From pathology to possibility
For a long time, much psychological research concentrated on disorder and dysfunction. What makes people psychologically unwell? What has gone wrong? How might we treat it?
Positive psychology deliberately asked a different set of questions.
What helps people flourish?
What characterises wellbeing?
What can we learn from people who are doing well?
The second set of questions doesn’t make the first irrelevant. It changes the object of enquiry.
I think we can make a similar distinction in business, to help understanding how, when where change and transformation principles can be used and useful.
There is problem-led change: What is going wrong, and how do we make it better?
But there is also possibility-led change:
What could this business become?
What could work differently?
What might we be capable of that we aren't doing now?
What would we design differently if we were starting from here rather than preserving what we already have?
What are we continuing to do simply because, so far, it has worked?
Those questions can be useful when the business is doing well.
Perhaps especially then.
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