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JOCM
26,3 An organisational change
approach based on Gestalt
psychotherapy theory and
458
practice
Received 8 August 2012
Revised 12 November 2012
Marie-Anne Chidiac
24 January 2013 Relational Change, London, UK
Accepted 24 January 2013

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to expand understanding of how Gestalt psychotherapy
theory and practice can support the facilitation of change management efforts in organisations.
Design/methodology/approach – The methodology is based on action research approach in which
the author has applied Gestalt principles to her work as a change management practitioner. Case study
material is used to support the development of an emergent model for change management based on
Gestalt psychotherapy theory and praxis.
Findings – This paper emphasises the need to attend in change management efforts to three
interrelated capabilities: Sensing, Supporting and Sustaining. Together these emphasise the need to
track and stay responsive to the organisational environment; to ensure the right amount of support
and challenge is present in the change effort and finally, to provide a focus on experimentation and the
embedding of learning for sustainable change.
Research limitations/implications – This contribution is limited by looking at only four cases in
the private sector and the current paper should be considered as a preliminary/exploratory research.
Practical implications – This study has two key implications for scholars and practitioners. First,
it shows the usefulness of continuous sensing into the phenomenological experience of the
organisation throughout the lifetime of a change project. Second, this study shows that learning and
experimentation with new ways of being is crucial to an organisation that wants to grow and remain
fluid and responsive to its environment.
Originality/value – This article offers a conceptualisation of how the theory and practice of
relational Gestalt psychotherapy theory can shape the practice of organisational development
practitioners. Its uniqueness lies in that it offers to Gestalt practitioners a sense of the applicability of
Gestalt theory to large-scale organisational interventions; and for non-Gestalt informed OD
practitioners it offers new insights into a theory base that promotes a relational, holistic and emergent
view of change.
Keywords Change management, Gestalt psychology, Gestalt psychotherapy,
Organizational development, Postmodernism
Paper type Conceptual paper

I am grateful for the support I received when I wrote this paper. My thanks go to Professor Paul
Barber, Nicky Burton and Dr Sally Denham-Vaughan who have been a supportive and inspiring
Journal of Organizational Change team of Gestalt OD practitioners and have generously commented on early drafts of this paper.
Management
Vol. 26 No. 3, 2013 In particular, thank you Paul for your challenging me to stay with Gestalt’s counter-cultural
pp. 458-474 nature and not try to make it too respectable; to Nicky for your relentless search for clarity of
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0953-4814
meaning and applicability and last but not least, to Sally whose encouragement and
DOI 10.1108/09534811311328533 co-facilitation of a workshop on this topic has helped flesh out aspects of this emerging model.
Organisational development based on Gestalt psychotherapy theory Change based on
This article stems from my life-based action research as an organisational consultant in Gestalt theory
the field of OD since the 1990s and how encountering Gestalt Psychotherapy theory and
practice has fundamentally modified and shaped my OD practice. Initially schooled in
the notion of organisational change as a process that can be created, planned and
managed, I was soon to discover as a young consultant on a large transformational
project, that total control of a change situation was a myth. Turning to Gestalt theory 459
and practice clearly supported my presence and “use of self” as a practitioner. Yet more
than that, it also offered me a framework from which to view organisational change and
development that is more relational and constructionist than objectivist in orientation.
What is interesting however, is that theoretical OD orientations to which I was
initially introduced to as a young consultant are still very much at the heart of many
OD practices today. These are mostly based on behavioural, positivist and open
systems theories that helped shape the formulation of OD practice in the 1950s and
1960s. This is somewhat intriguing given the emergence in the last decade of new OD
practices which as highlighted by Marshak and Grant (2008), are not necessarily
different from a values or viability perspective to the classic OD but from an
ontological and epistemological one.
I contend that the field of gestalt psychotherapy theory and practice applied to
organisations offers a perspective that could help advance thinking and practice in
relation to these new/emerging aspects of OD. Building on the concept of “organisation
as self” (Chidiac and Denham-Vaughan, 2009), this article first provides a
conceptualisation of healthy organisational functioning based on gestalt theory and
practice. From this, three capabilities are identified which provide a gestalt frame for
guiding the design and facilitation of change projects. Specifically, these capabilities
arose from an action research approach focussed on an exploration of my practice as an
organisational change consultant over a period of ten years. During this time I applied
gestalt psychotherapy concepts to my work in organisational change projects. Case
study material from four projects is used in this article to reflect on and illustrate the
applicability of this emergent model.

