Systemic organisational consulting: what it means

Systemic organisation theory understands an organisation as a social system whose basic element is communication. The most important communicative event is the decision. Every perception and every piece of information has to pass through the eye of the needle of communication before the organisation can use it. The starting point for observation and intervention is therefore not primarily individual people. It is the established observation and evaluation grids and the communication routines with which information is gathered and condensed into decisions.

To remain able to act, every organisation selects which environments it considers relevant. Its routines preferentially confirm its own picture of the world and filter out deviating impulses. The unexpected is reinterpreted as the expected. An organisation sees what it sees, and as a rule it does not see that it does not see what it does not see. It therefore cannot be steered linearly from outside, nor changed at will.

First-order change is constantly happening. Organisations take up impulses from the environment in an unsteered way and adapt their routines. Even rigidity as it is experienced is the result of constant adaptation. This is what the term dynamic stability stands for. Second-order change deals with a specific occasion and then follows newly created routines. Similar problems are dealt with using the means that have proven themselves in the past. The pattern is called more of the same.

In third-order change, the organisation learns to observe how it has dealt with change so far. It asks what it learns about itself when it produces such problems, and whether its own solution patterns need to be renewed. In short, it is about changing the way it changes. Expert consulting and classic process consulting operate at the second level. Systemic organisational consulting aims at the third.

External consulting makes sense when blind spots need to be uncovered, when established patterns block further development or when leadership itself has to become the subject. The same applies when conflicts, competing goals or internal politics block decisions and neutrality is needed. Outsiders are not part of internal politics. They can voice uncomfortable truths and unsettle routines and things taken for granted.

There is also process leadership beyond day-to-day business. Insiders are often under operational pressure. Outsiders create focus and structure and keep a change stable over time. They can establish new connections, roles and decision paths across units because they are not caught in established patterns of cooperation. They design reflection so that the organisation arrives at new insights itself.

The starting point is the question of which developments are relevant for the company and where existing patterns reach their limits. Strategy, organisation, culture, people and leadership are considered together.

A transformation architecture links the topics to be worked on with suitable forms of communication and decision-making. The DVVision programme shows how this can be implemented in a group of companies.

Every organisation has its own learning history in dealing with impulses for change. Essentially this includes its strategic focus, its business model, its problem-solving patterns and frames of observation, its decision routines, the way it presents itself internally and externally, its patterns of learning and change and a particular leadership culture. With every intervention it must be examined carefully what in this history continues to serve as a resource and where a learning tradition must be deliberately interrupted.

This leads to a basic rule. Changes to structures, routines, processes and values always require decisions by the organisation itself, arrived at in its own communication processes. Consulting can unsettle, point out differences from internal routines and enable reflection. It cannot carry a change into the organisation.

The aim of the transformis approach is for an organisation to recognise changes early and increasingly shape its development under its own steam. Consulting is meant to help anchor this capacity in the organisation.

Organisations are not trivial machines. Changes usually fail at the social level and rarely at the factual level. Many initiatives are neatly derived from key figures and promise significant improvements with compelling logic. They still fail because the relationship level and group dynamics are left out. Fear of loss and failure, rivalries and claims to power have a decisive influence on the process, even when people act as if they did not exist.

Systemic consulting therefore names the spoken and unspoken patterns of communication and decision-making that stand in the way of a necessary change. For management and owners this shifts the perspective. Alongside structures, processes and key figures, what counts are the conditions under which decisions, responsibility and implementation actually become effective.

The systemic perspective links the subject-matter task with the way an organisation makes decisions and processes knowledge. A strategy project therefore does not only ask about the best positioning on paper. It also asks who brings in information from the market and customer contact, how conflicting goals are discussed and which routines can carry a new direction. Systemic consulting examines concrete situations with those involved instead of attributing general characteristics to the organisation.

The observations give rise to hypotheses that are tested as the work proceeds. A suitable architecture connects the relevant people, topics and decisions. Consulting has fulfilled its purpose when the organisation can increasingly achieve the necessary understanding and development itself. This may concern a single interface or a comprehensive transformation. The assignment sets the boundary.