured to be joined by Yasuteru Aoki from Japan, who is the 'Solution King' of Japan and is also advising on the Japanese translation of The Solutions Focus book. Aoki-san took this video of the band kicking off the session with a quick version of Doxicl.

To do or to decide Mark McKergow - 15:25 5/2

Jenny and I are just back from a great visit to the USA and Canada. We started our SF Professional certification course in Toronto and joined in with the first SolWorld event on North American soil, the Toronto Salon. (They decided they wanted something more intimate than a conference, and 'salon' seemed appropriately French/cosy/whatever.) Anyway, both events were excellent - thanks to Alan, Mike, Minna, Suzanne, Tim, Anna and all the team there. I also had time to go to North Carolina to do some teaching and facilitation with a company there.

During the SF Professional course we did a coaching demonstration. Our customer brought an interesting issue - he was beginning to get involved with a start-up company and wasn't sure about his next move. During the platform building part of our conversation we reached an interesting point - was it that he wanted to think about getting involved with the company, or was it more about deciding to get involved?

ALthough these things appear closely related, they turn out to be very different in practice. If 10 on the scale is involvement, that goes one way. If 10 on the scale is a knowing a decision, that goes another way. The counters for the involvement can be very different from the counters for a decision.

In this case it turned out to be a decision issue. I was struck by how this distinction leads to a totally different conversation, and how important it is to be clear near the beginning. Another similar distinction might be a manager who wants to be ready to do something - as opposed to actually doing it. Or someone who wants another job, versus being ready to apply for another job. Steve de Shazer produced a video a couple of years ago working with a client who 'wanted to want' something, rather than 'wanting' it. Again, these are different platforms, and lead to different conversations.

Building the platform is a key part of Solutions Focused practice. Remember to work out who is a customer (wants something different and is prepared to do something about it) and for what? And take care to notice whether they want to do it, or decide to do it.

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