Gestalt and OD
Robine (2011) highlights that although early Gestalt Therapy theory contains
numerous references to a modernist mode of thinking, it also introduced new ideas
based on field theory and a notion of self that is fluid and emerges in contact with the
environment. This places Gestalt psychotherapy theory at the heart of what is called
“postmodernism”. The latter is a turn away from the subject, from individualism to a
more intersubjective frame of reference.
In line with social constructionism, meaning is therefore co-created and as stated by
Robine (2011, p. 42) “there is no other reality that that which we construct in
relationship”. This epistemological stance is revolutionary in the world of OD as it
deconstructs the myth of objectivity and places the organisational practitioner at the
heart of the co-construction of meaning as he/she leads change. This can be seen in the
writings of many Gestalt writers such as Nevis (1987), Critchley (1998), Barber (2006,
2012) and Gaffney (2010a,b).
Unlike however some deconstructive aspects of postmodernism, Gestalt
Psychotherapy theory is a phenomenological hermeneutic process. According to
JOCM Madison (1990), the philosophical discipline of phenomenological hermeneutics comes
26,3 “after postmodernism” and is based on the work of phenomenologists namely
Heidegger and Gadamer.
What Gestalt psychotherapy theory offers therefore is not just the refuting of
Cartesian dualism and positivism but a more fundamental epistemological shift in that
meaning is found as we are constructed by the world while at the same time we are
460 constructing this world from our own background and experiences. This is at the heart
of Gestalt’s view of Self and I will therefore first outline how this applies to an
organisation and then provide a summary of the main Gestalt OD principles.

The organisation as self


In Gestalt psychotherapy theory, our sense of self emerges at every moment from our
interaction with others and the environment. The self is therefore constantly changing
and adjusting according to the situation within which it finds itself. It is fluid and
dynamic, responsive to the environment, and experiencing changing needs and goals
as the situation changes.
The purpose of the self however, is to organise this emerging and changing
experience to make it meaningful. Organisation of the field in this way is termed the
“self-function” and is accompanied by the “self-structures” of “id”, “ego” and
“personality” (Perls et al., 1994). These are different aspects of the self that are part of
the on-going process of self-formation and destruction. The Gestalt concept of self
provides us with a relational framework for interacting with the world, one in which
we impact on, and are impacted by, what is around us. Furthermore, it takes account of
emergent, out of awareness processes, as well as more conscious and enduring aspects
of ourselves.
As complex systems, organisations – like individual people or groups – can be
meaningfully viewed through the lens of the gestalt theory of self. That is, they are also
formed within a network of emerging relationships and depend on those relationships.
They are also constantly changing and shifting as these relationships change. The
view of the organisation as self is best captured through a wave metaphor shown in
Figure 1 where:
.
The actual body of the wave (or ego function) is the most visible part of self
functioning in terms of what the organisation says or does – its resulting action.

Figure 1.
The organisation as self –
a wave analogy
.
The seawaters below the wave (or id function) are the less visible internal Change based on
dynamics of an organisation. Usually less in awareness and not articulated by Gestalt theory
the organisation.
.
The seabed (or personality function) is the more “sedimented” ways of being of
an organisation which are linked to the prevailing narrative and culture.

