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© 2000, Coert Visser This fascinating book describes how a new virus, the luxury fever has Americans seemingly inescapably in its grip: people spend a larger and larger proportion of our money on luxury goods. And, because for most people incomes have remained static or have even declined (in the US and the UK), this extra spending was financed by lower savings and higher debts, making the economy weaker and more vulnerable. Further, most people work longer and tend to spend less time on important activities such as vacations, being with family, sleeping exercising, etc. To make things worse: Americans spend less on vital public services which leads to a deteriorating infrastructure, to higher crime, to dirty streets and parks, to water pollution, to a deteriorating education system, etc. And what about health? 40 million Americans currently lack health insurance.... This book explains how there is a competition 1) between different forms of private spending (do we buy luxury or do we...

Helping, negotiating, directing © 2006, Coert Visser and Gwenda Schlundt Bodien The goals continuum is a model reflecting in which situation you can apply which skill. The extreme left of the continuum describes situations in which the goals of the employee are the center of the discussion. In these situations helping (coaching) is the most suitable approach. The extreme right is about situations in which the goals of the manager are central. Between the two extremes on this continuum are situations that require negotiation. Managing people is not always an easy thing to do. Take a look at this example: A manager told us recently: “One of the people in my team, Bert, does not perform well. Time and again he does not meet the deadlines. As a consequence the delivery to our customers is frequently delayed. This has to stop! But no matter how much I try to help him, I can’t seem to get through to him. He gets irritated, he tries to avoid me and he dismisses my suggestions. What am I to d...

© 2006, Coert Visser and Insoo Kim Berg This article presents some thoughts about the not-knowing posture. Is it easy? Is it valuable? Is it ethical to charge money for your services while assuming a not-knowing posture? Does the not-knowing posture mean you have to completely discard expertise? Many who are new to the Solution-Focused practice principles seem to get confused by the concept taking a “not-knowing” posture when facing their clients. The not-knowing posture (Anderson and Goolishian, 1992) means that as practitioners we work from the assumption that each case is different. Therefore we do not know exactly what the situation of the client is and what he should think or do. This is why in order to arrive at a more satisfying outcome, solution-focused practitioners ask lots of what seem like strange questions that activate their minds. We did not realize for a long time that the “not-knowing posture” was creating some confusion among the newly learning therapists, coaches, co...

Does the people centered management philosophy still work during crisis? © 2005, Coert Visser Summary - Researchers like Kim Cameron and Wayne Cascio have said for years that a strategy of laying-off people in many cases does not work, and may even backfire, in times of crisis. The situation in the American airline industry after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 was an almost unparalleled crisis. An excellent chance to take the test. Which companies proved to be most resilient and why? “We are willing to suffer some damage, even to our stock price, to protect the jobs of our people.” - Jim Parker, CEO of Southwest Airlines”, 8 OCTOBER, 2001 Crisis in the airline industry Since 9/11 terrorist attacks, the world economy has suffered severely. The airline industry is one of the worst hit sectors. Passenger numbers fell back drastically, companies showed huge losses, and stock prices fell. Large numbers of employees lost their jobs. These traumatic events have confronted the sector with an ul...

© 2005, Coert Visser and Gwenda Schlundt Bodien Managers frequently say that directing people can be a challenging task. There can be hard situations in conversations when managers try to direct people. What should you do when an employee reacts defensively and does not acknowledge the point you are trying to make? Or what about an employee who raises all kinds of different subjects and one who complains utterly? This article describes a tool for leading in a constructive and activating manner and for dealing effectively with different kinds of responses by employees. You are a sales manager responsible for leading a team of salespeople. Mike is a senior salesman with outspoken opinions which he is not shy to share. He does not have a high opinion of Pascal, a junior salesman in the team. Yesterday, there was an incident between Mike and Pascal. Another salesperson has told you that Mike called Pascal a “loser who will never become a good salesman”. The incident is the talk of the day....

© 2005, Arnoud Huibers and Coert Visser The solution-focused approach has brought forward a simple technique which can help to make meetings about organizational change stimulating and effective. Organizational change Organizations, departments, and people in organizations work are practically permanently going through large and small changes. Those changes can encompass structural aspects like a change in the business process, merging departments, implementing systems, or changes in the management structure. They can also be about cultural changes like improving customer satisfaction, improving co-operation, raising productivity, and so forth. Talking about progress In large-scale change projects, it is very important to keep communicating about the goals of and the progress in the change process. Our observation is that meetings about organizational change often focus on two topics: 1) what goes wrong? and 2) What will we do about that? When people focus attention on these two questi...

© 2005, Insoo Kim Berg and Coert Visser When we, as managers, change how we view a person, we can generate much simpler and easier solutions to them so that we can focus our attention on more difficult and time consuming issues. Managing people takes more than clear black and white views. Even though it certainly is important to make expectations and rules of conduct clear, it is not as simple as it is described in textbooks. Many good managers have discovered that managing people is an art rather than a science, and all artistic skills take time to develop and become good at. Many competent managers discover this reality by trial and error. Sometimes this art is described as practice wisdom. By trial and error, good managers have learned that bringing out the best in their workers is the best strategy to motivate, encourage, and teach their workers without “teaching”. Many wise managers have learned that when it is the worker’s idea to change, they will change as much as they can, for...

