32. When in doubt, zoom out
When things seem stuck, zooming out can help see the patterns and systemic connections in play.
The world is in shock following the events of 7 October 2023 in the middle east. Hamas fighters unexpectedly crossed the border from the Gaza strip into Israel and brought terror and violent death to innocent people including children. These events were appalling and cannot (of course) go unanswered. But how?
One way to look at it might be that dreadful acts deserve an equally (or even more) dreadful response. That might seem just, in the spirit of ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’. However, before jumping in with swift retribution there is something else that can help – zoom out. Just for a moment, look more widely. What’s going on? Who else might be involved (or become engaged)? What might be the wider consequences? Anyone interested in a wider look at what surrounds these abhorrent events can get a start by listening to David Aaronovitch’s BBC radio show The Briefing Room; last week’s episode was entitled What Was Hamas Thinking?
Zooming out
Current events in the middle east are global in their importance. The same ‘zoom out’ process can be useful at any level, from the tiny annoying things in life like being late for meetings or spending too much time on social media, to workplace project slippage and family rows. Something keeps happening that you don’t want (or keeps not happening which you’d like). Maybe something very unexpected happens (as in the Hamas outrage). What to do might appear obvious… but before just acting instinctively, try zooming out.
When we zoom out, we can look more widely at what’s going on in space, time and context:
Seeing a wider spatial picture helps us be aware of more stakeholders, people and groups who are involved (or at least affected) by what’s happening
Seeing a wider time span helps us assess whether or when this has happened before, is it part of a recurring pattern, what transpired in the past, and what can be learned
Seeing wider contexts helps us be aware of connections, linkages and inter-relations which may not be obvious at first but can be vital in building a way forward that makes things better, not worse.
Zooming out in Solution Focus
Regular readers will know my background in introducing the ideas and methods of Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) into the worlds of coaching, team development and organisation change. The Solutions Focus book (by Paul Z Jackon and me) was originally published in 2002, and still sells – it sells so well that we’ve been working on a new and significantly updated edition for 2024! More news on that soon.
SFBT was founded as an approach by Steve de Shazer, Insoo Kim Berg and their colleagues at the Brief Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Steve and Insoo had both come from an interactional family therapy background (devised from the 1950s onward), where the family under treatment can be viewed as a ‘system’ of interacting parts; the father’s actions might affect the mother in certain ways, which leads to the elder daughter acting up in ways that upset the parents and alienate the son, and so on. Rather than just try to find out which family member is to blame and tell them to stop it, the process is more constructive, seeking to intervene in the patterns of interaction and open up new possibilities by interrupting existing harmful patterns.
So far so good. However, Steve de Shazer started thinking differently quite early in his career. A landmark review of de Shazer’s theory development by Harry Korman, Peter De Jong and Sarah Smock Jordan in 2020 found that even in 1972 Steve was falling out with his family therapy supervisor about where to ‘draw the lines’. Rather than simply viewing the client family in interactional terms, de Shazer wanted to include the therapist within the view. He described this later as moving from ‘family as a system’ to ‘family therapy as a system’. This was a key move – de Shazer and Berg later expanded on this in the 1980s by looking at how therapist participation and behaviour helped (or hindered) the process (as outlined in chapter three of my book The Next Generation Of Solution Focused Practice).
The distinction made by de Shazer is important. Early versions of systems thinking, including the influential 1990s book The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge, stress the examination of a situation from an outside perspective, analysing the way events unfold from a ‘neutral observer’ position. This was an advance on simple linear cause-and-effect reasoning, for sure. However, it tended to put the practitioner in a position of depersonalising their analysis, taking a ‘god’ position and reasoning that if only the people involved could see the bigger picture they could act more constructively.
From neutral observer to (inevitably) engaged participant
De Shazer’s position changes the practitioner from neutral observer to engaged participant. Having become involved with the client family, organisation or whatever, they are now part the story. Their actions will have an influence on how things progress, whether they want it to or not. (The express wish of some SF practitioners to ‘leave no footprints’ is not a desire to have no influence, but rather to not be seen as key sources of change – much better for the clients to think they did it themselves, a more sustainable place for tackling future issues.) It is therefore incumbent on the practitioner to take care of their actions so as to promote sustainable change and not side with one family member over others, develop dependency, make things worse or allow their theoretical views or autobiographies to overwhelm the evidence in front of them.
This participative view chimes with the complexity perspective, where a more by any one of the constituent parts can have ripple effects through the system. Even the smallest things can have an impact, sometimes close by in space and time (right there in front of you) and sometimes in more distant fashion. I’ve experienced coaching clients coming along and saying “I’ve been thinking about what you said last month…” – and having no recollection of saying that at all! One of the themes emerging at the Social Construction Conference last weekend was the way in which the construction of the relationship between practitioner and client (and indeed the practitioner’s institution and the client) is so fundamental. This wider perspective is a key part of ‘zooming out’. There are three ways to zoom out, with cautionary tales about what happens if you don’t in each case.
Zooming out in space
This is not about space rockets in the cartoons of my childhood! It’s about zooming out the spatial picture, to see more of the participants and stakeholders who are involved or affected. One illustrative example is the recent HS2 high speed rail link cancellation debacle in the UK.