The metaphor shows how the shape of the wave, i.e. the resulting behaviour and action 461
of an organisation, emerges as a function of both the dynamics within the
organisation’s internal and external environment and the ingrained narrative and
culture of the business. And so, poor awareness of the organisation’s id function – in
terms of internal dynamics (swirls in the seawaters) as well as external influences
(underwater currents) – will result in a “desensitised” organisation and one that is not
able to adapt to its changing environment.
The CEO of a privatised public sector organisation which was starting to lose its
dominant position in the market encouraged his senior managers to launch a flurry of
change initiatives. Rather than focus on “sensing” their internal and external position
and take account of their existing resources and capabilities, the resulting action was
disconnected and largely based on their historical narrative: “how things used to be”.
In this case, the seawaters were shallow and the attention mostly on “doing” with the
wave mostly influenced by the shape of the seabed, or the organisation’s sedimented
and ingrained ways of being.
Encyclopedia Britannica is another example of an organisation that suffered from
poor awareness of its id function. It was slow to react and adapt to the changing
environment – only stopping its weighty 32-volume print edition recently to focus on
digital expansion amid rising competition from other websites such as Wikipedia.
After 244 years of publishing its Encyclopedia, it was not easy for the business to shed
the prevailing narrative and often entrenched organisational memory. As
Govindarajan and Trimble (2011, p. 110) highlight, “deeply rooted memory may be
great for preservation, but if it is not tamed sufficiently, it gets in the way of creation”.
Being aware of a changing environment is not always enough for an organisation (and
its leadership) to take action. Attending to emergent needs requires a supportive
environment, a topic that will be explored later on in this article.
Whilst poor attendance to an organisation’s id function reduces adaptive capacity,
an entrenched narrative or culture will also prohibit change to be sustained. On change
projects, this lack of sustainability often means old behaviours return a few months
after the end of the project - once the change team has disbanded and leadership
attention has moved away. Returning to the wave metaphor, it is easy to see how the
contour of the seabed affects the shape of the wave. If the seabed is too fixed and
sedimented, it will be difficult to sustain change in resulting action and behaviour. The
elasticity of an organisation’s culture and dominant narrative is linked to its ability to
learn and experiment with newness.
At Google for example, employees are encouraged to innovate. The Google
“70-20-10” rule directs engineers to spend 70 per cent of their time on core business
tasks and 20 per cent on related projects, but allows them to spend 10 per cent of their
time pursuing their own ideas (Jaruzelski and Dehoff, 2010). This rule has been pivotal
to Google’s success as it has encouraged employees to experiment and develop new
products that might never have seen the light of day.
JOCM Although many authors make the link between a strong organisational culture and
26,3 performance (Denison, 1990; Kotter and Heskett, 1992; Truskie, 1999), Alvesson (2002)
warns of the dangers of objectifying culture by assuming there are key attributes that
can be applied to fix organisational cultures. As depicted by the wave metaphor,
resultant action is a function of both the seabed and the sea-depth. In other words, the
interrelated aspects of self-functioning need to be considered as a whole, and cultural
462 adaptability as well as fit to internal/external pressures and market needs will
determine organisational performance.

Key Gestalt OD principles


Gestalt therapy theory and practice therefore offers us a conceptualisation of healthy
organisational functioning. The selfing process captures the importance of id
functioning, or the sensing ability of an organisation, to inform decision-making,
planning and implementation. Similarly, how an organisation presents itself, what it
says and does, is dependent on its sensitivity to its current context as well as its
personality functioning. The latter can be understood as an organisation’s culture,
historical narrative as well as its perceived strengths and weaknesses. Like
individuals, organisations get stuck in a sedimented view of who they are and what
they can and cannot do. Learning and experimenting with new ways of being is
therefore crucial to an organisation that wants to grow and remain fluid and
responsive to its environment.
Based on the above, Gestalt OD principles can be summaries as follows:
.
What an organisation says or does emerges from its ground, (culture and field
conditions) both in the moment and historically.
.
Organisational behaviour is dependent on, and will vary with, external and
internal influences (ego functioning is a correlate of all influences in the field).
.
A small change in id functioning can lead to a large ripple in ego functioning. Not
a causal relationship.
.
An organisation will self-organise as best it can given prevailing conditions.
.
Trying to over-control our environment means we are less responsive to it. In
other words, we become less aware and less sensitive to the organising
influences in the field.
.
Not taking account of our culture, context and of what “is”, renders change
initiatives at best irrelevant and at worst distracts and deviates the business.
Change is then insensitive, unsupported and unsustainable.

The Table I summarises the key differences between a classic and Gestalt OD
approach.

Gestalt organisational change capabilities


The above conceptualisation of an organisation as “emergent self”, and other related
Gestalt psychotherapy theories and insights, have guided and informed my thinking in
designing and managing change projects. Reflecting on the impact of this approach in
four case studies has led me to the development of an emergent model which identifies
key Gestalt organisational change capabilities. The case study projects were selected
as they represent a good variation in terms of size and extent of change undertaken
Change based on
Classical OD (1950s onward) Gestalt OD
Gestalt theory
Based on modernist thought and philosophy Influenced by postmodern thought and
philosophy
Truth is transcendent and discoverable; there is a Truth is immanent and emerges from the
single, objective reality situation; there are multiple, socially constructed
realities 463
Change requires contending views to be
acknowledged and negotiated
The organisation is an open system that is most Organisations are emergent social processes. The
effective when its sub-systems are aligned organisation’s behaviour is a function of its
external and internal environments as well as its
historical narrative and culture (id, ego and
personality functioning)
Reality can be discovered using rational and There are multiple realities which are socially
analytic processes. Resistance is to be overcome negotiated and may involve power and political
processes. Resistance is to be listened to
Emphasis on changing behaviour and what one Emphasis on heightening awareness and
does (Behaviourism) supporting emergence as a precursor to effective
action (Awareness)
Change can be created, planned and managed Change is a dialectic of planning and emergence.
There is no one size fits all approach: effective
interventions are situational
Change is about sensing/tracking and supporting
the satisfaction of different needs
Collecting and applying valid data using objective Heightening awareness of all data (in a process of
problem solving methods leads to change co-diagnosis), in particular of personal/subjective
data, leads to change
There are key attributes to a successful culture Culture is a function of historical influences and
that determine performance and sustain change the present moment. Adaptability and
experimentation are key to sustaining change
Source: Adapted from Marshak and Grant (2008) Table I.

