Organizational Consulting. Organizational Arrangements As Part Of Business Consulting

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

In organizational constellations, as in constellations in general, there are many myths and legends. Let's try to figure out what is an indication for constellation, and how this method differs from other methods of organizational consulting? How so special this method, given its phenomenology, differs from many other methods used in organizational consulting. So, what is most used in the practical work of an external organizational consultant (not to be confused with psychologists, business trainers):

• methods of financial and economic analysis,
• methods and principles of audit,
• accounting methodology,
• strategic management,
• basics of management, including time management,
• coaching,
• tax accounting;
• Management Accounting;
• management consulting;
• anti-crisis consulting;
• methods and principles of operational and management audit;
• foundations of jurisprudence in the field of creation, formation and management of legal entities;
• bylaws (letters from the State Tax Administration, NBU, Central Bank, etc.)

and, for a very "advanced" organizational consultant:

• psychology of communication,
• psychology of conflicts,
• motivation
• personality diagnostics, etc.

I am not a beginner in the field of organizational consulting, and for quite a long time these methods were enough for me, what is called "by the eyes", but time passes, we grow, and along with our professional growth our clients and their requests grow, respectively. Several years ago, for clarity, I began to actively use the method of modeling and economic forecasting of macroeconomic and business processes. Its essence lies in the spatial modeling of the client's request and the derivation and assignment of the key requested figures from the process, for example, the figure of the Competitors, the Political vector (for Ukraine this is a very strong factor of influence), Profit, Costs, Consumers, Shareholders, Exchange rate, Tax discount rate and etc. In the process of working on such requests, I noticed that in each individual case the same assigned figures “look different”, sometimes even, sometimes “falling,” sometimes “swinging,” and so on. And the next stage of my growth as a specialist was the study of constellations according to Hellinger, system laws (here I was also extremely lucky, my therapy teacher was a wonderful doctor, which is called "from God", who instilled in us, still students, the basics and principles of system laws, stating that the patient is not a separate organism, that behind him are his relatives, family, collective, his vocation, abilities, the degree of their realization, the desire to live and be healthy, finally!). I remember that it was strange to us how the patient “does not want to get well, or wants to be in the hospital,” and only after having encountered in practice, I received clear confirmation that the one who really wants it survives and recovers. But, I digress a little from the topic.

So, I understood the cases of organizational requests, when from the point of view of managerial, analytical and economic methodologies and approaches, everything is fine, but in reality there is no result, or it (the result) is very different from the planned predicted. Those. in the field of consulting, certain elements appear that affect the clarification of the request and are not related to the economic component of it. And in this case, constellation is a method of phenomenology of referring to the inner world of the client - this is the moment that fundamentally distinguishes the constellation method from any other used in orconsulting. Maybe for some it sounds pretentious, but I am ready to debate, because, as they say - "tested in practice." In addition to the phenomenon of clarifying and touching the deep and internal components of the client's personality, this method allows, as they say, "touch and hear" the soul of the organization, its own expanded organizational system, which, in addition to the legal and economic and financial components, includes it (organizations) "Own history", as individual and unique as the people who create it and influence its functioning. The phenomenon of "collective conscience" of organizations - the first law - to create the need for balance, however, the movement towards balance, for the most part, remains hidden for our consciousness (!). Those who represent the excluded members of the system do not know that they are "chosen" to establish a balance, do not know about the imbalance in the system. The collective conscience aims to bring back what has been lost, and through this restores order in the system. These movements cannot be calculated by any economic-analytical methods (!). The second law that the collective conscience serves - and which it seeks to restore if it has been violated - is that everyone in the organization should take the place that belongs to him according to his rank of belonging. This is the advantage of those who joined the system earlier over those who came later. The law of priority in the organization is violated if someone who joined the organization later, seeks to take a place of a higher rank than it is intended, and this type of violation often leads to both failures of the organization as a whole and devaluation of the work of such a member of the organization. Many organizations fail due to internal conflicts, torn apart by contradictions, “undercurrents”, the so-called “third” power created by informal leaders (B. Hellinger, “Three Kinds of Conscience”).

Let's analyze the most frequent requests from the field of organizational consulting:

- How much does the personality of the founder (s) and his (their) personal history contribute to the history of the organization?

- To what extent is the organizational system susceptible to the systemic intertwining of its creators?

- To what extent do the goals and objectives of the organization, prescribed and approved in the Charter, coincide with the true goals of the people who created it?

