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Introduction

Six stages of systemic consultation

David Campbell & Clare Huffington

T
he strength—and the weakness—of the systemic model is
that it provides the means for a continual search for mean-
ing. It builds a picture of the ways parts of a whole are
connected and speculates about possible meanings attributed to
these patterns. Once a meaning is identified, however, a systemic
observer must step back to acknowledge that, in identifying that
particular meaning, he or she has created a new context and new
possible meanings. And where does it all end?
For the purpose of working as a consultant or manager within
an organization, a punctuation point has to be reached in order
that a decision can be taken, a change made, or a problem resolved.
At that point, a particular set of meanings will be used as a basis
for action.
The strength of the model lies in its ability to identify many
possible meanings from which to construct an understanding of
what is going on, and then how best to intervene; its weakness
is that it does not encourage people to develop a model of the
world from one position. Thus, one could get caught in continu-
ally generating new meanings and not taking action when needed.
The consultant working within a systemic framework is trying to

1
2 DAVID CAMPBELL & CLARE HUFFINGTON

help the client reach a position of having the minimum sufficient

meanings to be able to move forward in a new way.
The systemic paradigm is based on the idea that, when we
observe connectedness, we can see a pattern, and meaning arises
from the interpretations we place on the pattern. Pattern leads
to meanings. We find that clients in organizations have often got
stuck with one particular meaning they are placing on events
and that this is not allowing them to develop as individuals, as
groups, or as a whole organization. Finding new meanings can
loosen connections to a particular set of ideas that are producing
the stuckness. It can do the equivalent of throwing open the win-
dows of the sickroom to allow in light and air. Once new ideas
and feedback are present, they generate further meanings and
creativity is released in the organization, which enables people to
solve their own problems.
In this introduction, we present generic ideas that we find
essential in carrying out a piece of consultation from start to fin-
ish, and we explain the systemic thinking that can be applied at
each stage, making reference to our own experiences or to those
of the other contributors to this book. We also refer to techniques
and ways of working with clients inspired by systemic thinking
and used by us or our contributors in this work. We hope that in
doing this, readers will be able to find tools and techniques they
can use themselves in their own work as consultants or manag-
ers.
We asked each contributor to describe the way they use the
systemic model in their consultancy practice and to begin their
chapter by addressing the question: “What specific interpreta-
tion or application of systemic thinking will be underpinning the
work in your chapter?” We wanted them to set out the key ideas
that they would then illustrate via a case example or examples,
where possible including detailed accounts of the exercises and
techniques they use inspired by systemic thinking. We also asked
them to conclude with an evaluation of the work, pinpointing its
strengths and weaknesses and what the contributor learned from
it as well as how it might be developed or applied in other situ-
ations.
The consultation process can be described in terms of six stages
that we have identified as discrete and essential parts of a process
 INTRODUCTION 3

consultation. The description of stages differs from other process

consultation approaches (e.g., Shein, 1969; Schön, 1983) in:

» the emphasis on generating meaning at every stage of the

process
» close collaboration with clients as co-creators of new mean-
ings
» the relative backgrounding of the consultant and foreground-
ing of client leadership and action in producing change.

The six stages we are proposing are:

1. developing an understanding of the consultant’s relationship

to the client;
2. identifying a problem and making a contract for work;
3. designing a consultation;
4. working directly with the participants;
5. using continuous feedback;
6. evaluation.

1. Developing an understanding of the consultant’s

relationship to the client
Consultants are contacted for many reasons. The consultation has
to be supported, and paid for, by someone or some group with suf-
ficient authority to sanction the time, effort, and money involved.
So the first question the consultant asks is, “What does consulta-
tion mean to this person, this group, or this organization?” The
sponsor has been engaged in some internal debate among several
points of view about how to manage change in the organization,
represented by “the staff need some new input to help them
through a difficult area”, on the one hand, and “we don’t want
to make things worse by stirring things up with the staff”, on the
other. It may be that a particular individual sees him/herself as
losing out in some way in the situation the organization is in and
is seeking to bolster his or her position by securing external help
(Selvini Palazzoli, 1986).
4 DAVID CAMPBELL & CLARE HUFFINGTON

