Wanna do better
 The
school year is nearly over. Mary, the teacher, has determined all the pupils
grades for their end-of year reports and all the relevant topics of her
subject have been covered. Today is the last lesson. Mary thinks about how
she'll use the time. She has thought about having the pupils do some extra
work. And she also has thought about showing a movie to the children. But
she decides to do something different. She asks the children to complete a
brief questionnaire with questions like:
* What do you think went well this year?
* What has made you
proud this year?
* What are you not so satisfied about?
* How would you like next year to go?
* What will you do differently next year?
* How would you like your life to be after you will have finished school?
Mary invites the children to answer these
questions and says she is very curious about how they will answer them. Some
children begin to write right away. Some others have to get used to these
questions first, before they start writing. Then, a few children ask if they
can draw the answers instead of writing them. Mary says that is fine. One of
the pupils, Ali, only writes one sentences on his paper and hands it in
right away. He has written: “I wanna be a gangsta." Mary looks at the paper
for a second and thinks about whether she should say something about it. She
decides not to. She walks past the children who are answering the questions.
After about 10 minutes Ali suddenly asks: Miss, could I have another paper?
What I just wrote was a joke. Now, I wanna answer it for real." When he is
finished Mary has a quick look at what he has written. The first thing she
reads is: “Wanna do better at school.”
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Mary's quiet class
 Mary
is a teacher on a small town school. The school is seen as a problem school. One
of her new classes in particular has a reputation of being a tough class. At the
start of the new school year, the situation in the classroom is rather
disorderly. Mary decides to make very clear what she expects of the pupils:
behave well, be on time, do your homework, bring your book and your work, work
quietly and do your best to get good grades. After some time the situation is
improving in Mary's class. She has made clear what she expects of the pupils and
they seem to go along with that more and more. After about half a year things
start to fall back a bit, however. Pupils start to be less quiet, are late for
class more often, behave less well-mannered and so forth. From other teachers
Mary has heard that this class is very problematic in their lessons too, driving
some of them almost to despair. She tries to solve this by being strict. She
demands the class to be silent and corrects pupils when they behave badly.
Frequently, she sends pupils out of the classroom. However, this strict approach
doesn't seem to work too well. Pupils say to her she is much too strict and some
pupils seem to get only more difficult and annoying.
On a certain day, at the beginning of the lesson, Mary asks herself desperately
what she can do with this class. She doesn't know. Silently she sits in front of
the class. Once again, the pupils behave very noisily. Mary stays silent and
keeps watching for minutes at what happens and thinking about what to do. At
some point, some pupils begin to ask: "Miss, why don't you say anything?" But
Mary still does not know how speak effectively to the pupils so she decides to
wait some more and stay silent until she knows what to say and do. The noisiness
goes on for a few more minutes and then some children start to take out their
books and start to work. It is becoming more quietly in the classroom. Mary is
still silent. After another 5 minutes it has become really quiet. One or two
pupils are still talking but most of them are working quietly. Yet another 5
minutes later it is completely silent in the classroom. Then, Mary starts
talking: “I was very curious about whether you know what is expected of you in
the classroom. I wasn't sure you knew. But now I know you do know. All of you
are working quietly. You are doing exactly what's expected of you. I find that a
very good sign." She gives some pupils some specific little compliments about
their behavior. The pupils look at Mary, at first a bit surprised. But then some
of them begin to smile. From that moment on, Mary has complete attention of the
class. When one pupil begins to behave loudly again, he is corrected by other
pupils almost right away. The rest of the lesson goes on very quietly and
pleasantly. Mary is pleased with how this has worked.
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What
to do with the assistant?
