SOLWorld

Sharing and building Solution Focused practice in organisations

Mark McKergow's Blog (32)

Search Blog Posts

Meeting with Agile software pioneer Alistair Cockburn

UPDATE January 2010 - Alistair has posted his comments on SF and how to use punchier language at http://alistair.cockburn.us/Solutions+Focus+aka+Delta+Method. Go and check it out, and see my comments there.



As you will probably know, I enjoy meeting people who have led developments in other field which seem to have some resonance or connection with SF practice. (See the Karlstad Group section of the site…

Continue

Added by Mark McKergow on January 3, 2010 at 15:22 — 5 Comments

SF gets a warm welcome at the British Wittgenstein Society

Yesterday was marked by the Autumn lecture of the British Wittgenstein Society, and Kirsten Dierolf and I were very pleased not only to be invited to the lecture, but also to be included in a special dinner following the event. The lecturer was Prof Rom Harré (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Romano_Harr%C3%A9) who has added Chair of the LSE’s Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences to his large collection… Continue

Added by Mark McKergow on November 3, 2009 at 15:54 — 2 Comments

Art of Hosting - interesting meta-method of emergent change approaches

As a practicing consultant, coach and facilitator I always try to keep developing myself by attending trainings and other events from time to time. Within the SF world this is not always easy – after 17 years I feel as if I’ve seen quite a lot. Some of you will know of my recent work on developing the idea of Leader as Host, and part of my research led me to the Art of Hosting group (www.artofhosting.org).



Art of Hosting (AoH) is a movement… Continue

Added by Mark McKergow on October 5, 2009 at 17:00 — No Comments

Praise from the British Wittgenstein Society!

My paper with Kirsten Dierolf on the Grammar of Neuroscience (published in the SFCT journal InterAction and available for free download at http://tinyurl.com/lqb7p5) has come to the attention of Professor Danièle Moyal-Sharrock (http://herts.academia.edu/DanieleMoyalSharrock) at the University of Hertfordshire and founder of the British Wittgenstein Society. She is a Wittgenstein specialist, and… Continue

Added by Mark McKergow on September 25, 2009 at 14:00 — No Comments

At last... Inbetween is finally published - read it here

You may remember that Harry Korman and I have been working on an epic paper about the radical simplicity of SF, and I put up a draft some time ago. Well, it's finally out in Journal of Systemic Therapies (following quite a lot of revision after the various peer reviewers comments), and you can read the final version at www.sfwork.com/jsp/index.jsp?lnk=6d8.



The reference is McKergow MW and Korman H (2009), Journal of Systemic… Continue

Added by Mark McKergow on July 6, 2009 at 9:30 — 6 Comments

Latest news on the strange story of Phage

You may remember the section in The Solutions Focus book about the strange story of phage - the virus that eats bacteria. An evolving alternative to antibiotics, phage evolve along with bacteria and so offer a possible way to deal with bacteria which develop resistance to antibiotics. The parallel is with 'every case is different' (phage) vs 'every case is the same' (antibiotics).



I thought you might be interested to know that the development of phage treatments is continuing, with… Continue

Added by Mark McKergow on May 10, 2009 at 8:54 — No Comments

Nudge book - interesting parallels with SF

I recently read the book Nudge by David Thaler and Cass Sunstein. Subtitled Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness, the book connects to the movement in behavioural economics which looks at what people ACTUALLY do when faced with choices, rather than what they OUGHT to do if they acted rationally. Thaler and Sunstein talk about people acting as 'choice architects' for their customers or users. For example, the way food is displayed in… Continue

Added by Mark McKergow on December 19, 2008 at 13:00 — 7 Comments

Inbetween again, and Dorothy Rowe

I have been working on a revised version of the Inbetween paper (thanks to all who commented) and attach the latest working version here

Inbetween 080826 FP.doc. Harry and I submitted it to Family Process who have made many helpful comments (and some others too) - we are just addressing these now. In this week's New Scientist magazine I came across a great comment piece by the Australian… Continue

Added by Mark McKergow on November 1, 2008 at 16:00 — 7 Comments

Protesting or demanding? Tony Benn in Cheltenham

Here in the town of Cheltenham, UK we have just finished our annual festival of literature. Fantastic event, in fact over 200 seperate events over 10 days with authors from all fields - fiction, politics, science, biography, philosophy, childrens' books and much more - speaking about their work, reading from it (a little), debating, signing books and generally having a fun and improving time. Some of my favourite events this year included Tony Curtis (a real genuine Hollywood legend and still… Continue

Added by Mark McKergow on October 20, 2008 at 18:03 — 4 Comments

Explanation focused or progress focused?

