🎙️ Toward Solutions Podcast | Episode 14: From Demotivated to Double Output with Elvira Kalmar

And with that mindset we create very different processes of the change. So the whole process of how change is creative is different and because of that the outcome is very different also. So one of the things I've noticed and sometimes it really blows my mind as well even after 20 years, how short these interventions are. Hello and welcome to the Toward Solution Podcast where creativity meets practical application. I'm Deon Singh and I'm Jason Pasco. Together we dive deep into the world of solution focus, exploring its transformative power across a variety of contexts. Come join us each month as we engage in enlightening conversations with experts and practitioners who are applying solution focus in their unique environments. Whether you're looking to enhance your personal life, professional practice or community projects, our discussions will provide you with valuable insights and actionable ideas. Tune in to discover how you can implement solution focus practices in your own context, unlocking new possibilities and creative solutions. Let's embark on this journey of exploration and innovation together. If you like this podcast leave us a review and subscribe now so you don't miss an episode of Toward Solutions. So Alveira thank you so much for joining us. Annette Gray said that we must talk to you and we started out reaching out to a couple of people but since then we've just been following this adventure asking our guess who should we talk to next and when we asked Annette Gray who we should talk to next she said you've got to talk to Alveira. So thanks for joining us and yeah really looking forward to getting to know you and hearing about your work. Hey thank you so much and thank you Annette for inviting me. So Alveira he's my first curiosity. What is it that you love about the solution focus approach? So many things but I think what I would probably highlight most is coming from my background and my other passion, the passion for developing organizations or people who are working together in organizations and the solution focus approach is just a mind-blowing different approach. So when we try to create change in organizations with this approach it's mind-blowingly different. It's short, it's fun, there's energy in it and when you tell people that all we're about to embark on a transformation you see the energy already going down and then how we start asking our questions and investigating the next level of the organization, how would that look like and what would clients notice about it? The energy just comes back immediately into the room and we start co-creating something that we all are passionate about in the organization. That's why we are there because we want to make that impact happen and you know I've been working with organizations or in organizations in this field for over 20 years now and I've seen so many failed attempts of transforming things, reorganizing organizations with the greatest intentions, so much work, so much emotion invested into them and then at the end somehow everybody disappointed that really what we wanted to achieve did not come out of it or that there were lots of compromises and that doesn't happen with the solution focused approach. We spend most of the time in our process instead of diagnosing what's usually the consultants do co-creating the preferred future and that's just a different game. That's so cool. Have you always worked this way? Of course not, so that's why I also feel entitled to criticize often the traditional way how organization development and especially organization design is approaching organizations. I think it was about 15 years ago that I've met with the solution focus approach maybe a little bit more and I did a coaching course actually a team coaching course in Hungary with the Hungarian solution surfers and from the first moment it was for me like ah so if it works like this with teams I don't be used this on a whole company level or on a bigger unit level so it cannot stop just on a team level and basically from then moment onwards I started my experimentation on a company level changes issues things how would the approach those situations with the solution focus approach and how would that change the game and it really does change the game. That's really really cool. You mentioned so at that time when you started experimenting what did you notice? So you said that there's more you know the changes the change happens before what else is different do you think about the you know that you said there's more energy that the change is more likely to happen what else do you think is different to how you were working. I mean how I'm working is completely different and I think this is the biggest difference that happens and that's what today I'm trying to do one of the main things I'm doing is actually teaching solution focused organization development and design. I have an internationally accredited course because I think the first change has to happen in our mindset yeah as the attempt but not just consultants leaders people who work in organizations who work and deal with organizational issues if we can shift our mindset and the solution focused approach is a great help in that and instead of focusing on the problems the issues where always the initiative start that we should change something and not just to focus on what we want to have instead but the other I think very important aspect of the solution focus approach is trusting the people in the organization trusting the system so like in coaching we trust the person that the person has the solution to all the issues or a team can figure out that's even more true in a case of an organization that they already have the solutions they already have the knowledge that they need and with that mindset we create very different processes of the change so the whole process of how change is created is different and because of that the outcome is very different also so one of the things I've noticed and sometimes it really blows my mind as well even after 20 years how short these interventions are one of the cases each for example with Annette we were discussing some years ago yeah probably about six years ago it was an agile transformation at the time that was the big