SYSTEMIC ORGANISATIONAL CONSULTING

Looking after the individual while looking after the whole – a win-win situation.

Connections in business, and any other interpersonal system, typically happen on a non-verbal level. Systemic organisational and business consulting looks at the hidden dynamics in organisations. To find out more read this page or follow the links:

• What is a systemic approach to consulting?
• The systemic attitude
• A networked way of thinking
• So, what do we do really?

We are consciously ‘unconventional consultants’ and approach organisational development from a different angle.

As an executive or manager you generally have, or can take, little time to follow trends and concepts in organisational development, as getting your head around such theories takes time. So, when under time pressure, are you tempted to turn to ‘quick fix’ solutions offered in the consulting market? These solutions might satisfy your need for action, but do they solve the problem?
In a parallel to a good action movie; where the hero rides into town, saves the people from immediate danger and destruction, and then disappears into the setting sun; the ‘heroic’ consultant flies in, gives a powerful presentation and leaves behind big documents and an even bigger bill. You might be left wondering what that was all about. If the recommended solution does not yield the expected result, you might wonder whether you did something wrong. If the recommended solution does work, what will you do with the next problem? Hire another consultant? Instead of repeated crisis remedies, why not focus on long-term improvement of the situation as a whole?

Systemic organisational consulting is not about giving you advice and telling you how to do things. Expert advice is only possible if the exact problem has happened before in an identical context. Almost invariably your situation will be different. In other words:

• Systemic organisational consulting is not a proposal for an expensive change project
• The systemic approach does not promise to quickly untangle the ‘central problem’
• We don’t provide the solutions or serve recipes for success

As has been said about economic development aid in the third world: helpers undercut the capacity of people to help themselves. This is also true for organisations and businesses. Ever heard the Chinese proverb ‘give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime’?

Systemic organisational consulting is about supporting organisations, teams and individuals to help themselves. In other words:

• The systemic approach is customised consulting
• You organise yourself with our guidance
• We construct a framework – you develop ‘your’ processes
• We treat employees as the experts
• We use only carefully chosen interventions

Systemic organisational consulting goes beyond following processes and procedures, it looks at the bigger picture. As humans we form part of a system, with complex relationships; links between cause and effect are, more often than not, invisible. From research in biology and ecology we have learned that everything is interconnected, forming a network of smaller and larger systems. The smallest interference eventually has an effect on the whole system. This phenomena inherent to any living organism, differentiates ‘life’ from ‘machine’.
Learning and adopting the systemic approach is not easy, since it is ultimately a question of attitude and therefore involves far more than basic ‘know-how’.

Many words are used to attempt to describe the phenomena that give insight into the functioning of a living organism, which is so fundamental to every organisation or any other system:

• systemic attitude
• systemic view
• systemic understanding
• systemic awareness
• systemic intelligence

Essentially, systemic organisational consulting is consulting with awareness - ‘systemic awareness’. It is the quantum leap from ‘doing’ to ‘being’. Instead of forcing a change, we stay with ‘what is’. Our methodology uses a ‘phenomenological’ stance. We follow with fascination the phenomena of the living organism and, strangely enough, change starts to happen without effort and performance improves. Our many years of experience as consultants, trainers and facilitators have shown us not only how difficult systemic organisational consulting can be to learn, but also how effective it can be.
By adopting a ‘systemic view’ of situations, we gain a deeper insight into complex relationships, and gain a ‘systemic understanding’ that includes whole organisations, teams, individuals and processes.

We aim to initiate, guide and support towards long-term results. Our programs and conferences are interactive, workshop based, communicative and experience oriented. We use interventions that invite communication about communication. In your organisation, we first examine existing processes - what is there - and establish, with your help, which of them works. It does not make sense to ‘fix what ain’t broken’. Only then, together, can we build on that base.

A systemic attitude to consulting takes your unique circumstances into account. It does not follow a predetermined path with signposts and lots of others travelling in the same direction. Systemic organisational and business consulting is an adventure – an adventure into un-chartered waters with corresponding risks and hurdles on the way, where:

• Interventions might fail; But, ultimately the venture can bring you big success.

Just like the maritime explorer Christopher Columbus, who on proposing to the King a new route from Europe to the Orient, sailed into the un-chartered waters of the Atlantic ocean - a systemic attitude led him to go beyond the known world of his time. He took risks and nearly failed. In the end he discovered a ‘new world’, the Americas.
Columbus, by crossing the Atlantic Ocean, was not following a well-worn path.

