Our House: Visual and Active Consulting

For consultants, facilitators or OD specialists, a house’s familiar image will help their clients see, think and feel their ways 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).