The adjective Solution Focused is not always very useful. Everyone wants to work in a ‘solution focused’ way – after all, who wouldn’t? However the term ‘solution’ is used in SF in a different way to everyday conversation: we use it to mean ‘what’s wanted’, whereas in normal usage it is used for ‘what to do’. So, SF coaching, for example, is built around what the client wants, as opposed to problem focused approaches which focus on identifying and fixing what’s wrong. SF usually ends up with… Continue

Added by Mark McKergow on June 17, 2008 at 19:14 — 6 Comments

Inbetween, not inside or outside - the radical simplicity of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy

Harry Korman (who runs the SFT-L SF therapy listserv) and I have been working on a paper for a while. We think it's now ready for an initial discussion in the SF community, prior to a second version for external publication. We'd be very interested in your comments.



You can read the paper at www.sfwork.com/jsp/index.jsp?lnk=6d8 or download a pdf from Harry's website by… Continue

Added by Mark McKergow on June 3, 2008 at 16:18 — 12 Comments

SF from Treebeard in Lord of the Rings?

I was sent this very nice quote by Kamila Novokova a few weeks ago. I think it sums up quite a lot about SF practice, and also how to act not-knowingly and still to act. It comes from the part where Treebeard, an ent (tree-shepherd), is carrying Merry and Pippin. They are very unsure about what's going on, having never seen an ent before...



Merry: "Would you think it rude, if we asked what you are going to do with us, and which side you are on?"



Treebeard: "'I am not going… Continue

Added by Mark McKergow on May 16, 2008 at 14:03 — 8 Comments

Latest Blog Posts

Most Popular Blog Posts

Monthly Archives

2016

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

Badge

Loading…

Get Badge

Blog Posts

what are your best hopes?” Author Katherine Waldock

Posted by Ayse Adil on April 1, 2021 at 11:43

The SF advent calendar - advent, advent, adventure

Posted by Dominik Godat on December 1, 2017 at 3:56

The Paradox of Leadership with Nora Bateson, 21 April 2017, Berlin

Posted by Zarine Jacob on February 24, 2017 at 14:49

How we use SF in our company

Posted by Jim Nanireko on December 6, 2016 at 15:04 — 2 Comments

Post-Brexit free open space event by Katherine Long: Monday, July 4, 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM (BST)

Posted by Zarine Jacob on June 25, 2016 at 16:40

Notes

Jumpstart into Solution Focus

You want to learn more about "Solution Focus"?

You prefer a "step by step" introduction instead to start with reading some voluminous books?

You would appreciate to have a complete "helicopter view" on SF after the first step…

Continue

Created by Hans-Peter Korn Dec 25, 2009 at 10:25am. Last updated by Mark McKergow Nov 3, 2014.

Making the most of SOLWorld.ning.com

If you’ve just arrived at SOLWorld.org (the SOLWorld ning group), you may be looking at all the features and wondering where to start.  This note might be helpful…

 …

Continue

Created by Mark McKergow Jun 3, 2008 at 4:55pm. Last updated by Jesper H Christiansen Aug 22, 2017.

Open Space at SOLworld conferences

SOLworld Open Space instructions as it was used at the 2011 conference, by Mark McKergow

Continue

Created by Katalin Hankovszky Dec 30, 2015 at 10:18pm. Last updated by Katalin Hankovszky Dec 30, 2015.

SOLWorld Resources

Welcome to the SOLWorld Resources section.  This part of the site features information about the SOLWorld network, our past events and materials from our previous website.  It will take some time to update all the information, so thanks for your patience. 

Information in this part of the site is 'read-only'.  If you want to start discussions, please go to the Forum or Groups. …

Continue

Created by Mark McKergow May 12, 2008 at 4:08pm. Last updated by Mark McKergow Dec 2, 2022.

© 2024   Created by Mark McKergow.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service