Case Study Articles

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 ARTICLES

Use Solutions Focus to Facilitate a Challenging Symposium

Delegates discussing issues

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The head of a charity wanted to facilitate a Symposium in a way that would challenge conventional thinking and enrich the debate on the topic of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) of indigenous peoples.

She wanted to ensure that “it would be different to conventional symposia, that it would be a closed and informal environment, that it encouraged dialogue, built relationships and had maximum benefit.”

Facilitating a workshop on this contentious issue in a problem focused way could lead to disagreement, hostility and broken relationships.

This article illustrates step by step how we used a Solutions Focused Approach to facilitate the Symposium. It explains the issues that arose, how we dealt with those issues and the successful impact the Symposium has had on the charity.

Facilitate a Team to Overcome Obstacles

Mad scientists try out temporal perspective machine

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Our client was Programme Director of a multi million pound programme for a FTSE 100 company. Yes! And… facilitated a programme team workshop when he assumed responsibility for the programme and we were asked to facilitate the team’s ongoing planning meetings.

The intent of the programme was to transform working practices, using a new IT platform to make better use of assets. The company had begun piloting the programme in one geographical region. To obtain resources to roll it out to other regions, it was vital that the pilot achieved the benefits the Programme Director had promised the Board.

This article illustrates step by step how we facilitated the Premortem Technique with our own twist. It explains how the technique works, how you can build actions from it and the successful impact the workshop had on the programme.

Use mapping to boost project collaboration

Project Team Picture

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If you and your colleagues have to prepare and share plans for business or major projects this case study can help you…

A Programme Director had taken on the challenge of turning around a failing, multi-million pound, transformational change programme. Project managers were developing new plans for ten different areas of the project and he needed to be assured that the plans would integrate. In addition, he wanted to ensure that the plans were robust, took into account key dependencies and that the plan owners’ colleagues would endorse them. Read on

Shaping Strategy with Solutions Focus

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Management teams often shape strategy in isolation from staff and then communicate it to them. This approach works very well for many companies, however, managers often have to use a great deal of time and  effort to communicate it,  gain acceptance for it and motivate people to implement it. It can also lose valuable intelligence from people working on the front line.  In this case study, we outline how one Business Unit of a multinational company involved all its people in the shaping of its strategy. We explain  the approach, the success factors and  issues relevant to other companies. Finally, we relate Kotter’s Change Model to  the approach,  in order to explain why it can be more successful than the traditional approach.

 

Improve collaboration with Solutions Focus

Team Collaborating

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Do you need to improve collaboration in an underperforming team? In this article, we describe how you might use a “Solutions Focus” approach to achieve this. We illustrate the approach using a workshop that we ran for a Government organisation. This department had had continual change over the previous two years, people were tackling new roles due to an organisational restructure and they had been dealing with the introduction of a new system designed to reengineer organisational processes.

There were interpersonal conflicts, people were tired of change and frustrated.  Read how they resolved this.

 

Create a Product in Three Short Workshops

Rich Picture From Workshop

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Many people wish to run a creative thinking workshop but are concerned that it may go wrong, that their colleagues might refuse to take part or cause issues. In this case study we show how Inga, an MBA student who attended John Brooker’s Open University residential class on creative thinking tackled a product creation challenge. Though nervous, Inga applied what she had learned on the course in a very flexible way and achieved great results. Read how she did this.

Obtain Better Advice From Clients

Clients Meeting

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Would you like to improve the quantity and quality of information you obtain at meetings with multiple clients, for example, annual client conferences? In this article we discuss how you might gather information from clients in a more participative and effective way, that gives your clients a good impression of your organisation and leaves them feeling they have contributed.

 

The Power of Metaphor

Metaphorical Tree

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Great creative leaders (witness Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech) use metaphor a great deal to illustrate, persuade and inspire. Metaphors influence how you think and how you act. In this document, I explore the use of metaphor and its structure. I show how metaphors help shape your thinking and the thinking of others. I illustrate how you can use them in practical ways in work and workshops. This is not a case study as such, but does provide ideas for how you might use metaphors with your team.

A Tale of Two Meetings – Using Solution(s) Focus With Your  Team (e-book)

A Tale of Two Cities

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The following is a true story related by Niklas Tiger, Managing Director of Hi5, an IT organization that provides outsourced IT services to customers over the Internet in Sweden. Hi5 is not a client of ours but Niklas has given us permission to use the story as an example of how the Solutions Focus approach to tackling problems can work.

Implementing Solutions Focus (SF) as a way of managing change in our organization and also in collaboration with customers, really has transformed our company. A very low tech down to earth example of this happened as recently as this morning, which is proof, that SF is able to make a huge impact in the everyday life of any organisation. READ ON

We have slightly adapted the wording for clarity otherwise this is his story. Thanks also to Charles Dickens for the title suggestion.