within private sector organisations. The impact of the approach was evaluated through
post-project reflection and dialogue with key members of the client organisation
providing a heuristic evaluative method.
This research has led me to recognise the need for change efforts to foster and grow
the following capabilities within the organisation:
.
Sensing – as the stance or activities that track and stay responsive to the
organisational environment and id functioning.
.
Supporting – as the stance or activities that enable emergent change and a move
to action (ego functioning). In Gestalt, emergent and planned approaches are
viewed as a dialectic rather than a polarity.
.
Sustaining – as the stance or activities that assimilate and embed change.
Attending to the adaptability of the organisation’s personality functioning as a
way of ensuring sustainable change.
JOCM As shown in Figure 2, these three organising abilities rely on a fourth: the
26,3 instrumentality of the OD practitioner or change team as a whole. By this I do not only
mean the knowledge of the change facilitators but their presence in the client system
and how their use of self as instruments of change is an integral part of the change
intervention. Indeed the “use of self” as a consulting instrument differentiates Gestalt
OD theory and practice from other intervention orientations (Stevenson, n.d.). Nevis’s
464 (1987) seminal book Organizational Consulting: A Gestalt Approach, explores in detail
the key skills of an organisational consultant. I shall therefore not expand further on
this aspect of Gestalt OD in this article but highlight the primacy of this skill to a
Gestalt OD practice.

Sensing
Sensing is the ability to read and carefully track the organisation’s current
environment. It is an on-going action enquiry into the organisation’s id function
through the various phases of the change project.
In many OD projects, what is viewed as “sensing” may be done once as a diagnostic
at the start of a project and then forgotten as the project moves through its other
phases. From a Gestalt perspective however, responsiveness to the emergent need of
the organisation during a change project requires a sustained effort in tracking the
moment-by-moment changes in internal dynamics and influences.
The first level of “sensing” is done through the practitioner’s own presence and “use
of self as instrument”. This dimension of Gestalt has been widely written about in the
past (Nevis, 1987; Tolbert and Hanafin, 2006), and more recently by Barber (2012) who
expands on this in his reflective guide on facilitating change. An important dimension
of managing change is to support and train leaders and managers to develop their own
presence and use of self. This requires expanding and acknowledging the
personal/subjective or intuitive type of data.
At an organisational wide level, it is about finding out what aspect of the
environment is being tracked by the organisation. This data is often available but not
acted upon or made figural and could include; internal measures (e.g. survey results or

