Sustainable SF Organisations to Change the World

Paul Z Jackson

Synopsis

At the SOLWorld Unconference, ‘Exploring How Solution Focus creates sustainable organisations’, Paul Z Jackson led a session to explore what SF distinctively offers for treating organisations as sustainable entities that aim to persist and evolve. The outcomes of this exploration add to the more familiar idea of SF Projects, which merely conclude.

The group discussed organisations as living systems that adapt continuously to survive, challenging business paradigms that often prioritise quick profits and short-term political gains. The dialogue pointed out the dangers of such shortsightedness, suggesting that sustainability and adaptability are essential for long-term success and stability within the broader ecological and societal contexts.

The session also delved into the potential of Solution Focus (SF) approaches to address organisational and societal challenges. By championing a shared focus on desirable futures and what is already working, SF encourages people to take small, manageable steps towards progress, thus avoiding the pitfalls of oppositional attitudes or doom-laden predictions.

SF empowers individuals as experts in their own lives, which prompts a recognition of agency that may lead them to engage actively in broader political and social contexts.

Seeing human activities as part of a larger natural ecosystem advocates for a holistic approach that draws on historical precedents from long-lasting institutions like religions, empires, and ecological circles to foster sustainable practices in modern organisational settings.

Follow up article

We are delighted that the Unconference kick started further developments in the form of a blog article that Paul wrote on Embracing Sustainability. We have reproduced this below, adding a ‘map’ of the workshop output at the end of the article.

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