ABSTRACT
Endings are vitaly important. How we remember past experiences is heavily weighted by how those experiences end. Can endings be happy? They are necessarily ambivalent. The chapter offers meditations on ending organizational work from two experienced consultants with the mantra ‘the end is in the beginning’ – to achieve a ‘good enough’ ending, the end must be thought about from the outset of the work. Boundaries become more flexible, with more boundary crossings. Every ending recapitulates earlier endings; it is the task of the consultant to influence the ending so as to maximize the value of the work that has gone before. A three-generational model (grandparents, parents, children) can be useful to us and our clients in normalizing processes of ending and change. There are several descriptions of real-life endings with an analysis of the dynamics influencing them. Endings are inevitable; therefore, group analytic endings to consultancy are works of mourning.
