1. What is Systemic Consulting?
A Post Modern Approach to
Organisational Development
Sarah Lewis: Jemstone Consultancy

2. Brief Background Family therapy - Milan School Families as systems
Psychology - Social Constructionism
Psychology - Social Constructivism
Post Modernism
Organic metaphor for organisations
Organisations as systems
Sense-making and meaning making

3. Some Key Systemic Ideas
We see what we talk about
Reality is socially constructed
Its a multi-verse not a universe
Meaning is context bound
We live in communication
Language contains moral order
Organisations are networks of conversation
Information lies in difference
We seek always to make sense and to go on

4. What are the implications of this for organisations?
The main task of management is meaning making and creating possibilities to go on
Organisations are networks of conversation in which accounts are created
More than one account can exist, none is the truth, all may be true
Conversation/communication contains moral order
Affect action through communication

5. The Raw Materials Stories lived, stories told, stories not yet told
Voices
Systemic connections
System positions
Context
Language, talk, communication, conversation

6. The Creation of Change Creating, playing with, connecting accounts
Playing with voices
Playing with positions
Explorations of meaning and purpose
Separation of domains of conversation
Exploration of systemic connections
Articulating context

7. Methodology and Stance
Working with metaphors
Identifying strange loops and paradox
Appreciative enquiry
Coordinated management of meaning
Domains of conversation
Curiosity
Reflexivity
Systemic

8. Strange Loops and Paradox
We don’t have a leader We have a leader
We are a cooperative We are not a cooperative
We are equal We are not equal
We need a leader to survive We don’t survive if we have a leader

9. Coordinated Management of Meaning
Cultural System
Coordination: How we coordinate with others
Meaning: How we make meaning
We make meaning together
All speech acts are embedded in multiple contexts
Organisation
Family Myth
Life script
Relationship
Episode
Speech Act

10. Domains of Conversation
Sensitivity and sensibility
Both/and - coherence
Considerations of fit
Ethics
Elegance, beauty and form
Make judgements
Consider purpose
Eloquence
Convergent
Structure and order
Purpose, obligation, entitlement
Adviser
Strategy
Modernist mind set of certainty
Acting ‘as if’ know exactly what is going on
Aesthetics:
How does it feel?
Production:
What shall we do?
Divergent
Move around the system
Creative hypotheses
Be curious
Refrain from advice
Connecting fragments
Metaphors
Explanation:
What does it mean?

11. Appreciative Enquiry Discover and Value ‘What is’
Dreaming (envisioning the future)
‘What might be’
Declare (co-construct the future)
‘What will be’
Design through Dialogue
‘What should be’

12. Reference
Cooperrider, Sorensen, Yaeger and Whitney (eds) (2001) Appreciative Inquiry. Stipes USA
Hammond (1996) The thin book of appreciative inquiry. Kodiak Consulting