thing and companies too especially large organizations took years to actually transform themselves into some sort of a java of working and yeah this client that we started with a small group of a pilot project and it took them three months to get the idea of the game because the process itself was done in a solution focus and in an agi-late and then after three months they said thank you very much we're good from from here onwards we know how to do it and maybe that's the other thing we can notice often I think is that the confidence of the people in the organizations we work with this approach with is growing during the process rather than disappearing and with this small step-by-step they experience in the power and what they can go create so therefore external consultants are needed for a lot less or a lot shorter time because they can continue evolving or developing themselves so they're not dependent on the consultants that much yeah that's another yeah cool difference yeah um so if you know you bump into somebody and they say I say you do a solution focused approach to organizational change what is what is that approach what is the solution focused approach what would you how would you explain it I usually tell them that instead of wasting time on understanding what your problem is and where is it coming from we spend all that money and all that time on co-creating the next level of your organization in its own evolution and we're not going to rely on our knowledge but we are going to invite people from your organization to co-create that. And of course it's depending on what is the mindset of the organization and the majority of it. We will start with maybe a smaller circle of people, but we definitely don't stop to working with just the top management. So maybe we start there, but as we move on, we're going to involve more and more people. And I will tell them that the first thing you guys have to do is agree on the signs of success. So how are we going to know that this change was successful? And that's where it actually turns out often the question I have to ask, who else should be in the room? Who has to agree with you on the signs or the criteria of success? And with that, we're already starting to create the first agreements about the pre-first future of the direction they are heading. And yeah, maybe that's another thing I usually say is that here, and especially because it's organization design also, we're not fiddling around with work charts. So this is not about restructuring, but it's about making agreements. And agreements about two things. What is the work? You have to do now and how you are going to do that work or how are you going to make that work happen. So simplifying things, not making them simple, but taking the complexity out of it, and I think that's another. We are probably selling point of the solution focus we have here working with organizations, and organizational change is that instead of over complicating, we're actually coming down to very simple questions and very simple agreements that will change how people think about their work and how they are working together. And really, as I said, most of the time we're there for a very short period of time, because the patterns we use, the questions we ask are very simple in a way that participants, people in the organization can learn this logic and take us themselves these questions. So we take organizations also out of the sequence of thinking that there is a way of A, have we are working now, and then we have to create B, and then we have to shift over or move over everyone to the B, and instead people get the idea that we are constantly evolving our organizations, and we just have to ask the right questions from ourselves and have the right people in the room who can make the right agreements to move forward. And that's what we are facilitating. So we're kind of running pilot projects and then handing over the projects to the organizations and the people in them to run it for themselves. Yeah. Do you do check-ins down the track with those, or do you hear back from those pilot projects that are expanding, and how are they going? I usually hear back from them, because of course another thing we teach in the process is to notice the signs of progress, not just do the things, but notice what has become better. And while we are working together, so for these three months, or we recently had an AI implementation project, which was a six-week sprint, the sprint is over, but I still get the invitations to the project presentation events and participants who participated in this sprint, now sharing the outcome, sharing the impact with each other. And this is somehow also something we teach you, but how we are working together to notice progress, to create space for it where they can celebrate it, and out of that create a new energy that can take the new initiatives further. I really love that. I love the ability that the solution focused approach has to walk away with an organization, and then they continue. And I think it's the same with people, you can walk away with them and walk a little bit of the journey with them, and then they can continue. It's such a gift, I think. I like that, what you're saying, I often use this picture that we actually just come to all day, hands and walk together with them for a little while, and like coming back to the check-ins. We don't have to check on them because we walked with them, so we are also confident that they can be confidently evolving their own organization. So they are happy when they share their success and progress, but it would be, from my point of view, a lack of trust, if I would want to check in on them after birth. It's more likely that when you let your kids let them grow up, you let them go, and they will come if they have an issue, and they do come, so clients do come back if they face something that's bigger or different needs a different approach. But yeah, most of the time, we just sit back and we know that they have their own things in their own hand, and I think that's the biggest success we can have as consultants working with organizations. So, here's what's buzzing through my head. It's not necessarily about teaching them how to use the approach. It's walking beside them as they learn to use it so that they're confident and