Solution Focus’ challenge of the future & the futures challenge of Solution Focus

The minister looks at his advisers while he picks up the phone. He nods with gravity and realises to himself that the three crises, which have struck the government within a month, can result in a significant change in the public opinion towards him. There is not any doubt that the situation is sufficiently critical to require that he personally has to monitoring it closely. “Have they arrived yet?” he asks in the phone when it is answered after only a few ringing tones. He hangs up and turns toward the others in the room. “Let’s start with the strategy. The solution focuser’s are on the stairs”.…

Meanwhile in another country, the head of department in the local bank writes on a file for a debt to recover quickly and efficiently, that it must be send to the Department for Solution Focused Negotiation. He is without knowing that also the commander of the police training camp less than 20 km away, is briefing what they call the “solution focused ghost busters” in how much time they will have to try a peaceful and constructive negotiation with the rebels before the authority takes over…

These can be future-scenarios from common life after a shift in society from the problem-oriented paradigm to the solution focused.Solution Focus has without any doubt a unique potential to be in the front row in the development of a new paradigm that is not lead only by western conventional science methodology, diagnosing problems and on this basis deducing the solutions, but that has it’s point of departure in the dynamics of complexity and small modifications leading to huge changes. In a scenario like this, we might have achieved that public policies need to be based on solution-focused approaches; that communication between communal public servants and local citizens is oriented by solution focused principles, and that the United Nations has integrated the solution focused perspective as a transversal view of human beings in the same tenor as every UN project, mission and decision has to consider perspectives on gender, equality and even climate.

What if the solution-focused methods became part of the general trend in society?

Many studies already show that the solution-focused way is a viable one to create positive results in central arenas of society. For an example, in a conflict situation, peace is achieved faster when focus is on the resources available to construct a lighter future than when attention is paid to defining guilt and responsibilities. If the use of solution focused techniques where more common in social activism as well as in the preventive diplomacy applied by international organisms, it might well be that some wars could be avoided – or at least some of the social after maths costing even more pain and destruction. In the same sense, the inter-religious dialogues, which have shown to be the most constructive, are exactly those that with solution-focused spirit explore how co-existence worked before and the benefits of doing some of it again. And for what we already know about the constructive effects of Solution Focus in pedagogy and therapy contexts, there are no doubt that it could have a huge impact on whatever society if solutions-oriented thinking and acting were a permanent part of the schedule from primary to high school.It is easy to believe that the world would probably be at better place if solution focus challenged future and became the new paradigm.

Simultaneously, other images and scenarios creep into this vision of the future. For doesn’t there exist a real risk that solution focus will suffer the same destiny as positive psychology that are now often abused to get people back on the row, “happily” obedient…and feeling guilt if they have negative thoughts about it. And how can it be handled constructively when the solution-focused perspective has to be used in situations of extreme unequal power relations, as for an example when thousands of indebted, unemployed or convicted for smaller crimes need to “better” their conditions though Solution Focus, while they in a symbolic or concrete way are handcuffed to the situation. Like George Orwell has done before us, we could even imagine controllers doing rounds at work, checking if personal and procedures are sufficiently solution-focused…This provocative vision awakes the question if solution focus is still solution-focused when it is the rulers and holders of power who use the techniques? Is it then possible to have confidence in the constructive intention? Can it be taken for granted that the solution focused not automatically becomes an instrument for the strongest and most powerful? Or will the solution-focused professionals (we who live of working with this perspective) become like the social anthropologists decades ago, who under cover of being innocent, cultural and curious were hired by foreign governments to collect information on ethnical groups of political relevance. In this light, the solution-focused techniques will be the new spy-techniques who assure useful information for those who can pay. Reflexion on Solution Focus in future opens many questions.

A central question is if we at all can reduce the solution focus to some techniques that can be used anywhere and by anyone who has knowledge of them.  

This question points towards ourselves (it is outside the limits of this paper to consider if we can talk about a collective “we”). For are we just users of some constructive techniques, o does this make us a group of people of different disciplines who are followers of a particular philosophy and lifestyle? Maybe to some, we even look more like a sect? Or does the solution-focused perspective result in and particular openness, which lead to more creativity? Does that mean that we are more like guides to renewal in society, be it in companies, governments, social groups or in the psychological inner life? Perhaps we are a helpful special force of optimists, who always believe that there is a way, when everybody else has almost forgotten it. Or are we more like an international clique of professionals working for any drive forward, in whatever direction it heads at…?

It might be less important to answer the questions raised in this paper, than to acknowledge them as reminders of the incredible potential Solution Focus has to challenge future positively with a paradigm shift that can leave a deep trace in society. However, when we look towards the future, it stares back on us with a question about our present:Do we sufficiently use our common potential as solution-focused professionals?                                                           

The future does not need any answer. It just waits. Meanwhile it challenges us to employ and develop what we have already achieved…how to use all this when taking our next step forward?

Warmly, Sofie Geisler