my article

What should we expect? Positive thinking seems to be back in style. Positive psychology, appreciative inquiry, solution-focused change, and positive deviance are some popular positive change approaches. These approaches tend to focus on resources and virtues that enable individuals and organizations to flourish. Positive change approaches hold a great promise. Maybe they can help us to improve our lives, our organizations and hopefully even our world. But just how positive can we expect life to become? This may be an important question. If our expectations are too low, they can make us passive and thus prevent us from improving our circumstances. In these cases our expectations have become self-fulfilling. High expectations may be self-fulfilling too, up to a point. If they are unrealistically high, they can turn into a recipe for disillusion and frustration. Expectations play an important and sometimes paradoxical role. An example is a party. Sometimes you go a party with low expectat...

© 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...