This makes us think hard about why the sponsor comes down
on the side of bringing you in to consult to the organization. We
find it helpful to imagine the discussion that took place in the
organization that led to the final decision to contact a consultant.
Was there heated debate . . . unanimity . . . agreement with condi-
tions . . . or sulking acceptance, and what kind of reception might
the consultant receive when he or she arrives to meet the clients?
And why have you, in particular, been invited? Most commonly,
the consultant has been chosen by word of mouth, personal rec-
ommendation, or some form of tendering process. Sponsors have
had time to assess directly or indirectly whether you are both safe
and effective for the organization. They will have some sense of
whether their organization needs minor tweaking or wholesale
change, and you are part of their expectation.
For example, in the chapter contributed by Simon Western,
who is based at the Leadership Centre at Lancaster University, he
describes how he was initially contacted by his client, the Chief
Executive of the Centre for Excellence in Leadership in the Further
Education and Learning and Skills Sector in the United Kingdom.
She asked him to become her “personal leadership coach” at a
time when she was facing a challenge to her leadership style.
While successful as a leader of a further education college, her
new task was to lead a partnership organization where she felt her
existing style would not work. She may have hoped and expected
that Western, from a centre of perhaps even greater leadership
excellence in the university sector, would be able to help her be a
better and different leader in a new context. Western goes on in
his chapter to show how his client discovered that her task would
not be to be more powerful or dominant but to construe leader-
ship of a partnership of organizations in quite a different way
from leadership of a single institution. He illustrates well the way
the consultant working with a systemic model can generate new
meanings that transform the initial request and expectations into
a collaborative search for new meanings.
We have written elsewhere about the differences between the
internal and external consultant, and these distinctions are also
important at this stage of the process (Campbell, Draper, & Huff-
ington, 1991; Huffington & Brunning, 1994). While the internal
 INTRODUCTION 5

consultant may be seen to be safer, quicker to grasp the issues,

and easier to confide in, the risk is that he or she will be seen as
having a position and is therefore easier to disqualify—“She would
say that!” We can see, for example, in the second case presented by
Clare Huffington in her chapter, that the Human Resources (HR)
Director in the IT company was keen to act on the recommenda-
tions from an external consultant that the organization needed to
launch a leadership development intervention, especially for the
top team and Chief Executive (CEO), both as individuals and as a
group. However, the CEO had rejected this external advice as he
did not consider it a key priority at the time.
It may have been too far from what was important for him
or not linked in his mind with what were his priorities (perhaps
a failure on the part of the external consultant to make that link
effectively). So he turned to the HR Director—his internal consult-
ant, if you like—for a different way to take forward the need for
development. Her approach was more subtle, using coaching from
a number of external providers in a stepwise process monitored
by her, which the coaches called a “seeping model”. This meant a
gradual soaking in of new ideas over time. Although it took about
18 months, it did produce the result that the external consultant
had originally advocated. This time, however, the intervention
was able to integrate with the key priorities in the organization
from the perspective of the CEO and other key stakeholders at all
levels of the organization. This is because it became embedded in
many layers of meaning.
We would say it is essential that the consultant working within
a systemic framework pays attention to the question of ownership
of the ideas that get generated. If they are not well rooted in the
organization’s experience and fundamentally linked to its key
drivers, they will be rejected as too distant, external, or “foreign”.
This work is not about the consultant developing clever ideas
but helping the clients to find, or re-find, their own meanings,
cleverness, and creativity. The challenge for the consultant is to
get close enough to really engage with the way the clients think
while retaining sufficient distance to be able to comment on these
thoughts and the way they are expressed so that the client notices
this too.
6 DAVID CAMPBELL & CLARE HUFFINGTON