A
very successful business woman works with a small team and with an assistant who
plays a key role because this business woman is on the road quite a lot. The
business woman came to the first coaching session saying that she needed to take
a decision either to get rid of that assistant or to find a way to m ake
this assistant a lot more business oriented. The more she told me about the
case, the more she got upset about the fact that this assistant seemed to be
extremely capable in organizing things beautifully, making sure that everything
is neat and in order and precisely taken care of, but somehow misses the great
business opportunities that she encounters. So she takes calls and does not seem
to realize what kind of a business opportunity could open up in the call and how
she could make sure that actually that business remains with the company. So
since this is such a small company, the assistant has a crucial role: Either she
learns to grasp the business opportunities that she encounters, or my client
would not be interested in her capabilities as an extremely efficient
administrator. So
she and her coach had a little talk about how she would like that employee to
act differently,
that employee to act differently, what
would be the first small signs that she as a business woman would notice that
would tell her that things are moving into the right direction. The business
woman said that the assistant would ask a client for the aim of the telephone
call and would react immediately if it is a business related goal. We also
talked a lot about what she as manager would do differently. She said she would
notice that she would be a lot more relaxed around that assistant. Interestingly
enough she would get less bossy and less demanding in a sense, not nagging all
the time. She was quite shocked when she noticed how much she was nagging and
disturbing that assistant with her constant unhappiness with some of the things
the assistant was doing. Of course, we also looked at first small signs of
what seemed to work best with that employee. She noticed that some weeks ago,
she came back from a business trip and on her desk she had found a neat order of
people to call back, projects to take care of. She remembered that the assistant
had arranged the different calls and things to do by order of business
opportunities involved. At the beginning of our coaching session, she had been
convinced that this employee would not be able to do such a thing, and all of a
sudden she realized that she had already been taking first steps. The business
woman was surprised with both noticing how her reaction sometimes was not
helpful and that there actually were some good signs that she must have missed
and overlooked.
When she came back (for a follow-up coaching) about two weeks later, she
was overwhelmed and said that it was almost like a miracle happening. The first
day she got in after the coaching session, it seemed to her like as if that
assistant had been part of our coaching session and had heard all the things
that she wanted her to do more of. She said from the first half of the day on,
it was totally clear to her that she should definitely not get rid of her
assistant and that there were so many things that the assistant already did well.
She had had a lot of opportunities to compliment her on things that she did that
very morning. They even went to out for lunch together, and she had a long talk
with her pointing out very clearly what business goals she had. She had gained
some trust, and she said that she wanted to involve her in some thoughts on how
to develop the business further but that she had previously not shared with her
assistant. Her assistant came up with very creative ideas at lunch on how she
could better support the manager. So actually, our second session was the last
session we had. Things had been clear enough, and from what I have heard the
team is still working together well. It is just not an issue any more . (Source)
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Devil’s
Advocate
 A
management team developed a new strategic marketing policy. As the leader of
the team, Peter had been slightly irritated by Ed, the controller. What
bothered him in Ed’s behavior was that he seemed to be negative and critical
whatever the topic of the discussion seemed to be. The team members viewed Ed
as overly critical and thought he was slowing the team down. Peter wanted to
the coming session to be successful. That required everyone to be actively
involved in designing the new marketing strategy so that there would be a
broad foundation for whatever new policy would come out. Peter explicitly
asked himself how he could use Ed’s critical attitude in this strategy
design process. He realized that the new strategy would have to be
communicated to all stakeholders of the organization, like the personnel and
the board. Peter knew t hose stakeholders would ask many critical questions
about the new strategy. Ed’s critical approach could help the team to
prepare well for any possible objections and critical questions. He arranged
the process so that the first phase was aimed at identifying strengths,
weaknesses, chances and threats and the formulation of a draft strategy. In
the second phase he asked Ed to play the role of the Devil’s advocate. Ed
played this role very convincingly and to everyone’s satisfaction this
helped to significantly improve the strategy and the way it had to be
explained. (Source).
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Improving
Productivity
 Charles
wants to improve the productivity of his team because it has been far too low
the last few months. The team is now performing on a 49 % productivity while
the monthly target is 63%. Charles short-term goal is to get back on target
within three months. That way everybody will clearly see the team is back on
the right track. It would mean more job security for everyone within the team.
Also, it would mean that the business unit manager would worry less about the
team and get more off Charles’ back. It would also be good for Charles’
reputation. It would prove that he is able to turn a bad-performing team into
a well-performing team. Charles thinks of how he has managed before to turn a
lesser team performance into a better one. He had organized a team meeting in
which he discussed all available information with his team and expressed his
worry. He had asked the team to come up with ideas to improve the financial
performance. In response to this several good ideas were brought forward.
Charles noticed that the team members made more appointments with customers
and that sales increased quickly. Charles realizes that the following things
worked well: informing the team fully, sharing his worries, and activating
every team member to come up with improvements without telling them
specifically what to do. Charles again arranges a team meeting and does the
same things. This time too, it leads to a quick recovery of the financial
performance. The solutions turned out to be already there within the team but
they were not fully utilized. By the intervention Charles made they have
become more available so that they could used to improve the results. (Source).