competent in their context to grow it without you. So I don't do trainings of what is solution focus for them. They learn it in the interactions that we are having together when it's a client case. And finally, in the course where I have to teach organization development and design, the course is also designed in this way. So it's 10 days over 5 to 6 months, and then it's also holding the hands of a group of people who are learning how to work with this approach, but not teaching them, but sharing cases, giving some tools, using them, letting them go back today, own work environment, trying them out, coming back, noticing the size of progress. So that's a 6 month holding hands and walking together and then seeing how the approach is dripping, leaking through in today. Work life and everyday life we know that, yeah, it goes everywhere and see after 6 months that they are able to craft processes the same way. So yeah, then we just lean back and enjoy their success also. I love it. I love the way you just said there they craft, they learn how to craft the processes in their own way, because in there's a couple of things that stood out to me in your books. One of them was right up front where you were saying it really doesn't matter where in the organization you are, you can start to use this stuff. How have you seen that happen? Yes, I mean, it's one of the things which is I think also a very solution focused thing that we don't want to keep this knowledge for ourselves as consultants. And of course most of the time I'm also an external consultant, but I also learned in a large corporation inside and working in a large corporation was a very eye opening thing for me. Of course, I somehow knew and sense, but being inside is where you really see that if really the design of the organization is about our agreements about what is the work we have to do and how we are doing this. We're making these agreements constantly in every organization just on different levels. The management teams are thinking on a strategic level, then people in different groups or circles or working groups or project thinking on the own level. But actually these are the things we are talking about and making agreements. And I think over the decade since Taylorism, we forgot that an organization is not a machine and not something that's outside of us and things happen in it without us. We really distanced ourselves from the organization as a notion. And what I'm trying to say is that to my experience what I felt is that no, we are the organization, we the people and even with AI on board, it's still us. We agree on what is the work or we don't agree and then we don't do it. We agree on how we are going to do it. And the agreement part for me is so important because I have seen so many failed transformations. was one of my work what I have to do. do, for example, in this large corporation, the Beconsat and Schaim, they left their wonderful slides. It was a very clever solution, really, no criticism on that, but it was not the organization's solution. They didn't understand it, they did not know how to make it, it was not they agreement, they did not contract for this. And then that was under the disguise of change management, that we started creating, basically recreating a process where the organization goes through this rethinking and re-contracting and re-agreting about what they have to do differently and how. And then you feel that all that time and money was actually wasted. Because without those Chinese slides, the organization could come up to maybe not such a clever solution, but the solution that they could implement. And with the implementation of that, they gained confidence, which meant that next time in the next step, they dared to drape braver, bigger, and then they were able to achieve that as well. I often say that the solution focused approach. And that's what somehow even a criticism is towards it, that the change is not that big. It's not even transformation, that's why we don't even call it transformation, more like the word evolution. It's a small evolution. But even if that small step happens, the confidence that comes out of it, that we did it, what we agreed on, we achieved, that confidence will make the next step bigger. So the next level of the evolution and then the next. And by the time, so if you, for example, look at the time horizon of one year, but you would have suffered with this traditional A to B transformation and trying to squeeze the organization and people into this new mold that somebody designed, which is a forceful thing. And of course, people resisted because it's not the idea. We go through a process where the organization is braver and braver, more self-confident, they figure out how to create these loops so you don't need consultants. And you can start doing this at, like he's adjacent at every level of the organization. You can start doing it on a team level, project level. And that's the other thing these consultants are trying to sell us that you can only start, change from top down and you need to convince the top management version. That actually never happens like that. I mean, I was in the organization and I saw how people noticed something and they had ideas how we should do things differently. And then if you create the right circumstances, then they will come up and say, "Hey, here's an idea that we could do things differently." And to create these circumstances, it doesn't require much. It actually requires to give them a little space and say, "Oh, you have an idea. Try it out and let's see how it works." And that's how we work in a social focus way. Try it out, have a little pilot, have a little trial. Let's see the impact. Let's talk about the impact. Let's notice it. And then see what it invites. And this is how, for example, this transformation happened that we don't start to kind of change the whole organization. Again, coming back to evolution. You change where there is tension, where people anyway are fed up with how they are doing, what they are doing. So there is energy for it to come up with a different way. Come up with a different solution. And that's why I come back to this because like, yeah, like some seven years ago, the AI transformations were the big thing and now the AI transformations. And that's also, it's almost painful for