Antony Williams - Our House: Visual and Active Consulting

For consultants, facilitators or OD specialists, a houses familiar image will help their clients see, think and feel ways to solving their business issues. No need for dry and hard-to-remember management schemas. The striking visual and active methods shown here deeply engage clients - they get it right away. The House and its Rooms make sense to them, and they willingly start working with you.

The Our House model has many of these Rooms where complex business issues are sorted into one area at a time. The focus, the mood and the process vary with each Room, and the author reveals an entirely original consulting process each time. Disciplined creativity begins: loosening the grip of the past in the Attic; testing business foundations in the Cellar; preparing a meal the customer would love in the Kitchen; suppliers, maintenance and low-hanging fruit in the Garden; the team's dirty washing in the Laundry; elimination and waste goes into the Toilet; frank talk and vision alignment take place at the Dining Table; big systems perspectives can be seen from the Balcony; analysis in the Study; conversation and connection in the Living Room.

The simplicity of the images of a House and its Rooms belies their frugality and their strength. In each Room, your clients are put through something demanding yet liberating. They see things differently and they see different things. Our House shows you how to succeed with simple action methods that are enlightening and strong.

Antony Williams, Ph.D., TEP, works with leadership, planning and people-related issues in organisations. He is accustomed to training OD departments in large companies, health services and universities. He consults to senior teams, and facilitates high-profile and street-wise groups of participants. Antony is the author of The Passionate Technique, Forbidden Agendas and Visual and Active Supervision. He is a director of Santo & Williams, an OD consulting firm (www.santoandwilliams.com).

Second edition published 2020

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2020 Antony Williams

Illustrations Nelle Pierce 2018

The right of Antony Williams to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

First edition published by Routledge 2018

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Williams, Antony, 1941- author.

Title: Our house : visual and active consulting / Antony Williams ; illustrated by Nelle Pierce.

Description: Second Edition. | New York : Routledge, 2020. | Revised edition of the author's Our house, 2018. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019017499| ISBN 9780367277673 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429297779 (ebk)

Subjects: LCSH: Organizational change. | Organizational behavior. | Organizational effectiveness.

Classification: LCC HD58.8 .W5425 2020 | DDC 658.4/063dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019017499

ISBN: 978-0-367-27767-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-29777-9 (ebk)

For Catherine

Long ago, an anecdote recounted by my colleague Bernie Neville about a house sparked an idea that became, for Chris McLoughlin and me, the beginning of Our House. The frame held good, and in fifteen years I have renovated it many times, and added rooms to cover all manner of consulting and facilitation issues. A book was begun, and along came Maree Gladwyn; her acuity, patience, and sensibility luckily saw many unfortunate sentences and paragraphs die in my waste bin. More recently again, Jenny Postlethwaites advice and critique helped me get serious about publication. Pippa Lee Dow, Leanne Habeeb, and Diana Jones have read parts of the document and given valued advice and support. I am indebted to Bob Dick, Nick Wolff and Jude Treder-Wolff for their generous critiques of the final draft. Colleagues in Switzerland, Finland and Germany over many years offered gracious hospitality and valuable international perspectives on Our Houses emerging frame. Thank you. Illustrator Nelle Pierce worked ingeniously and tirelessly on the cover and the illustrations, turning a flat manuscript into a vibrant book. And all along the way, from that first sketch to what you are holding in your hands now, Catherine Santo has sifted ideas and added to them. She road-tested some of the Rooms with different categories of participants, and Our House is broader and better for it. But its for more personal reasons that this book is dedicated to her. And where would a book so focused on Vitality be without my beloved children Elisabeth and Samuel? Theyve made this actual house, the one Im sitting in right now, the one with real beds and dining tables and laundries and kitchens and halls and a dog such a joy what larks!

For Catherine