Figure 2.
Core Gestalt OD
capabilities
financial and process measures) or external measures (e.g. Competitor analyses, Change based on
industry benchmarks, etc). It is important to bring forward what might be relevant to Gestalt theory
the change process at hand. Deciding what data is relevant is part of a co-diagnosis
phase activity that is not to be confused with objective diagnosis in which data are
assumed to reflect or mirror an underlying objective reality. Rather, it is a co-enquiry
which heightens awareness of the multiplicity of realities and provides the ground for
further dialogue and discussion. 465
Gestalt draws extensively on the personal or subjective data which is crucial to
track throughout a change project. At an organisational level, this means setting up
regular “sensing” mechanisms and/or interventions that run in parallel (but
co-ordinated with) other project interventions. These need not be resource intensive
and could for example include tracking the mood of key stakeholders of the change
through regular contact; running “barometer events” which are regular but informal
gatherings that offer glimpses of the “rumour mill” and what people may be concerned
about; or even providing an open space in which informal dialogue about the change
project can be supported.
Some of these activities are often viewed on large projects as part of the remit of the
“communication stream” and yet, it is precisely the sharing of these activities that binds
large project streams together and allows for the responsiveness needed to inform the
next change intervention. In a Gestalt informed project, there is no separation between
project and change management activities as the emergent nature of this approach
means that responsiveness is a key aspect of how the project is managed.
The CIO of a newly merged pharmaceutical organisation was looking for support to
provide a focal point for IS integration activities, project manage integration teams to
meet business milestones, and manage escalation processes. This initial remit included
little “sensing” type activities as the pressures of tight timescales were such that the
client’s focus was mainly on meeting integration deadlines.
Sensing activities were therefore introduced gradually and in a low-key manner. An
open project room showing the progress of merger activities was set-up and people
were invited to regular lunchtime sessions on various aspects of the merger. Comments
and feedback from these sessions, and informal barometer groups, were gathered and
presented to the leadership team as part of the regular reporting on integration
activities.
What was interesting is, how figural this type of sensing data became in leadership
meetings, and the energy generated during related discussions. As the alignment of
integration activities started to take shape, the figure of the leadership meetings shifted
and more extensive sensing activities were authorised. These included the design and
delivery of a series of less structured interventions (such as roadshows, Q&A sessions
and barometer groups) to help the organisation recognise and voice the feelings of loss
that are part of any merger situation. The feedback from these fed into the design of
new integration activities such as leadership development workshops, and the forming
of an internal network of change agents.
As with most organisations, what is obvious and focused upon is the ego aspect,
what is said and especially what is “done”. This project however showed how
attending to the unnamed dynamics (id function) and culture of the legacy
organisations in the merger (personality function) provided a greater impetus for
change and newness within the IS function.
JOCM Finally, an essential aspect of “sensing” the organisation is attending to the internal
26,3 process of the change team and leadership team. Being part of the field and actively
engaged in the change effort, the team dynamics (at leadership level or within the
change facilitator team – if different) often hold important data mirroring part of the
organisation’s own process. Allowing time to explore and re-visit the team process is
not only a source of data, but allows for a more integrated and thus supportive and
466 holding presence in times of change.