me to watch how companies are trying to design it into the design. Instead of asking people, "Hey, and where are you using it already? And how could you use it better in your work?" And start building on what's already there. Giving, again, permission and giving confidence when people run pilot projects and they have great impacts rather than again creating a new mold with AI included and again trying to push that on the organization. Yeah, so that's the magic of the solution focused approach. What can you say? You want to focus, yeah. Yeah. What can organizations do to, I think you said, create the space or create an environment where people can innovate and come up with ideas. Or maybe what is it that you see organizations who do that well? What is it that you see that they do that allows that to happen? Well, the organizations who do that do this well anyway are the ones where they trust people. And when there is a lack of trust, then it's very difficult to create this space. So in my understanding and what I'm trying to teach in my courses also is not that we only go and work with organizations where they trust the people, but how to understand the trust level and I use for that you see Jason in the book, Meg Gregor's XY as a scale and to say that a trust comes from experience and gets lost out of experience also. So the only thing we can do to create trust is create an experience where people see that those whom they don't trust, they also commit it to the same goals, the same purposes, the same intentions. So in our processes and here's the magic of crafting the process, you have to create a process where for example, a leader who doesn't trust their own team, somehow you have to manage that the leader and the team are together and they talk about what they would like to have instead of what is and then the leader would realize and this is usually what I hear at the end of our processes. I did not know I have such clever people in my team. So we create this experience and then when that is there the next time they have a challenge or a difficult situation, then the leader is not going to try to solve it alone and one thing that I have to find a solution, but because of that experience is more likely to involve the people into creating the solution as well. So that's again something we can start anywhere in the organization. You don't have to start with the CEO and maybe just one last thought on that is that because wherever you start working with the solution focused approaching the organization, the impact is going to be so visible that other people are going to come and ask, what are you doing here? I mean, when I joined this company, I've got the most demotivated group of people as my team and within a year we were kind of the the island of happiness and success within age are in our organization and that's just all thanks to the solution focus approach because we talked about our successes, our progress, we learned to appreciate each other's efforts, contribution and we agreed on where are we going, what is the impact we want to have and then because we co-created that everybody was super committed so we just made it happen. And after a few months my peer leaders also started to come and ask, come on, are you doing with your team Alvira? Your team meetings are very loud, full of laughter, people are coming out happily and we were getting double amount of the work done that was expected from us. And it's just all building on the basic principles of the solution focus approach and using it. So yeah, the impact is very visible. So that's why nobody has to worry if it's only if you're only just starting as a single person with your team or with your unit because it's contagious, because of the energy and because of the impact that it has or it creates. So that's why the book also, yeah, it's kind of trying to be a pocket mentor for anyone who works in organizations and trying to give some tools or ideas how you can start working with, but it's just basically following the basic principles of solution. Yeah, yeah, well, I better mention it because no one's going to see the video. So it's solution focused pocket mentor for work evolutionists. So from transformation to evolution is what you mentioned there before. And there's book one and book two and I keep going from book one to book two. Okay, change change evolution is not the linear. but it's a spiral thing and that's how the books have been written also. And you mentioned all of your hand and book with you. Yeah, you mentioned it in the book because you mentioned that X, Y, cuts continue. And you mentioned the spiral and you've got this great diagram with the X, Y, continue at the top and the spiral starting very small but the loops are bigger and each loop draws on the experience that yeah of the previous experience. So there's some amazing models and thinking in there. One of the others that struck me was the different, you're going to have to clarify this Elvira. You had started with a hierarchy and then you went through these different sort of layers or levels of the system right through to a legal structure as well. Can you just help me with that one? That is something which I would say that it's, of course, it's coming from more from my organization design background but it's not really true because most organization designers are not aware of this that there are these parallel realities in organizations and each reality is for a different thing and each tension or problem we need to solve in the reality it belongs to. And this is one of the biggest problems I see today in the world that most organizations are trying to solve every of the issue in the formal structure. So if something is not happening let's restructure. If we need AI in the organization let's redesign the whole structure. So we try to solve everything in this one reality. And okay I list out my parallel realities. The idea is actually coming from the us flagging and he's using the formal structure which is the hierarchy. Of course we already knew in organization development change management we use the informal structure which is kind of balancing out formal structure. This is our network in the organization. How we gain information, what we don't get in the formal structure but also how we influence the system outside of the system. And