POWERFUL IDEAS ("idées puissantes") FROM INSOO KIM BERG AND STEVE DE SHAZER

A nice collection of idées puissantes ("powerful ideas") from psychotherapist team, Insoo Kim Berg and her husband Steve de Shazer  [both died unexpectedly a few years apart in the 2000s]:

• If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

• If it works, go with the flow.

• If it isn’t working, do something different.

• The solution to an issue—any issue—is almost never that closely related to the problem.

• This explains why the way people think and talk about problems is almost guaranteed to be different than the way they think and talk about solutions.

• The first place to look for solutions is to exceptions: ask yourself what has been working that you really hadn’t noticed all that much.

• The next best place to look for solutions is to what makes sense, now that you’ve thought a little more about it.

• What usually matters most are small, right, smart, good (that is, moral) next steps that may put you on the path to big changes.

• People need to be reminded (and none of us ever wants to forget) that the future is both created and negotiable.

• Not all change is a problem, and problems do not happen all the time. But change is inevitable.

[Excerpted from LEAP!Psych weblog of Dudley Lynch, President of Brain Technologies Corporation and author of 'LEAP!: How to Think Like a Dolphin & Do the Next Right, Smart Thing Come Hell or High Water', among others. He is one of my most favourite strategist authors.]