Supportings
The Supporting capability focuses on creating the “right” conditions for emergence
and change. The importance of “Supporting” activities is best understood in light of
Gestalt’s theory of change also known as the paradoxical theory of change (Beisser,
1970). The theory holds that it is only by being wholly and authentically aware of what
“is” and of what is going on, that a person or organisation can change. The theory
states that all attempts at effort, self-control or avoidance to achieve a goal are unlikely
to bring about change. Change is seen to happen spontaneously and naturally, while
stuckness and loss of movement is seen as the unnatural block. Thus trying to “force
change” is seen as increasing the likelihood of heading off in an unnatural and
in-authentic direction that will eventually, sooner or later, lead to increased tension,
strain and stuckness. We can see this in many examples of top-down change
programmes in organisations which fail to mobilise and engage people as they aim for
disconnected future plans, rather than stay with what is most figural to key
stakeholders. The well-known metaphor of organisational change as a “burning
platform” (Conner, 1993), supposedly lit by leaders to “motivate” followers to jump and
embrace change, stems from that over-emphasis on leadership visioning. Key
stakeholders of change need to connect the proposed change with where they are now
and what this means for them.
However for this “paradoxical” change to emerge, a healthy contact with the
environment is needed. In other words, there needs to be either enough internal support
and/or a low risk environment. Those two elements of support are clearly linked and,
are both a function of the situation. In a change environment for instance, the ability of
people to speak up, have their voices heard and needs met, is linked to how receptive
the organisation is to that behaviour – will they be judged, side-lined or listened to?
Change projects therefore need to attend to aspects of internal and environmental
support. This can be addressed in a multitude of ways such as:
Leaders facilitating emergence whilst maintaining the momentum for change. What I
have consistently witnessed in my organisational work is the correlation between
successful organisational change and the quality of leadership. So, alongside my belief
in an emergent bottom-up approach to change, I hold the importance of the leadership
role to bring about change and maintain momentum. Emergence does not imply a
leaderless organisation – quite the opposite. Effective change relies on leaders who can
facilitate the emergence of new ideas and listen unthreatened to “what is”. Pascale and
Sternin (2005) in their article in the Harvard Business Review, encourage leaders to find
groups of people who are doing things differently and “fan their flames”.
In the initial stages of a change project in a biotech organisation, one of the biggest
challenges to setting up a series of dialogue sessions with employees was to overcome
the anxiety of the newly appointed CEO who feared “moaning sessions” and an
increase in the sense of dissatisfaction. The more fluid agenda and structure of the Change based on
dialogue sessions was anxiety provoking to a leader used to more planned and Gestalt theory
predictable interventions. It was essential to work closely with the CEO and his
leadership team and develop their own capability to support the uncertainty of an
emergent type of change before expecting them to engage with dialogue sessions. Key
to designing and delivering emergent interventions in organisations is the need to
support leaders to overcome the paradigm of the old style top-down leader who is in 467
control of the change process.
Working alongside leaders to manage the change process and surface emergent
organisational needs and direction, is often seen as adopting contradictory approaches
to change. Consultants traditionally sit at either polarity of the planned versus
emergent continuum. Building that bridge is however a key aspect of working as a
holistic gestalt organisational consultant- both strategic and emergent.
Fostering connection and dialogue. Individuals feel supported mostly when they are
in relationship and feel understood and met. Fostering that sense of connection is
therefore an essential aspect of support and motivation in organisational change.
Today, this is possible through virtual forums as well as face-to-face opportunities for
dialogue. Many large scale interventions such as Open Space (Owen, 2008) and World
Café (Brown and Isaacs, 2005) can facilitate this type of dialogue and connection.
A deeply collaborative and co-created change process. The Gestalt OD practitioner
does not lead but facilitates the change journey. This is similar to the therapist who
does not take responsibility for making change happen in the client, but supports the
client to regain their response-ability. The organisation must therefore not be allowed
to abdicate its responsibility in making change happen – either to its leadership or a
change project team. Adopting a transparent, collaborative and co-created approach
provides both the impetus and support for change. Chan Kim and Mauborgne (2004),
refer to this as tipping-point leadership. The theory of tipping points hinges on the
insight that, when the beliefs and energies of a mass of people create an epidemic
movement towards an idea, fundamental change can happen.
I was asked once to take over the leadership of a change project which had “stalled”.
The client was unhappy with the lack of results shown so far. What struck me upon
meeting the client is how dis-empowered and frustrated people seemed. I spent much of
my initial few days just listening, working phenomenologically and focusing on
building a working alliance where possible. It is only as a held several conversations
with individuals at all levels of the organisation, in which I listened to impressions and
concerns acknowledging them as valid realities, that a slow shift started to occur. I was
able to pull together with the client project lead and his team a co-created plan that we
each had to “sell” to our respective organisations. This was a defining moment for the
project as a whole and which enabled it to go forward. Although this meant a delay in
the project of several months compared to initial projections, it was the pace with
which the organisation was comfortable and was unanimously approved by the board.
Although many consultants talk of “client buy-in” and “partnering” as did my own
organisation at the time, very few really understood how to engage the clients
effectively in a co-created way forward. Gestalt psychotherapy theory provided me
with a way of doing this, a method for working phenomenologically and dialogically
with key client figures, sharing my observations and supporting them to regain a sense
of ownership for the change taking place in their organisation.
JOCM Balancing risk and support in every intervention. It is important to maintain a
26,3 holistic focus in designing change interventions. By this I mean, attending to all the
cognitive, political, emotional, spiritual/values base dimensions affecting change
stakeholders. Key questions to consider would be:
.
What is the political layout? What are the leadership behaviours?
.
What is the emotional aspect of the change? (Loss, fear of redundancy, etc).
468 .
How is the change understood, or made meaning of, by the various stakeholders?
. Are there predominant character styles, moderations to contact or values that
need to be taken into account?
.
What is the language of change? How is the change communicated and how is it
received?