then the third reality is the venue creating reality and that's the most interesting one because that is about the work. So how do we create work? Who works together? Who are those? Yeah we call them circles so we don't mix them with the boxes of the hierarchy. Yeah so which are the circles we currently belong to because this reality is actually the reality that somehow all these new organizational models are trying to force on us. So holocracy, sociocracy, even the platform based organization. They're kind of trying to sell if this like this is some new model which only is just a thing, a different reality. And even in organizations where you only work or organize work or people around work in these circles have the work is changing. This reality is flexible. People have roles in them. You can fulfill the same role in different circles or different roles in the same or different circles. This is not something we have to implement or bring in into organizations. Here comes solution focus. Have a look what's already there. And what's already there is in the value creating reality. And when so many organizations who implement for example holocracy and then they are super disappointed because it's not bringing what they expect it from me is because they throw out all the other realities. They throw out hierarchy, they throw out the the informal structure. So these are the four realities and most of the work we do in organization development and design we're trying to focus on the value creating reality. And then the fourth reality is the legal reality because of course not everybody anymore is the employee of the organization. They're moving towards platform based organizations or more and more people are contributors so they are either self-employed people, they belong to small companies or even larger corporations come together. So we have to acknowledge that and be aware with our solutions, in our dreamings, in our preferred future that we cannot just for example involve the employees when we are redesigning a logistic process because it has external people, for example the lorry driver, I'm just pulling this out from one of the recent cases who are employed by other companies but they contribute to the process. So when we want to agree on the steps of the process we need the people there who are actually doing it. And since then I know since I wrote the book here comes the fifth reality also which is the digital reality so I don't mention it in the book but this is where AI comes and the data based solutions very strongly in and here is the exclamation mark not to fall into the trap to think then that reality can solve everything because it only sees about what we have data. Or AI only sees what you have fed it with information so for example we use processes like appreciative inquiry which is also very close to the solution focus approach and people go out and interview their colleagues about a certain topic that we want to reinforce in the organization and then they come back and then they just say okay here are the scripts of the interviews shouldn't we just put it into AI to summarize it and of course you can but AI will only summarize what you have written down what you have taken notes of. It's not going to write down that for example you went into the warehouse and you wanted to have an interview and there was no word to sit down for a coffee with a colleague. That information is not in the summary or when you had a conversation with someone and you asked a question about the critical question if it would happen what should be different in the organization. AI is not going to see if the person immediately had the answer or had to think very hard about something or was the person struggling to find confidence to suggest something which is really out of the box. So this is where I think it's important to know that all these realities are there in the organization kind of layered on each other and each have their own issues and you shouldn't mix them up and try to solve the issue that belongs to another reality going back again for example to the hierarchy. Makes me wonder thinking about those realities or in the book but five five hours you've described. Does that influence the way you ask solution-focused questions and what I'm thinking is yeah you know what would people in this reality notice. Yeah absolutely and I think this is where it blows my mind you see because people who complete my course the native in-church course they it's an academic course so they can actually go and get themselves certified. They just have to prove that they have enough practice hours and one of the things they have to prove to the certification board is when they are doing organization design. Whether it's so there's a whole list of what type of designs it can be and it's only one in the list customer-focused design and I'm wondering what else how can you rethink an organization without a customer in mind but that comes from our very strong foothold in the value creating reality so if an organization is and I go back to the very basic definition an organization is a group of people who agree to work together to achieve something together to have an impact. We forget this because they grow big and then they become yeah very big and you think you're just there to have a job yeah but at the end of the day we are all there to create something together and that's something together what we're creating has to have a customer or someone at the end of the line to whom they are creating it might be the society it might be the buying customers but you don't have the impact if it's not manifesting in something that the organization puts out into the world. So working in a value creating really means that we always start from the customer so when we start asking questions about the evolution about the next level of the organization it's not about how should we reorganize our people so that that it costs less. We started the question, "Should we really evolve. What would our customers notice? Because that's where it all starts and that's a very creating reality. That's where we create the value to the customer. And then if we say, "Oh, the customer would notice that whatever, yeah, we are faster, we are more on time, we are more precise," then we can come back from there to achieve that. What