May 2003 – Paul Z. Jackson is co-author of The Solution Focus, which has been picked out as one of the leading business books in the USA of the year 2002. The book is a great (the first!) English introduction to solution focused working in organisations. Paul has also written about improvisation and inspirational trainership. And .... he is an inspirational trainer himself (we experienced firsthand). In this interview Paul tells about how he learned about the Solution Focus and he shares some interesting stories and examples.

We heard you were once a journalist, a senior producer with BBC Radio and the founder of the More Fool Us improvisation comedy team. When and where did you pick up the solution focus? What was you intial feeling about it?

I read books by De Shazer and others, attended a four-day training at London's Brief Therapy Centre, subscribed to the SFT mailing list and went to the European Brief Therapy Conferences. My feeling was that this was a really elegant, philosophically sound approach to dealing with difficulties and change.  I'd read philosophy at university, and this had a logic and simplicity about it that I'd not seen in any other psychology works. It also struck me that this might be applicable outside of therapeutic contexts. I was also impressed by how pleasant, tolerant, sensible and fun loving the practitioners seemed to be.

How and in what areas did you start to apply it yourself? Did you do this alone or did you by then already collaborate with Mark? And when was this?

I started to apply it in Strategy workshops and Team-building sessions, about 5 years ago.  Teams are invited to draw their Future Perfect, for example.  We then scale where they are now, and how they are moving in the right direction.

With Mark, we have used SF principles in all our programmes together, asking lots of solution focused questions in feedback sessions, for example.  And we have run many programmes together to teach SF explicitly to facilitators, trainers and anyone else who is interested.

After having applied the solution focus for quite some years now, what do you see as its essence?

The essence is simplicity.  Simplicity and pragmatism.  Simplicity, pragmatism and versatility.  It is very neat - as much as for what we don't do as for what we do do.

What do you mean by that? 

We sometimes describe SF to people and they respond, "Oh yes, we do that."  And to some extent often they do.  On the other hand, they are often doing many other things too, which we don't do, and which get in the way of a direct route to what works.  Perhaps they are still exploring problems in depth, or looking at barriers or deficits.  So what we don't do - the routes not taken - is an important part of deploying one's SF skills.

You have co-written a book with Mark McKergow. How is the book received?

Great reviews, super responses from individuals who read it, and a second edition already in print.  It also seems to be spreading gradually to the USA and other parts of the world, which is very encouraging.

Besides applying and teaching about the solution focus you also do courses in writing and in improvisation. Are these courses explicitly linked to the solution focus?
All the training courses are grounded in a solutions focus, in that they assume that people are very capable and already bring many resources to the topic. We always include activities that bring out how well people are doing - taking them towards strengths, and looking for small next steps by way of progress. Improvisation - in the sense of responding appropriately in the moment - is a key skill for any solutions-focused practitioner.  So they share a common skills base, and also many interesting practical and theoretical overlaps.  In both, for example, a practitioner has a commitment to making the other people involved look good - through accepting, affirming and taking the 'client' seriously.

The solution focus is a very simple approach. What keeps it interesting after having done it for many years? Doesn´t the simplicity make it boring sometimes?

No. What keeps it interesting is that every case is different.  There are always different people, problems and contexts. We did have one chief executive who was asked by his subordinates what they had to do to have him coach them, and he replied, "Bring me more interesting issues".

Would you like to share a nice SF story with us?

A story: 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. I think if you 'get' this story, you 'get' solutions focus.

Thank you, that´s an interesting case. Do you also have a SF exercise to share?

I do, it´s called The Scaling Walk.

An activity for any size of group, I've run this with 5 people in a training session to around 100 at conferences.  It is suitable for anyone, from beginners to the most experienced. The purpose of the exercise is two-fold: it coaches all the participants in an individual activity of their choice, and it brings the Solutions Tool of Scaling to life through experience and discussion of all its main features. As facilitator, you ask everyone to think of a sport or hobby that they currently engage in and would like to be better at.  10 represents you performing consistently at your personal peak, in your chosen hobby, 0 is you regularly and stuckly at the worst you imagine it can be for you.  Where are you now?  Let's call that n. Set out a scale in the room from 0 at one end to 10 at the other. Line the Group up first at n on the scale, somewhere in the middle of the room. Simply by placing yourself on a Scale, you have implications of potential movement - and therefore possible progress.

If this is where you are now, what do you see when you look towards 10 (possible future) and towards O (know-how, counters, exceptions). You've used your Know-how to get you to n. Let's now visit 10 on the scale, at the attractive end of the room. Ask "What does 10 represent?", How much detail do we want about 10?" "What's the point of mentally visiting 10 on the scale?" Who has been at 10, for real, for a period, a moment, one swing of a golf club. (That's the source of useful know-how). Take the group back to n on the scale and ask what's different now about looking to 10.  (Often people say they feel inspired, motivated, they know something they didn't know before). "Where do we go from here?", "Do we go straight to 10?" No, we look at the know-how we've used to get to n, we look at what we've learned about 10, we collect the know-how we need to advance up the scale and we move to n+1. Getting to 10 in one step is probably too big a step. If not, then do it, or you'd probably have done it by now anyway.  Ask the group to take the step up to n+1. Looking at 10, what can they say about 10 now? What have they learned. (New counters and momentum from going from n to n+1). Ask the group to return to their seats, ask any questions they have about scaling and make any notes they need to in their workbooks.

Could you tell us something about your future plans?

Running workshops and trainings to spread the word about solutions focus.

Applying it on behalf of clients in big and small projects.

Collaborating with other Solutionists.

Perhaps another book.

Any final thoughts for our readers?

It's simple, but not always easy!

Thank you Paul and all the best!