The Solution Focus applications movement – beyond the theory:

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.

There is a great body of knowledge about how SF works both in theory and in practice.
The SF therapists are especially strong in their research, constantly finding
new ways to make their understanding of why SF works and, particularly how to
make its applications work even better.

A contrast lies in the example of an increasingly popular psychotherapy model, Positive Psychology (PS). It enjoys a vast body of
research on how it works, but less so in the applications sense. Interestingly,
Tony Hsieh of Zappos.com
fame used the PS body of research to rationalize and operationalize the
emotional intelligence he had developed called Delivering Happiness. But more
of that in a forthcoming blog.

People who use SF in organizational work are now developing more definitive applications. Clients find the basic theory of SF interesting,
at least intriguing. Yet they sometimes have trouble conceptualizing how to use
it.

There is an emerging body of SF applications. Here are some of the applications I have been using for some time with great success among a

wide range of client organization types, namely:

· SSF strategic planning

·
SF customer experience implementation

·
SF stakeholder consultation

·
SF team efficiency planning

·
and so on...

The point is that when presented in this fashion to organizations the client sees something they can buy and is therefore willing to risk trying something new.

Paul Z Jackson captured some of the SOL Summer Retreat discussion on this topic.

What are some of the SF applications you use, or would be willing to buy?