would our colleagues notice? What are we doing differently and our contributors because they are not just colleagues appreciating the legal reality, yeah? So not just asking about the employees. So what would we be noticing? What are we doing differently when we are already precise, on time, whatever to the customer? So we're kind of coming back from outwards in to the organization with our questions. And those are also very different conversations and many different questions than people usually have in organizations. So knowing about the different realities changes our questions. So interesting. My brain's bubbling away. One of the things Avira, we really wanted to do with the podcast was to have listeners learn something that they could try, they could just go and try in their world. What could you teach us that we could go try tomorrow? Well, then maybe I'll come back to this later. We've just kind of finished the last sentence. So next time you're sitting together with your people, whether it's your team or just your colleagues, just try imagining or having a discussion about, hey, should we make a step forward in our evolution? What would our customers, clients notice about us? And they may be internal clients and customers or external or you could ask in this case, hey, what would our listeners notice if we not argue about one thing? And start just saying it, whatever comes out of your mountain, have a conversation about it. I love this is the magic of solution focus. When we are cold dreaming and co-creating that if we're future. And the question is not, what should we do so that our customers are happy, but really coming from the impact side and then coming back. So, okay, so if we want to have that impact, if we want our customers to say that, or I love using, for example, tool, empathy map. Everybody's using it in design thinking to identify the problem, but you can use it in a solution focused way. So what would our customers think, say, feel and do? Should we make this step forward and go around it and have a conversation and you will have so much information just coming out of that conversation and then you can start thinking, okay, so what is it that we should be doing differently to have that, to achieve that? And in the doing differently, I also like to bring in from the solution focused approach to stop start continue. People think it's an agile thing, it's coming from the solution focused and it's wonderful, Steve Tashadar said, do more of what is working and start experimenting with things and don't do what is not useful and having these three things in front of you as a second tool maybe, it creates the opportunity to acknowledge the patterns that you don't have to change. It's not just about what we have to do differently, but it's also what is it that we're doing right in order to achieve that and gives the ability to say also, and there are things we should stop because they seem the great idea or they worked, I don't know, last year, but this year if we want to achieve this, we shouldn't be doing this and instead what should we start experimenting with? So even taking on the new is not a decision that's an endless life changing heavy thing, it's an experiment. Hey, why don't we start experimenting with, I don't know, not just having the sound, but maybe the picture of the podcast as well. And it's just an experiment and then we can see how it works, is it taking us closer to where we want it to go or maybe it's not and then in the next okay, another tool, calibration meeting. Let's see. Let's see. Next calibration meeting, we can come back and have a look, what have we achieved, what have we proud of, what was every person's contribution from the team to that, whatever we have achieved, and what is it that we should stop start continuing doing, still going into the direction that we have achieved. So kind of creating consciously these loops or the in the spiral of the circles, with coming back and having a look and fine tuning and yeah, maybe the experiment didn't go well and they say we have to try to do it differently or maybe say we have to start experimenting with something else. So it gives lightness instead of yeah, I don't even go there, just enjoying the lightness that I'm sorry, did I try to speed everything into, I mean, yeah, I'm listening, Elvira because it feels like I've stumbled over some of these things over the years. And you've just given a beautiful language to that. So I love the idea of crafting because I've been starting to talk about creating the conditions for and the idea of agreements. That's really clear, and that wasn't in my language before. I've been talking about collective best hopes in a team or an organisation and things like that. So this is, and then you've mentioned certain tools like StartStopContinue and then using those in a solution focus way. And I read in the book that the calibration meetings could be like the retrospectives in agile, you know, so they're there. Yes, and no, yeah. Good, tell me more about that because that's what I was kind of up to. I'm going to hang on a minute. I'm going to go over to book one and read more about this from book two. So tell me about that. Yeah, that's where it connects back a lot. Yes, I think so one of the things is that of course and everything that's in the book and have this whole thing somehow came together in this into a system is coming out of my own experimentation. Yes. And for example, working with my teams at different places is I also tell you, okay, agile is a great thing. So let's try to have a retrospective. You can do StartStopContinue, but yeah, and then there is a book where you can read 50 different ways of retrospectives. We try them all. And yeah, it's cool that making it fun, but somehow it was not bringing the energy. I was lacking the energy that I was experimenting with holocrosses different meetings, tactical meeting, very efficient, but again, something is missing from it. Somehow people said from my team, it's very mechanical. We missed a human part of it or the government's meeting where you can finally make agreements. They loved it. So out of all these experimentation came out this fire structure that went into the book also is that we know from the solution-focused approach that you have to create energy before you can create