ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we look at how systemic principles can be applied when working with a typical successful private-sector company. In contrast to Chapters 3 and 4, where we worked with the leadership group and a middle-management group, we show here the advantage gained by engaging, literally, the "whole system" in different types of conversations about change. This case also shows how the constructionist frame of working can help people make the shift from seeing problems in certain people to seeing the problem in the system of beliefs and the connected meanings that everybody makes from their interactions. This shift enables people to begin to explore different options for tackling issues.
Another concept illustrated in this case is the way in which a problem emerges as people communicate about distinctions they believe are relevant to good performance. Talking together, they come to agree that they are seeing the same thing as "problematic".
As we indicated in Chapter 1, feedback loops act to establish a context in which certain behaviour comes to mean "problem" to other members of a system. However, their response towards the identified "problem person" tends to reinforce the behaviour that they are seeing as problematic.
104 In our work, we try to establish an important pre-condition for communication—a belief in others' relevant experience and a shared basis of experience and vocabulary; and then we try, primarily, to allow people to experience many different types of communication about a diverse range of issues. We now call this process "widening the conversation".