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The
empty soapbox
One
of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the case of the
empty soap box, which happened in one of
Japan
's biggest cosmetics companies. The company received a complaint that a
consumer had bought a soap box that was empty. Immediately the authorities
isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged
boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soap box went
through the assembly line empty.
Management asked its engineers to solve the problem. Post-haste, the engineers
worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors manned by
two people to watch all the soap boxes that passed through the line to make
sure they were not empty. No doubt, they worked and they worked fast but they
spent whoopee amount to do so. But when a rank-and-file employee in a small
company was posed with the same problem, did not get into complications of
X-rays, etc but instead came out with another solution. He bought a strong
industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the
fan on, and as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes
out of the line. Moral of the story: "Always look for simple solutions.
Devise the simplest possible solution that solves the problem. So, learn to
focus on solutions not on problems". (Source: Alan Kay, Solutions-Ll
Mailing list, 2004).
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Find
a fitting job
 Jonathan
came for career advice saying his situation was rather urgent. He had been
working at a large public transportation company for several years. He had
started as a management trainee and, after that he held several management
jobs. At a certain point, he became restless. He was approaching his fourties
and thought he had to try something different in his career. He had been doing
his current job for about four years then and had been rather successful. In
fact, a large organizational change project he had led had been successfully
implemented. Now, he had run into an executive searcher who asked him to
become managing director of a small consultancy firm. It seemed a good
challenge and promised to be the kind of change he had been looking for. He
decided to take the challenge and had now been in his new job for about three
months. When he came to see us, he had discovered he really hated the job! He
hated working in such a commercial environment and was bored with the fact
that his role did not require him to do much more than to take care of
business. He was sure he needed to get out and find something new. And he
asked of us: "Please help me find a job of which I won’t, again, say
after a few months, that it doesn’t fit me. We helped Jonathan identify his
strengths by analyzing his situations of high performance and Jonathan was
able to find out some real strengths and affinities. In the meantime, he found
a job as a coordinator in calamity suppression. In this management job, he can
use his organizational skills, he really has a chance to manage, and he does
not have to work commercially but instead his work helps to deliver an
important public service. (Source)
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New
procedure
 Marc
often doesn’t follow the new working procedure. Due to this, he often
encounters unexpected situations, which costs him extra time. He knows this
but explains that he often forgets to follow the procedure. Ann, his manager,
has observed that Marc now and then does follow the procedure. She asks him
how, on these occasions, he manages to remember to follow the procedure. Marc
says: "Usually, that is on a Wednesday". Ann responds: "O, is
that so? And how do you manage to remember on Wednesdays?" He explains:
"Wednesdays are often so busy that I don’t want to risk losing too much
time. That is why, on Tuesdays, at the end of the day I always look at the
planning for Wednesday. And if it will be a busy day, I put the procedure on
my desk for the following day. That way, I can’t forget it." Ann
compliments him: "Good idea to check the planning in advance and to put
the procedure on your desk", to which Marc responds: "Indeed…I
think I will start doing that more often." (Source)
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Bad
temper
 Eric
has a bad temper. Under pressure he tends to lash out verbally at those around
him. He can´t really understand why he is like this. He feels maybe he is too
repressed, unhappy at home, worried about money –there are plenty of things
that could be causing it. Using the solution-focused approach his coach puts
all these causes to one side and asks him when he is least likely to lose his
temper. Eric works out that he feels more in control in the mornings, whe he
is less tired. He also realises that he is less likely to get stressed when he
is away from his own desk. He finds constant interruptions very difficult to
cope with and these are more likely to happen when he is easily available.
Eric begins to schedule his more important meetings for the mornings and to
try to get the bulk of his important work done early in the day. He also
begins to work from home one day a week and tries to save the kind of work
that needs unbroken concentration for that that day. He asks people not to
call him on that day unless it s absolutely vital. (Source: Greene, J &
Grant A.M (2003) Solution-focused Coaching London: Momentum Press)
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An
inspector calls
 A
chemical site which had always paid much attention to safety issues was now
under threat of closure by a new safety inspector. Working relations with
safety inspectors had always been reasonable, but this inspector was proving
officous, formal and uncooperative. Team member tried to improve the working
relationship with him but were unsuccessful. Negative stories about the
inpector started to go around and a sense of despondency gripped the site.