Sustaining
Organizational change is defined as a difference in form, quality, or state over time in an
organizational entity (Van de Ven and Poole, 1995, p. 512).
This is the ability to integrate knowledge and change in a sustainable way into
organisational life. Although wider and more systemic change initiatives are seen in
organisations, they often do not lead to sustainable change. We often witness a
“hockey stick phenomena” (Lee et al., 1997) whereby the impact of the change initiative
is short lived, and dependent on leadership attention and focus still driving the desired
results and behaviours. For change to be meaningful in an organisation, it needs to be
sustained over time and thus implies a shift in the organisation’s habitual ways of
being.
In Gestalt, we view sustainability as an assimilation of change at the level of
personality functioning. This requires a holistic understanding (mind and body) of
what the change means and feels like so that ingrained thinking, behaviours and
actions can make way for a different sense of self. This understanding is usually
supported by clarity around the existing patterns of behaviours and how these are
informed by the organisation’s or department’s history, as well as an ability to safely
experiment with different ways of being.
This has several implications for the way we work with organisational change.
Awareness of ground. Like most things in development, what is learnt earlier tends
to be most organising for subsequent learning, and thus most embedded or resistant to
change later on. This organising function of culture and narrative is usually out of
awareness in most organisations, and as Wheeler writes “The deepest level of culture,
then, is reality itself: all those things that we take to be not culture, but just ‘the way the
world is’” (Wheeler, 2005, p. 47). Bringing to awareness aspects of this ground is often a
helpful intervention in the process of creating newness and sustainability. “Awareness
of ground” can be achieved through large group interventions, or a series of smaller
interventions where the history or narrative of an organisation or business unit is
recorded and shared.
In a heavy manufacturing business, a large piece of brown paper was used to record
and capture the history of the organisation in terms of events and individual
impressions. This map of the organisation’s narrative was taken to various meetings at
different levels of the organisations, and slowly built up so that key themes and events
became figural. When not in use, the map was displayed on the wall in the long Change based on
corridor leading to the main cafeteria where people could check on its evolution and Gestalt theory
make comments. Soon, the map showed not only the defining moments and “war
stories” that helped shape the organisation, but also aspects of the shared language
and values. In designing subsequent change interventions, this map was used with the
leadership team to start articulate features of their culture and behaviours that they
needed to let go of, and what also needed to be retained and celebrated. 469
Adopting an experimenting stance. Gestalt practitioners take the view that clients
are able to learn and gain insights to change if they can participate in the experience of
being different. Experimentation is therefore a key tenet of working in a Gestalt frame,
and in practice means providing a safe enough context in which a group of people can
experience what change feels like and reflect on it. The reflexive stance is a key aspect
of the assimilation process.
Experimentation can emerge in the moment and be as simple as asking the
members of a leadership team to sit in different places to those they habitually occupy,
or asking them to modify the way they communicate. Working together with the client
to co-design a creative experiment can thus support resolution, learning and
development. It also provides a refreshing alternative to the more linear organisational
model of analysis-diagnosis-options-recommendations, which puts action last.
In some cases, change projects are also marginal to the day-to-day running of the
organisation. Managers often view this as an important condition to minimise
disruption to “business as usual”. Problems arise however at the point of transition
from conceptual/small group work to full organisational action. This is where a focus
on experimentation can rapidly mobilise large groups of people around the need for
change.
If the change is transformative and requires fundamentally new approaches at a
systemic level, then a hot-housing approach may be adopted. Hot-housing is a method
for part of an organisation to be ring-fenced while it experiments in finding better,
different, more effective ways of working for a few weeks. Creating this safe, contained
and separate environment is a way of letting go of the past and stimulate work groups
to behave differently. The hot-housed environment then provides the measured
performance improvement that creates the business case for rolling out new ways of
working.

Transfer of skills and capability


Awareness of ground as well as experimenting with new ways of being often require
the appropriate levels of motivation, skills and new capabilities to capitalise on the
emerging newness.
Traditionally most change programmes approach skill and capability transfer from
a didactic, course based approach. In many cases however, the hoped-for behavioural
change is disconnected from the context from which the need for it arose. In a Gestalt
frame, need-fulfilment is what primarily drives new action and behaviour and so, in
order to embed change in a sustainable manner, skill and capability transfer has to
happen in a timely and choiceful manner. In other words, responsibility for learning
has to be shared with the emphasis placed on the individual or group to reach for new
skills (such as in action learning), rather than a push approach to capability building
which typically happens at the end of the change project.
JOCM In a well-known FMCG organisation, the focus of a large change project was to
26,3 simplify business management processes in the commercial marketing areas, to
support both the introduction of a new IS (SAP) system and the restructure of key
areas.
Capability transfer started early in the project cycle where a small group of “change
capability agents” received training in core skills. The latter were viewed as enabling
470 skills to support individuals and groups to adopt an emergent approach to change in
their areas and instil a culture of collaboration. Enabling skills were selected based on
the existing culture within the organisation and what would most support change and
emergence. Some of these enabling skills included basic training, such as meeting
management, coaching, process improvement tools etc. Responsibility for training was
then passed onto team leaders who could call upon the change capability agents to
deliver short (usually 30 mins) trainings during regular meetings or on an ad-hoc basis.
These trainings were then followed if required, by action learning sessions.
A key to the success of this pull approach to developing capability was the role of
leaders, who embraced this new way of doing things and thus created a safe
environment for experimenting in being different.
So rather than “doing to” the organisation, the aim is to embed within the
organisation the capability for change by linking emerging needs with key skills. This
contributes to a learning climate which results in an increase in energy, common sense
and good will.
Finally, as human beings, we are quick to adopt what seems to work and provide us
with an outcome that feels positive and motivating. It is essential therefore, in the
process of longer-term change projects to take the time to reflect on what is working,
the quick-wins which have yielded results and their felt impact. This is both a
supportive and sustaining approach which is often forgotten in the rush to tackle the
next issue or problem.