2. Identifying a problem and making a contract for work

We have frequently had experiences in which an organization

presents a vague idea that something isn’t right and something
needs fixing, but they may not have any clearer notion of what
needs attention. The clients will, nevertheless, want some clarity
about the contract for work they are agreeing to (for a thorough
and engaging discussion of the contracting phase, we would refer
readers to Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting, 1981); yet the systemic
consultant will want to join the organization in such a way as to
be able to observe the organizational process going on around
him or her, and to have enough freedom and manoeuvrability to
make some formulations about the meaning of the process to the
organization. In this second stage, the consultant is trying to strike
a balance between agreeing on a focus for the consultation and
also leaving the focus broad enough to be able to see the organi-
zation in new ways as he or she interacts with it. This “balancing
position” can be usefully discussed and negotiated with commis-
sioning clients at the outset of the work.
Philip Boxer and Carole Eigen in their chapter describe how
the reflexive consultation process that they designed enabled the
CEO of a religious membership organization to take up a position
from which he could question the model within which he himself
was working as a leader. In the original meeting with the CEO, it
had been agreed that an external consultant would certainly not
know better than he how to meet the challenge of how to lead the
organization in the future. The consultation process would have
to be one that enabled the CEO himself to work out how to meet
the challenge on behalf of the organization. Therefore Boxer and
Eigen formed an internal “shadow consultation group” of four
individuals working on contract or within the client system. This
group was to work with the CEO and with Boxer as facilitator
and Eigen as his shadow consultant. The goal of the facilitation
was “to enable the group to notice what was being avoided or
was difficult to surface in its own dynamics as it struggled with
its task”. The consultation process proceeded through monthly
face-to-face meetings through three phases, the timing of which
were determined by the emergent learning of the CEO and the
consultation group; in other words, it was based on the internal
 INTRODUCTION 7

logic of the consultation process and layers of meaning as they

were uncovered. The final phase enabled the CEO to challenge a
previously unquestioned assumption in the organization that was
fundamental to its future and also to his leadership.
This example emphasizes that there are no “off-the-shelf” ways
of working within the systemic model. Each consultation is tail-
ored to the needs of the client, and the position the consultant(s)
take up in the process must serve these needs effectively. In this
case, the autonomy of the client needed to be respected, and the
nature of the working group and the stages of the consultation
were entirely driven by the development of his thinking about his
role. We see consultation as an ongoing process that is triggered
by the consultant’s first contact but is continually evolving as the
consultant and the organization interact around the consultation
project.

3. Designing a consultation
A crucial polarity for consultants is between the observing/reflect-
ing position and the need to “put down a marker and act”. This
third stage requires the consultant to offer something specific,
such as an explanation, a proposal, a policy, or a new structure.
The ways this process can develop are varied, and one clear exam-
ple of work in this stage is provided, in their chapter, by Georgina
Noakes and Myrna Gower. Georgina Noakes had a long-standing
relationship with the Human Resources department of a large
legal firm, through which she frequently met to discuss ways to
improve communication within the firm. The firm commissioned
her to design and analyse a survey for the staff about communica-
tion. This revealed that the legal assistants wanted more feedback
about what they were meant to be doing and how their work fitted
in to the larger picture. This then prompted the senior partners
to approach Noakes to remedy this situation, and she negotiated,
with the partners and Gower, to design a structured leadership
course for partners as a vehicle for improving the communication
between the partners and their assistants.
Keith Kinsella, in his chapter, also provides a good example
of the programme he designed to support the improvement of
8 DAVID CAMPBELL & CLARE HUFFINGTON

leadership in a local strategic partnership (LSP), a new type of

organization set up by the UK government to re-focus the deliv-
ery of services to meet local community needs. The LSP includes
police, the local health trust, education, voluntary, business, and
other sectors. He had to find ways to support leadership devel-
opment in a large and diverse group of busy people who wore
several hats. His first idea had been to design a free-standing
development programme that delegates would attend separately
from their ongoing work together. But this proved impossible
because of the pressure of time and competing priorities. What
evolved instead was a way of working in real time with the LSP
in their existing meetings but using what he calls a “close learn-
ing ‘development sandwich’” or “layered approach to developing
while doing”. This involved simultaneously working at intention
or purpose (both of learning and doing); at the context(s) for the
work (many, including each constituent organizational context as
well as the shared context); at process, so as to look at the emergent
ways they were working together and how they could become
more creative, and less formal and bureaucratic; and at content, the
central strategic issues they needed to resolve together.
Thus, what he calls the performing process was shadowed all
the way by the development perspective, with one or the other
being brought to the foreground where appropriate. This was a
powerful and effective process that quickly produced both con-
crete results and a creative and energized working process for the
LSP. Kinsella comments that it was a very intense and demand-
ing way of working for the consultant because of the need to be
thinking at all the levels at once and needing to be quick on your
feet and good at working in the moment. This is also an important
feature of this approach, as we will see in more detail in Stage 5.