Paul Z. Jackson and Mark McKergow were asked to help the team deal with this
problem. They asked the team to rate their best encounters with the inspector
on a scale of 0-10. One manager quickly snorted: " Zero!" Mark and
Paul paused and waited. "...apart from once, when it was a 3 for 20
seconds...." Suddenly there was a glimmer of hope. The crux of the
solution, Mark and Paul figured, would be in those few seconds. When they
asked the manager what he had done to bring about this dramatic, if brief,
improvement, he said: "I suppose I stopped pushing him for a moment and
gave him time to think." The mood of the meeting papaby changed. The team
outlined the parts they had individually played in their own best exchanges
with the inspector, and from these strands drew a list of 14 actons that they
could do quickly, simply and cheaply to move things just one point up the
scale. These included bringing fewer people to meet the inspector, wearing
name badges at meetings and giving hum more notice of impending questions and
issues. The individual who had most contact with the inspector was tasked with
noticing what was working best. Instead of gloom at their lack of options, the
managers said they now felt refreshed to be analysing what was going well
instead of what was going badly. When Paul and Mark followed up some weeks
later, matters were much improved. The threat of an improvement notice had
been lifted, and the project was back on track. One manager said the she knew
they were making real progress when the ´impersonal´inspector had enquired
about her recent holiday! (source: Jackson & McKergow, 2001).
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Positive
rumours
 Robert
is a team manager who gets a new member in his team. This new team member,
Diana, has been transfered from her previous department by the general manager
after she had a serious conflict. Just after Diana has started working at Robers
deparment, Robert gets a visit from the general manager. He warns Robert:
"Diana is a problem. She is very negative. I think this position really is
her last chance. There is no room at our company for people who can only be
negative. Robert is a bit surprised by this message. He has known Diana for some
time and is impressed by her commitment and her ciritical abilities. For a
moment he considers defending Diana but he does not. Instead he says: "Thank
you for letting me know this. What would think if you and me would sit down
after a few months and evaluate Diana´s performance? The general manager thinks
this is an excellent idea. After some time Diana performs very well in Robert´s
team, just like he expected. She is appreciated for her sharpmindedness and
involvement and she has more than once kept collegues from making mistakes.
Robert considers letting the general manager know about this but he realizes
that he knows the general manager as someone who is easily convinced. Because of
that he decides to follow a different approach. He begins spreading positive
rumours about Diana. Rumours that are completely true, however, about how well
she fits into the team, how involved she is and so forth. Robert trusts that it
will be just a matter of time before the general manager gets the word. And
indeed! Already within some weeks the generals manager comes up to Robert and
says with a suprised smile: "I am hearing some good things about
Diana." For a moment Robert feels like saying this is just what he had
expected, but he does not. The general manager continues: "I think that
your team is a much better place for her. Robert nodds and says: "Thanks
for your intervention. I think this has helped to bring out the best in
Diana." Robert realized there are three winners in this process. (Coert
Visser, 2003)
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Customer
service on the slide
 American
solutions consultant Lynn Johnson explains how he used a solution focus in his
work. "I was consulting with a ski school in the mountains above Salt Lake
city. They asked me to train them in good customer service, so I posed a
question: Suppose that you have feedback sheets from the last 100 students you
have taught. Suppose that 90 percent of the evaluatoins arefavorable and 10
percent are negative. You are going to follow up with in-depth interviews and
can only talk to one group of people. Which group will you want to interview?´They
replied, ´The 10 percent who aren´t yet satisfied.´Í disagree.´I said. ´You
want to interview the 90 percent who were pleased. Are you really sure you know
what you did helped the most in teaching skiing? Are you sure you understand
what it is you did right? Could it be that you inadvertently did something that
really pleased a student? Would you like to know what that was? The ski school
was excited by the ´look for what you are doing right´and in the next month I
heard several inspirational stories about the retreat. One of the best: the
training director of the ski school was giving a lesson to a well-known local
mediaperson. She asked him: ´What would you like to learn today?´He replied
that he wanted to learn to ski the ´crud´ or the chopped-up snow. She then
asked,´What was different about the times when you did ski crud very well?´He
pondered, grinned, and said,´tha is a really good question!´the lesson was a
great success and the resort made a new friend in the media." (source:
Jackson & McKergow, 2001).