The OD cycle through a Gestalt lens


The OD cycle is a route map for organisational practitioners to guide them through
managing the helping process in dealing with organisational change. Looking at a
typical phasing of an organisational change project, Tschudy (2006) identifies eight
phases:
(1) entry/contracting;
(2) data collection;
(3) data analysis;
(4) feedback;
(5) action planning;
(6) action taking;
(7) evaluation; and
(8) termination).

The action research process which is at the heart of OD can be glimpsed in these eight
phases and also in the five phases which I propose in Figure 3 as being more congenial
to a Gestalt perspective of organisational change. These can also be linked to the
Change based on
Gestalt theory

471

Figure 3.
The iterative action
research cycle

developmental process (orientation, identification, exploration, resolution) of the


facilitator-client relationship as identified by Barber (2012). It is worth noting that “the
theoretical foundations of Action Research lie in Gestalt psychology” (Cheung-Judge
and Holbeche, 2011, p. 32), highlighting the importance in Gestalt of awareness in the
change process. Fundamentally, change can only be achieved by helping individuals
reflect on and gain new insights into their situation.
Although project phases are often depicted as sequential steps in a planned process,
Figure 3 highlights the iterative nature of the project phases. As stated by Freedman
(2006, p. 93), within each phase of the project work, unexpected or emergent
information would mean that change practitioners would guide their client through the
four-step action research process to enable them to understand what happened, why it
happened and what they might choose to do about it.
As such the 3S model with its Sensing, Supporting and Sustaining activities cannot
be viewed as sequential but rather as shown in Figure 4, it provides an overarching
framework that spans the various phases of a change project. Space precludes me in
this article to articulate more fully the methodological or practical implications of
attending to a gestalt informed relational perspective in each phase of the cycle. This
remains an area for further writing and research.

Conclusion
This article has provided an overview of a Gestalt informed approach to organisational
development and change. As well as highlighting the importance of the practitioner’s
own presence and use of self, three interrelated capabilities – Sensing, Supporting and
Sustaining were identified. These emphasise the need to track and stay responsive to
the organisational environment; to ensure the right amount of support and challenge is
present in the change effort and finally, to provide a focus on experimentation and the
embedding of learning for sustainable change.
This study not only strengthens the case for emergent approaches to be used in
organisational change but also has two key implications for scholars and practitioners.
JOCM
26,3

472

Figure 4.
A Gestalt informed OD
cycle

First, it shows the usefulness of continuous sensing into the phenomenological


experience of the organisation throughout the lifetime of a change project. Second, this
study shows that learning and experimentation with new ways of being is crucial to an
organisation that wants to grow and remain fluid and responsive to its environment.
Clearly both implications will have an economic and commercial impact on the cost of a
change project compared to more traditional planned approaches. Enquiry into the
effectiveness of the case studies shows that the long-term impact resulting from a
gestalt based approach could justify the cost increase. Further comparative research
however into the cost-benefit of the approach would be needed.
This contribution is also limited by looking at only four cases that fall only within
the private sector. On the premise that model generalisation depends upon extensive
empirical data, the current paper should be considered as a preliminary/exploratory
research into a more emergent, relational and holistic organisational change
management approach.
Despite the limitations however, I hope that the insights and emerging model put
forward in this article would encourage further research into the effectiveness of a
gestalt based approach to a variety of organisational change contexts.

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Chidiac, M-A. and Denham-Vaughan, S. (2007), “The process of presence: energetic availability
and fluid responsiveness”, British Gestalt Journal, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 9-19.

About the author


Dr Marie-Anne Chidiac, B.Eng, MBA, MSc (Gestalt Psychotherapy), DPsych, UKCP registered
psychotherapist, EAGT-GPO, is an organisational consultant, psychotherapist, coach, trainer
and supervisor. She has a background in consulting, having worked with board level executives
and led major change management programmes both in the UK and Europe. In addition to her
clinical work in private practice, she currently works within both public and private sector
organisations to facilitate change and coach leaders and teams. She is co-founder of Relational
Change, an organisation that works to develop relational skills in individuals, teams,
organisations and communities. She holds a D.Psych in Public Works with a focus on the
synthesis of Gestalt psychotherapy and organisational development. Dr Marie-Anne Chidiac can
be contacted at: mac@relationalchange.org

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