change and to create energy in a team or even on the level of the organization is and that's what we use this calibration meeting for is that night really has four steps. One is to look back into the last period and acknowledge together what have we achieved. This might be goals we set up front, but also how we work together if we had, I don't know, objectives and key results, we can acknowledge what we succeeded in. And then really the second step and this was missing from every of these other approaches, acknowledge the individual's contribution to that. So whatever we achieved, maybe it was 20% of what we planned, but that 20% is done and what has Jason and what has Dion done that made this possible to happen. One have done what resources we have noticed and as teams practice this regularly after a while they become really good at noticing what the person has become better at. And we spend time on each and every person. Yeah? And there are lots of different creative ways how you can do this, depending how much time you have. And I always say that this is half of the calibration meeting. So it's not a quick check in and get over it. Half of it is acknowledging success, acknowledging individual contribution. And then we can talk about the Stock Start Continuous. So how we work together, what worked, what is it that we should stop, what is it that we should start experimentally. And the most important thing is the agreement. So it's not collecting thousands of post-its. Yeah, let people collect post-its, but then make suggestions. And based on the suggestion, on a theme, let them make an agreement. Okay, so we're going to stop this or we're going to start experimenting with this. And you don't need too many new agreements. So I usually say half an hour is enough, because you come up with enough new things to have enough space to experiment and see how the impact of them are. And then the last bit of is agreeing on the next deliverables. Yeah? So if you're doing monthly thing or a quarter of a year, so what is going to be ready by the end of that period of time? And who's going to work on that? And with that, you make on the team level the most important organization design agreements. And it's actually a tool, it's nothing else. If we would just use these in organizations on every level, it would shoot the organizations in today on evolution in both time. Yeah. I love what you said, it's stuck with me about creating the energy. And I think what I've observed is that a solution focused approach has an ability to, I'm not sure whether it's create the energy, but find that energy and bring it together. And I think that in some ways, it could be one of the most important things that leads to change is that energy. And so I sometimes think, everything else that we do, is it really important? Or I love how you've really structured, and I think there's a definite value to all of that. But I sometimes just question myself, I'm like, if we just have a conversation that leads to somebody having more energy and walking out of that, is that the main thing that we leave people? It is, and where I like to be very precise is that in different contexts, these conversations can be about different things, but in an organization, it has to be about the work. Yeah. It's not enough if you and I have a great conversation about how we want to collaborate together. I've done this, I've been there, I've been part of it. We agreed, we all wanted to collaborate, but we didn't agree on what actually is going to be the outcome, the deliverable, and who is actually going to do what in order to achieve that? So that's where I think, and what I would say, where coaching, team coaching, and organization development and design is different. So you can have a great impact with coaching and team coaching in an organization, but what it often lacks is this extra layer of, we have to talk about the work, we are there to work together. So that's the most important or the core agreement. And that's what's most often is missing in organizations also. So we talk about so many other things. There's so much noise that the core agreement is missing. And then how could we collaborate if we haven't agreed on what we are delivering together? And we can talk about the nice collaborations we had before and how we would want to do this, but it's lacking the core agreement. What are we going to deliver together? So that's where I think I would say, because sometimes we would say, "Oh, isn't this just then coaching and team coaching on an organizational level?" And in a way, yes. So in a way, yes, and in a way, no. Yeah. I think that's it. It looks like it's resonating. No, look at it. Because like I said, I feel like I've stumbled across these sort of tools over the years. And I'm sort of mapping back through bigger projects that I've run and more organizational development stuff. And it's in my mind at the moment, it's not team coaching. You take the elements of solution, the solution focused approach, but there are tools. There are tools that, whether it's something like Stop Start Continuum, just thinking of a project I ran was a strategic planning meeting and process. But we needed to get down to who's responsible, who's accountable, who needs to be consulted, who needs to be informed. What's going to be different 30 days from now? I'll say this by the former structure level. But what's going to be different 30 days from now when we get together again, what needs to be done in the next 10 days? All right, who's going to do that in the next 10 days? And it gets mapped down to that detail. By the time you get to 30 days, they've already thought of new stuff and kept moving things. But what I'm loving about this conversation and Elvira the book, and I'm reading both at once, but it's kind of helping me think through the structures that I've tripped over along the way that seem to work. And now I've got more of a language to it. So I do think crafting an agreements for me, moving forward, it's going to be really important. Because the co-construction that happens, we've got to craft that space and hold it for people. Yeah. Yeah. I really, in chatting with you, Irvira, I really appreciate the, the rigorous is not, maybe not the right word, but you can tell that you really thought things through and have a structure to how