Systemic organisational and business consulting similarly goes beyond the well-worn.
Going into depths, heights and further dimensions, some unknown to us, also brings to light the dark side of systems and of human individuals. Emotions such as: anger, fear, conflict, etc might erupt. Ambivalence is another human trait often seen in business. There is nothing wrong with this, and the roles that these emotions play need to be considered in order for an organisation to be able to grow. The skills we use to successfully supervise such situations do not just come from the tools and techniques we deem appropriate, nor from our psychological training, but largely from our ‘emotional maturity’ and our many years of experience in personal development – our ability to stay present in challenging situations.

A business does not only operate according to its self-declared tasks and goals. However you may choose to define a particular goal or a strategy , it is also defined by invisible laws powerfully operating for the benefit, or the disadvantage, of your business. If not acknowledged, these laws can fester in the underground as hidden dynamics.
Examples of events that can have an effect on the success of a project as well as the whole company, are:

• Secrets in the company that have not been dealt with
• Founders of the company that are not respected
• An acquisition where the culture of the acquired company is not respected
• Unfair dismissal

An organisation, even if it is a business entirely focused on profit, is a networked system of employees, products and tasks. Employees are people – with feelings. They can sense if the system is out of balance, possibly without being able to verbalise that sense.  Less experienced staff members might react inappropriately. As an example, employees can generally tell where the attention of their boss is focussed:

• Is it focussed too much upwards, towards the upper management
• Is it focussed too much down, onto the employees
• Is it focussed outside of the system, maybe on a new job or on private issues

As systemic organisational and business consultants, we address these issues specifically in team and leadership facilitation with delicacy and care. Family events might have an undue effect on the performance of an employee. In family businesses the influence of family dynamics is even stronger. Family dynamics are stronger than organisational dynamics and non-family employees need to know that they cannot understand or solve these family issues, and that there could well be a ‘hidden management’ exerting influence, such as:

• Brothers and sisters who are not working in the family business but who feel responsible for the company

The systemic attitude is changing the way we think, moving away from a single focus to a networked way of thinking. As systemic organisational and business consultants, we do not just take into account the viewpoint of our client. We also look at how the organisation around the client flourishes, how the employees of the organisation flourish, how organisations flourish with each other and how society flourishes. A networked way of thinking invites:

• Reflection and feedback
• Experiencing before following a theory

Systemic consulting does not just look at people and their relationships with each other either. A networked way of thinking takes into account all levels of information gathering when trying to find a solution:

• Rational intelligence
• Emotional intelligence
• Collective intelligence
• Social intelligence
• Systemic intelligence

Systemic organisational consulting accepts the need to include the overall context and processes in deliberations. A certain meta level is introduced to facilitate this.

By consulting to organisations and businesses systemically, we are moving away from a simplistic quantitative attitude towards a more comprehensive qualitative approach to consulting. The focus is not on how many processes, departments, employees etc, but on what is needed and what works.
We start our involvement with your organisation with a comprehensive systems analysis, that does not just focus on the organisation charts and stated objectives for shareholder profit, but includes:

• Qualitative interviews
• Information between the lines
• Acknowledging what exists
• You deciding what is worth keeping
• Focus on the positives

We use systemic tools and techniques to help improve the functioning and performance of your organisation in areas such as:

• Business transformation
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Decision & strategy support
• Technology driven innovation
• Systemic IT training
• Branding & proposition testing

On an interpersonal and individual level, we also offer systemic consulting services to:

• Team & leadership facilitation
• Business conflict management
• Systemic coaching
• Personal transformation
• Consulting to the consultant

Coaching is person oriented consulting. In organisational development it is used as an intervention to improve performance in an individual as well as a team. Systemic coaching takes the systemic dynamics in the organisations into account while working with individuals and teams.
Personal transformation includes issues of career as well an individual’s background, such as family history and culture. Only if we are clear with the past, can we move wholeheartedly into the future. And above all make the best of the opportunities offered to us in the present.
We base our approach on the systemic constellation model that can be applied to:

• Organisations and individuals by the use of systemic organisational constellations
• Individuals and cultures by the use of systemic family constellations

As systemic organisational and business consultants we aim to help stabilise your system. We focus on everyone that is part of your organisation with respect, for the benefit of the organisation as well as the individual. Organisations being task oriented systems, above all we include your task, your goal and your clients to help strengthen your position in the market.