What can we say about politics from a solution-focused viewpoint?  I know several SF practitioners have been considering that question for a while, and it was on Fania Pallikarakis's mind when she interviewed me recently for her article in the Huffington Post.

Here's the interview.

FP           Do you believe that SF ideas could apply in a political setting?

PZJ         Solutions Focus is the direct route to positive change. The approach is founded on…

SOLWorld Slideshow Part 2

The second part of the event. Happy memories!

SOL2013 slideshow part 1 A personal slideshow of the whole event. Happy memories. In two parts due to file size.

Dear SF colleagues and friends.

As you may know we offered 20 more places at the early bird price for those who had wanted to see the full programme for SOL World 2013 (May 14 - 17) before booking.

We would like to announce that we have just two places left at the lower price.  Once the two places are sold out or starting Monday, 15 April, the full price will be in force.

So if you have not booked yet, book now at…

“Where a minute before a handful of tech guys could agree on almost nothing, it took us only five minutes to identify the future perfect on which we all agreed.” Niklas Tiger. Managing Director of Hi5, Sweden.

How many meetings have you been in where you have tried to tackle a problem in a team and it just kept going round in circles?

The following is a true story related by Niklas Tiger, Managing Director of Hi5, an IT organisation in Sweden that provides outsourced IT…

Uncovering Treasure: Influencing with Solution Focus

Recently we had an SFCT UK call discussion on an article by Loraine Kennedy and Colin Coombs entitled “Uncovering Treasure: Influencing with Solution Focus.” This was printed in InterAction Volume 3 Number 2. We suggest you read this if you have not already done so.

Loraine pointed out that the article was a workshop paper and that it captured the learning from 3 workshops of 2 hours duration on the topic of Influencing…

Background

Members of the SFCT UK and Ireland group discussed dealing with team conflict in an SF way. We referred to an article on this topic as a stimulus for discussion. Despite the low numbers the call enabled a valuable discussion.

Initial thoughts

The consensus was that, the typical SF approach is itself a very good way to deal with conflict. We (those on the call) thought that it is first important to enable people to air their concerns in a controlled way…

“Great acts are made up of small deeds” - Lao Tzu, Chinese Philosopher

How do you effect change and maintain the operation…? 

Some of you may be the type of person to pull out a toolkit at first sight of a drawer knob dropping off or other domestic issue. To my discredit, I can always find something more interesting to do and many jobs build up before begrudgingly, I do them.

However, when our bathroom door hinge recently developed a very…

Solutions focus (SF) has been around for 30 years, possibly longer. First, in the world of family therapy and more recently in

organizations. Deeply researched it is an approach to help people find ways to

move beyond things they believe are preventing them from making progress, i.e.,

when they are stuck. One of the unique aspects of SF is that the client is in

charge of the change – the changes they want to make.…