it fits and how that how a solution focused approach and the tools and how it all fits and you've experimented and landed with these ideas. You must have put a lot of time experimenting and thinking into your work. I think that's the important part on experimenting. So none of this is more like me sitting and meditating about it. Everything that is in the books or how this whole approach has come together is exactly from these experiences like you're saying Jason, that you're there, you're in the situation, you have to come up with it slowly. So it's all coming from practice. Yeah. It's not a theory. It's coming from the practice, practical program, experimentation, what work, what didn't work. It wasn't good. I didn't work. Let's try something else. And yeah. And then it slowly comes into a system where all the pieces of the puzzle suddenly fit together. And yeah, actually writing a book helps clarifying it. Or maybe I was not thinking for me that was blood and sweat to the books. I would have me, but yeah. Yeah. I had a few people ask me if I'd write one and your books today got me to pull out like a 40 page document that I'd put together in 2022. And I hadn't looked at it since. And I think you're right. I think putting something on a page helps you think through and refine what's there. And yeah, thank you. This conversation might be the next step in that for me. I don't know. So good. Yeah. And you just have to remember that I did this not all my mother tongue. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Because that's another learning which also came out from the experimentation that I wrote a few articles earlier in Hungarian. That's my mother tongue. And then it got translated to English and it didn't work. Wow. Yeah. Because I mean, I don't know how many languages you speak. I speak a few and each language requires different ways of thinking. And you can translate the words, but not the thinking. So that was one of the decisions I also had to make. So that's part of the plugins that if I write it in Hungarian, I still have to rewrite it in English. So it cannot be translated. Well. Okay. I might just go for it. And yeah, that was another adventure and a lot of learning in that as well to find the right words. And for me, it's rather easy to talk about it. I talk about it a lot. I teach. I work with clients. But yeah, speaking and writing down things is another level of my English was so. Yeah, what a what an effort. Thank you. On the half of the the solution focused community. On the book, where's the best place for people to find it to get a copy? Oh, we're going to ask Jason, did you get a Amazon? I did. I did. Yeah. Okay. So the best place worldwide to get it is from Amazon. The little kind of trick in it is that fortunately, unfortunately. So out of Europe, you get the black and white version. In Europe, because the publishing house I worked with, they have a contracted Amazon. That in Europe, they distribute the pretty colorful version as well. But out of Europe, only a black and white, hints another learning from book publishing. I had to publish them in black and white again. So then they are available. So I guess Amazon is the best or if somebody is in Europe, then books on demand. That's a publishing house where people can directly orbit it. And there they have it in a color version or so. I saw both. I saw I tried to get the colored version, but I couldn't get the color. And tell us your course and how people get to find out about your course. Okay. So the course is on the goby on project website. And we advertise actually a lot of courses at the moment in English, German and Hungarian. And we have, they are usually, so either online or face to face. I already have been teaching this for over seven years. So I already have some people who learned it, use it and they are learning to co-facilitate it with me. And we're experimenting at the moment with not just full, but half-day versions that fit the Americas. And we've yet to come up with times, but that's coming very soon for Asia. I actually have a consultant coach trainer with whom probably from January, we're going to advertise kind of a half-day version, which can fit to the Asian time zones also. So I don't have to be up all night. Yeah. So the goby on project.com is the website where you can have a look at it. And maybe just my little extra thing. So besides teaching this, this approach and having this internationally accredited course. Yeah. I'm also somehow one of my secret resources and quite good at building communities. So the people who completed our course are quite active in our online community. So much that as of this year, we've actually created our consultancy platform. So if you would like to work with a consultant who is working with this approach, they are also on our website under the consultancy page. You can see the different languages and different countries, different industries people are from. And at the moment as our introductory promotion, you can book a free mentoring session with them. So you can have a look at book a session with one of the consultants and discuss whichever challenge you have right now in your organizational life. And they'll be in there and happy to offer you through that story. So that's all available from the go beyond project. Yeah. Project. Awesome. All right. We'll make sure that's linked. Superb. Thank you very much. Thank you. As with so many of these conversations, I think I've benefited equally as our listeners will hopefully benefit. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks for your generosity and your time and you know, you're willing this to share. It's been, it's been lots of fun. Thank you for joining us on the Toward Solutions podcast. We hope today's insights inspire you to apply solution focused in your own life and projects. Whether you're applying these strategies in your personal life, professional practice or community projects, we're excited to see the impact you create. If you found this episode useful, please leave us a review and share it with others who might benefit from out of discussions. Your support really helps us to reach more people and continue to bring you quality content. Stay tuned for more enlightening conversations, subscribe now and let's continue this journey towards solutions together.