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Three
dogs
 I
was coaching a woman was so angry at the whole world and no matter how I tried
to find something to compliment, she would not hear any of it. So, I gave up and
I knew that miracle question would be way out of line. She was very
depressed. I used a scaling question with her asking her where she was on a scale
from 0 to 10. She responded immediately that she was at 0. I replied: "aha,
that´s not bad. Considering your situation, how come it is not a minus 5?"
She yelled angrily: "You did not say I could say a minus five, otherwise I
would certainly have said that!" I responded: "You´re quite right, I
should have mentioned that. But you know, many people in your kind of of
circumstances do say, they´re at minus five, even if I don´t say they can use
that score. I wonder why you did not do that." She was quiet for a moment
and then said: "It´s because of my dogs. They are the only ones who love
me unconditionally." I smiled and said: "You are a smart women. Most
people would buy just one dog. You buy three dogs!" And she was
smart. She knew what she needed and she got it. (Insoo Kim
Berg, personal
communication 2003)
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A
Terrible Cook
 I
was coaching a woman called Sharon, who said her problem was that she was 'a
terrible cook'. There were, she suspected, all sorts of reasons for this problem.
We, however, were embarked on a solutions focused quest, so didn't ever get to
delve into the reasons, fascinating though they may have been. Instead, I asked
her what she wanted with respect to her cooking. And what she wanted, she said,
was to cook splendid dinners with fresh ingredients for her boyfriend and even
for a small group of friends. How was she currently doing, on a Scale of such
dinners, where 10 was the splendid dinners with the boyfriend and 1 was opening
a tin of catfood? Currently at a 4, she said, backing this up by telling me she
had some experiences of cooking with fresh food in the past, especially when
here work was less time-consuming. To give herself 5 on the scale, she
would see herself using some fresh ingredients in a meal. And she set
herself the small action of buying some fresh ingredients by shopping at the
weekend. You'll note there's nothing in the action about cooking them - and
therefore nothing about cooking prowess, so that the nature of the possible
solution is well removed from whatever was the cause of the problem. Sharon
planned simply to buy fresh ingredients at the weekend: A very doable
action to which she was 10-on-a-scale committed. When we met again to review,
she revealed that she had bought the ingredients, and indeed did go on to
prepare a splendid meal. 'How did you do that?' I wondered, impressed. 'I
couldn't bear to let the fresh ingredients go to waste,' she replied. And
so the route to her solution was action-oriented (shopping) and based on a
'resource' of parsimony. (Paul Z.
Jackson, 2003).
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Blunt
communication
 John
is a 35-year-old project manager who was offered external coaching. John
performed generally well, but was said to communicate rather bluntly. The goal
of the coaching was to help John improve his communication skills, to
communicate more tactful and to be more aware. John and his coach tried to find
situations in which John had already done this. Together, they explored
these situations and identified which behaviors helped to make John’s
communication more effective. Doing this they identified some things that worked
really well (taking some time before responding, asking other people´s help,
etc.). In the following few weeks John started to apply these solutions
consciously. It worked fine. John even applied his new skills when applying for
a new job within his organization. He got the job. (Source).
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 The
management of an Italian chemical company wanted their employees to wear safety
glasses. Many employees, however, often did not do follow this rule. The
managers held a solution-focused session to solve this problem. They searched
for positive exceptions. One manager asked the question: "When do the
employees want to wear glasses?" This question made them realise that
their employees loved to wear cool, modern sunglasses with mirror glasses. Then
they asked themselves: "Why don´t we make cool mirror-glassed safety
glasses? They did. The result was that the employees began to wear the
safety glasses right away! A very small change in the design lead to a very
important change in the behaviour of the employees and to a higher safety (source:
Jackson & McKergow, 2001).
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Positive
paranoia in teambuilding
 Ben
Furman, an experienced solution-focused consultant from Finland, led a
team-building process. He did an exercise he calls ´positive paranoia´ with
the team.It goes like this. Within a given period -let´s say the next week-
each member of a team has to do something beneficial for another member or for
the team as a whole, but without saying what it is going to be and not even
announcing when they´ve done it or what they have done. Conversely,
everyone tries to spot when the beneficial actions are taken. All is revealed at
the end of the week, when they meet again with the organizer, facilitator or
team leader. Meanwhile, it creates an atmosphere of people spotting coleagues
doing useful turns for each other. When people are hunting for what they want -especially
in a charged atmosphere of expectnant uncertainty - they stand every chance of
tracking it down. (source: Jackson & McKergow, 2001).
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More
cases to come...
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