© 2005, Coert Visser Change processes can sometimes stagnate and old problems can turn up again. Often this leads to disappointwiment and pessimism. But in many cases the change process can be revitalized by very simple means. The five tips mentioned in this article have time and again proven their usefulness. A department was trying to implement a culture change in which more discipline and sticking better to agreements were important goals. The change process had started and had at first led to promising results. After about one and a half year, it became obvious that the change process was no longer proceeding well. Several old problems reappeared and there were no clear signs of progress. With long lasting change processes in organizations managers sometimes worry about the possibility that at a certain moment stagnation or a set-back might happen. After a promising start the change process can lose its momentum. The energy disappears, the progress in the direction of the goal seem...

© Insoo Kim Berg and Coert Visser We are often struck by how results oriented many people in business are. It seems to come naturally to many of them to constantly keep an eye on the outcomes they want to achieve. It seems fair to say that business conversations are essentially goal driven conversations. However, in situations of adversity both managers and employees seem to lose that focus. Whenever there are obstacles, when there is delay, when people don’t perform like intended, it seems only natural to become more directive, more outspoken and to generate pressure in order to speed up the process of getting results. A patient, soft spoken, thoughtful, style of management seems to be the last thing that is asked for. Rather, such a style is viewed as conflicting with a results focus and should be avoided. After all, how can you create sense urgency when you act patiently and understanding? In such cases the drive for results is usually still there but it somehow does not translate i...

© Coert Visser Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What's a sun-dial in the shade? - Benjamin Franklin Excellent performance is based on strengths This article is a follow up of Effective managers pay attention to strengths . That article explained how excellent performance is primarily based on identifying, applying and developing strengths. The statement is supported by solid research by Gallup. However, in everyday practice most (HR) managers seem to take strengths for granted and focus first and foremost on identifying and eliminating weaknesses and deficits. Large-scale international research by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O' Clifton (2001) has shown that effective manager do not emphasize weaknesses and limitations but strengths. From their research it has become clear that effective managers are led by the convictions that everyone’s talents are lasting and unique and that the greatest opportunity for development for each person lies in the area of their grea...

© Coert Visser and Gwenda Schlundt Bodien (2005) “We have so many meetings in this organization but they lead to nothing but frustration. The wrong topics are on the agenda and even those topics aren’t handled properly. Meetings always start too late and are always drawn out. I am sick and tired of it!” – A manager in a large organization Meetings can be more useful! Inefficient meetings are a pain to many managers and employees. Recent research by Microsoft among 38.000 respondents in 200 countries showed that employees are in meetings on average for 5,6 hours a week and according to them no less than 69 percent of this time leads to nothing at all. So it is no wonder that meetings often take away participants’ energy and are seen as useless. By using a success-focused approach in meetings they can be much more effective and less frustrating. The success perspective focuses constantly on making and keeping meetings useful for all participants. This works by posing a special kind of ...

© Coert Visser (2005) The basis of all cooperative activity is integrated diversity.- Mary Parker Follett (1924) The Madness of Groups Many people distrust the behavior and decisions of people in groups. That is very understandable. Consider for instance how a group of football fans can behave. Especially in groups, people can sometimes get completely out of control. An example on a larger scale is the collective madness of many people in Germany before and in World War II. Collective madness has been known for a long time. In 1841 the Scotsman Charles Mackay wrote a book about it called: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. More recently Irving Janis presented his theory of groupthink. Janis described how teams often so strongly desire unanimity that strong pressure is put on individual members to conform. The quality of decisions suffers seriously because of this because individual team members will be less and less inclined to bring forward their own knowledg...

© Coert Visser (2005) Benjamin Disraeli, the nineteenth century British statesman, once said: ‘Change is inevitable’. That is quite right. Change happens constantly, whether we drive it deliberately or not. The seven-step-method, which is described in this article, is about purposeful change. The method can be compared to a recipe. All ingredients and steps have their specific function and can add to the taste. But the recipe allows you to determine the order and quantities in which the ingredients are used. The seven steps are: The seven step method 1. Clarifying the desire for change 2. Defining the desired state 3. Determining the platform 4. Analyzing past success 5. One small step forward 6. Monitoring progress 7. Determining the further desire for change Below follows a description of the situation of Frank, a team manager who needs help improving the financial performance of his team. 1. Clarifying the desire for change When people have a desire for change there is always someth...

The Power of Internal Solutions © 2004, Coert Visser When your organization is not functioning well you hire a consultant. When the workload in your team is too high you hire a new employee. When team members don’t perform well you send them to a training program. All of that sounds logical but it isn’t. Very often problems can be solved without help from outside of the organization by making better use of what is already there. Managers can learn to utilize more effectively the chances, strengths, resources that are already available in the organization. That is not only cheaper than to rely on external help but often also more effective. Moreover, the organization becomes more independent. Internal Solutions When confronted with problems many managers tend to reach out for external solutions, solutions that are not yet available with in the organization. External solutions, like hiring a consultant, implementing a new management tool or hiring a new employee, often seem required to s...