4. Working directly with the participants

The way systemic consultants work with clients is experienced
as quite different from the way other consultants work. Clients
will typically say things like, “I never thought about our situation
that way before”; “It is such a relief to be able to talk about what
is really going on in our team in a safe way”; “I realize I don’t
 INTRODUCTION 9

have to come up with all the answers by myself—I can do what I

do with you (consultant) with my colleagues now”. They experi-
ence the intensity and depth of the approach in contrast to other
approaches. One of the features of the style is of a real focus on
meaning but without this being centred on the consultant. What
is on the table is a shared exploration of the system from an inside
and outside perspective—from the consultant who is outside look-
ing in and the clients who are inside looking out—as well as their
perspectives on each other’s views
It can sometimes be difficult for clients to free themselves from
the perspectives and meanings they already have. It is a common
experience for a consultant working with a group to have mem-
bers of that group using it as an opportunity to “sound off” their
well-honed views without listening to one another at all. The con-
sultant has to be able to develop tools and techniques to:

» help clients to think more systemically and less individually

» shift their well-worn patterns of thinking and interacting
» allow them to play and be creative
» create a context for them to come up with new ideas and new
ways of behaving.

One way that clients begin to think systemically during the con-
sultation is by the consultant asking “systemic questions” that
invite the client to explore the way behaviour and ideas influence
diverse parts of the organization. For example, rather than ask-
ing how someone tried to tackle a particular problem, a systemic
question might ask: “When you tried to tackle the problem in
that way, what effect did you notice on another department?”, or
“What have you observed in other parts of the organization that
influenced you to try this approach?” Although the differences
between these questions may appear slight, we find that when
asked repeatedly over the course of a consultation, they do have
the effect of helping people think more systemically about their
behaviour.
There are many examples of how our contributors enable par-
ticipants to generate new ideas in their work—for example, Keith
Kinsella and his simple but effective use of Post-it Notes and
10 DAVID CAMPBELL & CLARE HUFFINGTON

working in smaller groups so everyone could have their say;

using simple voting processes (“put your 3 red dots on the ideas
you want to concentrate on”); and taking regular time-outs to
take the group temperature. These techniques had the effect of
constraining the usual formal meeting patterns and encouraging
risk-taking and informality so that people could share ideas more
quickly and easily and tackle some quite complex issues without
the anticipated difficulty.
In his chapter, David Campbell takes a different approach in
his consultation work by facilitating direct, dialogical communi-
cation among participants. In order to do this, he takes the state-
ments people make about their work, identifies them as “position
statements”, and then places the position on a polarity line with
other position statements. This has the effect of encouraging par-
ticipants to talk to each other from different positions and thereby
get more interested in ideas other than their own. For example, in
one consultation a participant said their difficulty was that “there
was no compassion from the kids to the carers”; Campbell turned
this statement into a position—that clients show compassion for
themselves, not others—and then contrasted that with the position
at the other end of the polarity—that clients show compassion for
others, not themselves. The staff group could then discuss why it
may be important for clients to shift their positions in relation to
the staff depending on what else was going on in their lives.

5. Using continuous feedback

There is sometimes the sense in other descriptions of process
consultation that it is enough to carefully diagnose the presenting
problem or issue, design a consultation, and then sit back and
let it roll! The difference between this approach and the systemic
model we are describing here is the intensity of the work done in
the moment. There is a need for the consultant to be alert at all
times to opportunities to spot emerging patterns and to find ways
to make these evident and usable to the client group so that they
can become the basis for new meanings to be shared. In this sense
it is an emergent, not prescriptive, process. Christine Oliver, in her
 INTRODUCTION 11

chapter, identifies particular pieces of feedback as “moments of

significance”, and she describes the way she uses these moments
to focus everyone’s attention on a new way of understanding
the process the group is going through. For example, she uses a
poignant example of someone who, in the midst of the consulta-
tion work, sat in a chair, and it collapsed. The next day, the person
reported that no one had phoned to see how she was, and she
suggested that the group was not caring. Oliver used this event
as feedback that touched on another important theme for the
group—namely, the ambiguity of accountability in the organiza-
tion, which meant that colleagues did not know who they could
count on. She actively blocked further discussion about whether
this was a caring group and led the group into discussion about
this theme of accountability.
Another example of using ongoing feedback is represented in
the chapter by Marianne Grønbæk. She uses the semantic polari-
ties model with groups experiencing difficulties as a framework
for “harvesting” the feedback from one phase of a consultation to
lead into the next. Semantic polarities are the range of positions we
may take within a particular theme or discourse in order to create
meaning in a relationship with other positions. The use of a par-
ticular polarity emerges from an initial discussion on a topic with
a group. For example, managers in a school staff group identified
several themes in the difficulties they were experiencing in their
meetings: cultural differences; authority levels; equality issues;
responsibility; the need for rules. Grønbæk then describes how
she created clarity and focus in the next phase of the discussion
by suggesting that there might be a semantic polarity between, on
the one hand, “rules and tools will create the best meetings and
decisions” and, on the other, “being aware of your own and oth-
ers’ positions creates the best meetings and decisions”. She then
invited everyone to take positions in relation to their agreement
with these polarities so as to create a conversation that would
allow differences to be expressed in the group. The ensuing dif-
ferences could then be teased out to allow more discussions based
on further emerging polarities so as to finally allow decisions to
be made about how future meetings of the staff group would be
run. This example elegantly shows how, in stepwise fashion, using
12 DAVID CAMPBELL & CLARE HUFFINGTON