HS2 was supposed to be a high speed rail link from London to Birmingham (in the English midlands) and then to Manchester and Leeds in the north of England. (I live in Scotland, where we have very different ideas about what constitutes ‘the north’!) The Leeds leg was cancelled in late 2021, and the Manchester leg was scrapped on financial grounds a couple of weeks ago by prime minister Rishi Sunak.
That the project is in a financial mess with ballooning costs is not in doubt. For the prime minister to announce the move without consultation with his northern MPs and the city mayors, presenting a ragbag of alternative plans which has already come unravelled, and to do it all at a party conference IN MANCHESTER shows a complete lack of wider awareness. The close-up view is financial responsibility. The zoomed-out view is that the Government is happy to renege on previous agreements, ignore a key part of the country, lose trust that they can carry difficult projects through, and make it more difficult to engage with partners and suppliers next time. None of this is to say that it shouldn’t be cancelled, just that there is precious little evidence of any wider thinking or zooming out.
Zooming out in time
Zooming out in time is to see not just the immediate events but to embrace also the past and the future. Looking at a wider time span helps us to see what has happened before, what transpired then, what can we learn from this, as well as what do we and other parties hope for in the future.
My example here is about drug consumption. This is a problem around the world, of course, and it’s a particularly serious one here in Scotland where drug deaths are nearly three times the UK average. Making drugs illegal doesn’t seem to have stopped people taking them. The Scottish government are well aware of this issue and have just started to run a safe consumption room in Glasgow following a wide-ranging research project. The bizarre thing is that the UK government are dead against the initiative (though have not actually stopped it, which would cause a minor constitutional crisis). It takes some narrow-minded chutzpah to be both furious about something and also furious that someone is trying to do something about it! Presumably the alternative is to make the drugs even more illegal?
Zooming out in context
To zoom out in context is to see the wider connections and interlinkages which are part of the picture. Of course, these are not always convenient or even centrally important, but considering them matters. In the Host book, Helen Bailey and I refer to three levels on connection with the third as ‘wise interconnectedness’ – the ability to take a sense of the bigger picture and use it well.
My example here is last weekend’s Indigenous Voice referendum in Australia. As you may know by now, the proposal to initiate a constitutional assembly to make representations on behalf of Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islanders to government on matters concerning them (in a non-binding way). At the start of campaigning a year ago the motion had support of some 65%. However, opinion swing against it and the motion was defeated, with over 60% voting to reject it. There seems to have been a number of reasons for the rejection, including the desire to give the government a kicking (also a key factor in the UK Brexit vote), worries about the constitutional impact, and even that the proposals didn’t go far enough.
Yes, the government has been given a short-term and local kicking. But how does it look, more widely? It’s surely the latest kick in the teeth for indigenous people who have been mistreated for centuries. Another round in the modern movement of ‘old white men not getting their way for once and getting upsy about it’?
Fortunately the indigenous people of Australia have a very well developed sense of zoomed out-ness and wide perspective. One way to find out more about that is to read the excellent Sand Talk: How indigenous thinking can save the world by Tyson Yunkaporta. Perhaps the result of this rejection will be a mass rallying of people behind the intention of the Voice, and the development of further options. Something like this happened unexpectedly in Scotland after the 2014 independence referendum was lost (by the unexpectedly close margin of 55/45). However, look at the bigger picture. The referendum process engaged a whole new generation of young activists, which led to the Scottish National Party winning 56 out of 59 seats in the UK Parliament the following year.
Back to the middle east
As I write the situation around Israel and Gaza is very fluid and fast-moving. I am not proposing to see into the future but will try to point to some of the wider issues. What were Hamas thinking when planning their violent incursion? Possibilities seem to include enraging Israel into rash acts of retaliation, sparking a wider conflict to bring in Hezbollah in Lebanon and possibly Iran, and/or upsetting the process of diplomatic normalisation between Saudi Arabia and Israel. The US president is attempting to talk to leaders from around the region and walk the difficult tightrope between holding Israel close and using that closeness to urge restraint (partly in private). For a comprehensive view on Israel’s options as of today, I recommend international affairs expert Lawrence Freedman’s Substack on Israel’s Strategic Crisis which dropped as I was writing this piece. Who knows what will happen next. As ever, the British satirical magazine Private Eye has grasped the situation on today’s front cover.
Conclusions
When things are puzzling or confusing, try zooming out. In humane and effective organisations, just because you as a leader CAN do something doesn’t mean you SHOULD. Yes, it’s harder work, more complicated and requires patience – but it pays off in the end.
Dates and Mates
It’s the US Solution Focused Brief Therapy Association online conference this weekend! I am taking part in a panel about SF organisations around the world, speaking about SOLWorld, the SF un-organisation for sharing SF in organisational work. It’s free to register for the event - more details at https://www.sfbta.org/conference.
Please like and share this post, and subscribe free. Thank you!
Thank you very much for this inspiring post. I will use these thoughts for my just started project in a hospital. In the past I used an image that meant something similar, but the term "zoom out" is so much clearer and easier to understand.
Great post, Mark. Tiny correction - there’s a stray violet early on...