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Links

Sites providing information on business and organizational applications of solutions focus:

Paul Z Jackson and Janine Waldman, The Solutions Focus, www.thesolutionsfocus.co.uk
Mark McKergow and Jenny Clarke, centre for solutions focus at work, www.sfwork.com

Our international partners - organisations with whom we have continuing collaborations in developing Solutions Focused ideas in the workplace

Alan Kay and the Glasgow Group, Toronto, Canada
Solutionwork, Sweden. The site features some great research findings with getting long-term unemployed back to work in Sweden.
NOAM: Coert Visser and Gwenda Schlundt Bodien's Dutch organisation for solution focused management and career development, featuring trainings in Dutch and English and interesting articles.
Harry Norman Partnerships, Bristol, UK, with information on solution focused reflecting teams in the workplace
The Academy of Solution Focused Training, Singapore, Debbie Hogan and her colleagues promote our work in SE Asia
Stretch Learning, UK, Tim Andrews helps you stretch your learning abilities
www.solworld.org - SOL, Solutions in Organisations Linkup, conferences, listserv, information

Other organisations using Solutions Focus in the workplace that we know and recommend

www.solutionsurfers.com Peter Szabo's site with Skaleboards and much more
Weiterbildungsforum Basel - Coaching and coach training in Switzerland with Peter Szabo
www.solution-focused-management.com, Belgium. Louis Cauffman's 8-step Dance of solution focused management.
www.syst-strukturaufstellungen.de/ Matthias Varga von Kibéd and Insa Sparrer's institute for Systemic Stuctural Constellations and Solution Focused work
Institute for Systemic Coaching and Training in Vienna, runs conferences and trainings on all aspects of systemic work
www.korn.ch/team-process-modules/index.htm Hans-Peter Korn's 'Playground for Team Solutions' - an interactive hyper-show
Ben Furman's Reteaming homepages (Finland)
FKC Mellansjö school - The most SF organisation in the world?
Charlie Johnson's Solutions Group (USA)
Tony Grant, University of Sydney Coaching Psychology Unit
Lynn Johnson, Solutions Consulting Group
Fletcher Peacock Enterprises: Solution Focused Communication, seminars and talks, based in Quebec, Canada. Includes information in French.
Loesbar, platform for SF coaching in Switzerland with Daniel Meier
http://www.agens.as - AGENS Positiv Utvikling SF and other positive approaches in Norway
Solutions Solutions John Sproson, SF training for sales people and others
http://www.handlungsspielraeume.com Kati Hankovsky, team and individual SF coaching & training, also in German and Hungarian
http://www.brief-coaching.com Peter Szabo's new site relating to his work and book on Brief Coaching

Self-Help and other interesting places

SEAL - Society for Effective Affective Learning, featuring many forward-looking philosophies and approaches to learning and change
Michelle Weiner-Davis's pages for self-help, relationships and women's issues
Sue Knight - NLP training and more for business

Appreciative Inquiry

www.lasadev.com , Tricia Lustig's pages on Ai, featuring book reviews
Anne Radford's pages on the international Ai network - seminars, conferences

Sites relating to solution focused therapy

Brief Family Therapy Centre, Milwaukee - the home of Solution Focused Brief Therapy
Bill O'Hanlon's Possibility Centre
Michael Durrant including an excellent selection of SF links
ISTC
Joel Simon, New York State, USA
Brief Therapy Practice, London - training, educational applications, conferences
Solutionfocus, Denmark - training, therapy, events
ILK - Institut für lösungsfokussierte Kommunikation, Bielefeld - therapy, training, coaching, supervision
Eileen Murphy Consultants - SF training, particularly for schools and community projects in the UK
Brief Therapy North East - a regional network for Solution Focused practitioners working in the North East of the UK
www.solution-focused-practice.co.uk - SF therapy and training with Rob Black
Northwest Solutions - Carole Waskett, based in Northwest England
www.masterswork.com, DVDs and videos of leaders in SF and social construction, inc Matthias Varga and Steve de Shazer
The Solution Focused Therapy listserver provides a forum for discussion of solution focused therapy and related ideas:
How to subscribe to SFT-L

The Solutions Focus has a number of interesting siblings and cousins
You may have encountered Ben Furman's Reteaming, Lynn Johnson's Priorities Process (link), the public consultation processes of Future Search and Appreciative Inquiry (link), which are all to some degree solution-focused (with the first two deriving explicitly from a solution-focused brief therapy background.)
Drama is another source, and appears in a solution-focused guise in organizations where, for example, teams perform improvised scenarios to demonstrate the preferred future in action. Augusto Boal and his followers use such techniques mainly in social and political contexts, while Paul Z Jackson's Rehearsals for Success is designed explicitly for organizations.
We have derived some of our ideas from complexity, the scientific study of complex systems - a close cousin of the chaos theory which strikes such a resonant bell with some of our favourite organizations. You may be familiar with the complex system of world weather, where we find a mixture of unpredictability and patterns emerging. As we all know, with the weather it's impossible to predict accurately even a few days ahead.

William of Occam, a figure from 14th century Surrey, railed against his fellow philosophers who were building themselves more and more complicated explanations for the way the world was. It appeared that whoever came up with the most complicated was deemed the cleverest and therefore spoke the truth.
Occam said it was vain to do with more when it was possible to do with less. In his quest to assume no more than he had to, he dissected every issue as if with a razor.

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (Entities ought not to be multiplied except from necessity).

Gregory Bateson posed the idea of a difference that makes a difference. In a complex system such as an organization, we can create change by making a small yet significant difference at one point, that reverberates through all the feedback systems to make the larger kinds of differences the client is seeking.

 

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 © The Solutions Focus, 2007.