Solution-Focused Futures (SFF)
Welcome to our website. We appreciate your interest and hope that you will find your visit useful enough to return often.
Our site aims to be a resource for people interested in developing and sustaining a Solution-Focused Brief Approach (SFBA) in their working to enable change and improvement, whether that be with individuals, groups, teams, or organisations. We are keen to contribute to developing communities of SFBA practitioners, both in our local areas and internationally. We hope that participation in our site will enable a rich ecology of ideas, a flow of conversation, and a web of possibilities that will make a difference in your work and to your life.
Solution-Focused Futures was initiated as a joint venture by Svea van der Hoorn and Belinda Gottschalk (Druker). We are registered educational psychologists and share a passion for the Solution-focused Brief Approach's way of supporting coping and enabling change. We both live in the southern hemisphere - Belinda has relocated to Sydney, and Svea works in South Africa and Australia - and elsewhere on invitation.
Solution-Focused Futures upholds the values of the Solution-Focused Brief Approach, namely, collaboration, respect, inclusion, pragmatism and affirming diversity. We are committed to developing sustainable change and improvement through noticing and amplifying what already works, and creatively developing more hopeful futures by harnessing overlooked possibilities and under-utilised resources.
We are not dismissive of the problems that arise from the complexities and turbulence that people and organisations experience, but are much more interested in processes that help people and organisations achieve the preferred futures they hope for.
SOME FOOD FOR THOUGHT - - adapted from Albert Einstein
"The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far, creates problems that we cannot solve at the same level of thinking at which we have created the problems ….
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if we are to survive, and thrive.”
Being Brief is about beginnings - not about hurrying
Q: What needs to happen for things to begin to go in the desired direction?
Q: What needs to happen to give you a glimpse of a more hopeful future?
Q: How will we know that what we are doing together is on track for the changes you want to see come about in your life and/or work?
Taking a Solution-Focused stance is about describing what we want to work towards - a vision of a future without the problem - not about analysing the problem we want to move away from. And often, the problem is about being or feeling stuck in the face of circumstances.
Q: Let's suppose this problem is resolved, what will you be doing then?
Q: When things have improved, how will things be different?
Q: Even if this situation continues to exist, how will you know you're coping better?
"There is not necessarily a logical connection between the problem and the solution" - adapted from Steve de Shazer