semantic polarities, differences can safely be expressed and used

as a basis for expanding meaning in a group rather, than leading
to insoluble conflict.

6. Evaluation
The consultant working within the systemic model would not
usually see evaluation exclusively as a discrete stage in the con-
sultation process but as a mindset throughout the work. The con-
sultant is continually looking for pattern and meaning and trying
to create a context for meanings to be examined and evaluated by
clients as a basis for new decision-making and action. He or she
is aiming to set off a whole series of learning cycles like fireworks
all the time if possible (Kolb, 1984). However, the final test of the
pudding is in the eating: it is not enough to generate lots of inter-
esting meanings if it does not result in change that is linked to the
original reason for calling in a consultant in the first place.
Of course, it is sometimes difficult to measure success against
the original goals of the work because the goals can change based
on the more developed analysis of the underlying issues that is
part of the consultation process. And unexpected and surprising
leaps forward can take place! But the consultant needs to be able
to track these as time goes on. Nevertheless, there are various
ways consultants have tried to pin down and isolate aspects of
this organizational process in order to make more evidence-based
judgements about what has happened and how the consultant
might go forward.
As discussed above, the evaluation that Noakes and Gower
describe resulted from a long-standing client interest in commu-
nication in the law firm. Interestingly, this evaluation revealed
some dissatisfaction that led directly to the longer-term leadership
training programme.
David Campbell and Marianne Grønbæk produced a previous
volume about their work with positioning and semantic polari-
ties (Campbell & Grønbæk, 2006), and for that publication they
commissioned a researcher to interview three directors who had
used this model of consultation in their own organizations. This
allowed the authors to learn, from a more neutral source, about the
 INTRODUCTION 13

outcome of their work, but also about some specific interventions

that the participants found helpful.
Simon Western reports impressive data relating to the suc-
cess of the partnership working of the Centre for Excellence in
Leadership (CEL) following his work with the CEO and con-
stituent organizations. For example, 96% of participants rated
CEL programmes as good or very good; CEL worked with 91% of
organizations in the further-education sector in the United King-
dom; and within the organization, leadership was distributed and
internal communication improved.
Many of the learning points to emerge from Rita Harris’s chap-
ter are the result of a training course she established at the Tavi-
stock Clinic. Members of the course, all of whom are managing
services, are asked to bring their own work dilemmas to the course
seminars, where they are discussed and evaluated by the group
consisting of course members. Thus, over time, it becomes clear
which interventions are having which impact within their services.
This is an excellent method for evaluating ongoing work, but also,
by placing the work in a course structure, the students/managers
have the opportunity to receive ongoing supervision that allows
them to step back and evaluate their own position in the system.
Harris used these course discussions to develop her own learning
about the impact of the systemic model. For example, she notes
that service managers have reported reduced personal anxiety for
every small problematic event, and that understanding the inter-
connectedness of systems has enabled them to make more sense
of the emotional environment in their organizations.

Conclusion

In this introduction, we have tried to emphasize that it is impor-

tant to see systemic consultation as both similar to and different
from any other approach to consultation. Consultants from any
walk of life would probably agree that these six stages of consulta-
tion are fundamental to the work, although they might cast them
in different terms. But we have also highlighted some of the spe-
cific systemic concepts that make this approach radically different
14 DAVID CAMPBELL & CLARE HUFFINGTON

from many others, such as the careful attention to feedback during

the consultation, the emphasis on interaction and dialogue, the
appreciation that meaning arises from context, and the consultant
seeing him/herself as part of what he or she observes. The chap-
ters that follow go much further in elucidating these concepts and
how they are put into the practice of work with organizations.