- How much do they themselves know about it?

- How do co-founding agreements that are not legally certified affect the functioning of the organization?

- How do co-founders' agreements, which are legally prescribed, but violated in fact, affect the functioning of the organization?

- How do out-of-office relationships affect the functioning of the organization?

- How does the family business affect the functioning of the organization, especially if this dynamic is strengthened not in one generation, but in several?

- What dynamics in the organization will prevail in the case of:

• Reorganizations?
• Associations?
• Creation of a new brand?
• Release of new products?
• Entering and developing a new market segment?
• Changes in tax laws?
• Introducing a new internal / external control system?
• Change of political power, current political vector?
• Changes in the external economic vector of the state's foreign policy?

- How will computerization and replacement of manual labor with special equipment, which will inevitably cause a reduction in personnel by several times, affect the functioning of the organization?

- Which is cheaper, to train the "old" staff or to hire a new one?

- How does the top management's management affect the functionality of the organization and the tasks it performs, if the power in the organization was taken under control and the change of leadership was carried out using a raider takeover?

- How does the distancing of its creator and the appointment of the manager affect the functionality of the organization, if earlier the management of the enterprise was carried out exclusively by its owner?

- How does the fact that the current financial policy at the enterprise currently use “black accounting” affects the functioning and development of the organization?

- How does the management accounting policy aimed at tax evasion affect the operational performance of current tasks and the functioning of the enterprise as a whole? Willful violation of the law?

- How does the fact of close partnership with a foreign investor affect the functioning of the organization? A foreign state?

- How does charitable activity, carried out at the expense of the organization's profit, affect the functioning of the organization?

- How it affects the activities of the organization as a whole and the solution of its current operational tasks, the costs invested in personnel development, incl. social spending?

- How does the profit obtained through legalization of proceeds from illegal activities affect the activities and functioning of the organization? For the team? Individual workers? For the purpose of the organization?

- How does the mission and goals of the organization affect the activities and functioning of the organization?

- How does its activity affect the activities and functioning of the organization, if it is associated with deception of the end user?

- How does the investment influence of an external investor, incl. foreign origin?

- How does it affect the activities and functioning of the organization, the actions of the management / owner to transfer the profit from the main activity to offshore zones?

- How does the change in the composition of founders affect the activities and functioning of the organization? One of the founders? Several?

- How does any personnel change affect the activities and functioning of the organization? External? Internal?

- How does the company's credit liabilities affect the activities and functioning of the organization? Lack of those? Are the current / operational tasks of the enterprise related to the credit obligations?

- How does the choice of an external consultant affect the activities and functioning of the organization?

The versatility of approaches ensures that these organizational consulting requests are multivalent solutions, the expediency of which, of course, depends on the client's choice. In addition to the above, there is a whole section of so-called irrational client requests, which are successfully solved by the method of structural constellations.

These are the following types of requests:

• search for resource components for the client;
• finding harmony between the main activity and the family;
• search for "meaning" - for example, tetral arrangement;
• search for a "good" solution;
• “What worries”, “worries”;
• search for "purpose", purpose, activity;
• “That which hinders”;
• Search for advantages and disadvantages; pros and cons;
• “What is hidden”, “history of the organization”;
• Choice variations;
• Situations testing and selection algorithms;

Another uniqueness of the phenomenological approach lies in the fact that in this method it is possible to work with the time factor (the technique of psychodramatic clocks, carried out both in the direction of the past and in the direction of the future time counting), and work in various contexts in the mode of requests, against the background of which »Events in the tested field, for example:

• history of the organization;
• the personal context of the customer;
• the territory of another state, mainland;
• war;
• a life;
• death;
• purpose;
• fate;
• revolution, coup d'etat;
• earthquake,
• catastrophe;
• disaster.

And, a point that I cannot but touch on, the method of constellations in organizations also includes the influence of the constellator himself in the organization system, albeit temporary, but this influence is carried out, and, in my opinion, it is very important to be aware of your place in the client's organization system, to strictly observe the principle of "neutrality" and this is also an important and essential principle for me "do no harm".

I would like to end with the words of B. Hellinger: “First of all, the growing needs food. Second, the growing must rise in opposition to the forces that impede growth. Help very often focuses on nutrition and hides from conflict. Therefore, the second growth factor must get its rightful place. And in this understanding, support means helping others to accept and fulfill their Path, which requires them to face conflict and acquire skills even mastery in situations of opposition and rejection …