When an owner has reviewed the numbers, talked with the team and held several meetings, yet the decision keeps slipping, it may help to look at the situation from another angle. A project can move in fits and starts, arguments for and against can cancel each other out, and responsibility can quietly return to the owner.
A systemic perspective helps examine the connections between parts of a situation, notice the owner’s own response and form hypotheses that can be tested in day-to-day work.
Systemic constellations in management
In Systemic Constellations in the Context of Management, Claude Rosselet and Georg Senoner describe a staged way of exploring complex organisational situations. Roles, interests and elements of a system are represented spatially, making relationships and overlooked questions easier to discuss.
The authors share company examples in which progress followed when participants considered stakeholders’ perspectives, improved communication and agreed on next actions. These stories do not establish that one method works universally. They illustrate a broader point: a decision depends not only on its logic on paper, but also on people, roles, resources and the conditions for implementation.
A systemic view can be useful when a business question involves connected elements: owner and team, customer promise and delivery capacity, authority and accountability, growth plans and available resources. It broadens the inquiry; it does not replace data checks, financial analysis or specialist advice.
My format begins with a specific question
In individual work I combine a systemic review of a business situation, a psychological perspective and metaphorical associative cards. An image can help a client put words to something not yet easy to articulate: tension, doubt, a conflict of roles or a desired change.
This is not fortune-telling, and an image does not provide a ready-made answer about what is “really” happening in a company. It is a prompt for questions: What do you notice in the image? How does it relate to your situation? Which facts support this interpretation, and which contradict it? What else might explain what is happening?
We move from an association to a hypothesis and then to a way of testing it. If the starting statement is “the team does not take responsibility,” we clarify which decisions the team is authorised to make, what happens after mistakes, how work is allocated and how results are assessed. Possible explanations may include unclear authority, overload, a skills gap or the owner’s habit of taking decisions back. Each is a hypothesis to check against practice.
Why the owner’s role matters
A business is more than processes and metrics. It is a space an owner creates and develops to pursue an intention, create value and earn revenue. Products meet customer needs, people take roles, decisions are made and resources are allocated. At the same time, business resilience also depends on the team, the market, the offer and external conditions.
The owner’s position matters, but this does not mean every business difficulty is caused by the owner’s psychology. Markets, competition, financing, processes, teams and other circumstances all affect outcomes. Still, an owner’s response to uncertainty, conflict or risk may influence which decisions are noticed, delayed, delegated or reconsidered.
An owner may want to scale while feeling anxious when decisions are made without them, or know a price should change but find it difficult to state it to a client. We treat such reactions as material for inquiry, not as a diagnosis or a predetermined cause.
What an individual session offers
The session focuses on one question and on the information the client chooses to share. Unlike a group format, there is no need to discuss the situation in front of other participants. This can matter when the topic concerns a partnership, finances, a team or a decision not yet announced.
Online work makes it possible to meet from different locations. Cards can be used as a digital deck or image; a spatial model can be represented with objects, a sketch or positions on screen. We choose the method to fit the question and technical conditions.
This can reduce travel time and help us get to the issue sooner. Pace depends on the complexity of the situation, clarity of the question, willingness to consider alternatives and access to relevant facts. One meeting will not necessarily resolve a complex issue.
How the work proceeds
- Clarify the question. What is happening, what decision is needed and what would make the meeting useful?
- Build context. Separate observable facts from interpretations and consider participants, roles, constraints and prior actions.
- Explore connections and responses. Use conversation, systemic modelling and, where appropriate, metaphorical cards.
- Form several hypotheses. Do not mistake the first emotionally compelling explanation for the only one.
- Plan a test. Choose a next step, the information needed and a criterion for review.
For example, instead of concluding that “the team resists change,” we can check whether people understand the goal, helped shape it, have authority and resources, and know what will stop being a priority when a new process begins.
Limits of the method
Systemic inquiry and metaphorical cards do not predict the future, establish objective causes on their own or guarantee increased revenue, a returning customer or a successful launch. They can help generate questions and working hypotheses. Management decisions should be checked against facts, participant feedback, metrics and relevant professional expertise.
The client decides what details to share. An image is not evidence of another person’s intentions, and a constellation model should not be the sole basis for employment, financial or legal decisions.
My professional approach
I draw on systemic approaches to organisations and management developed by earlier practitioners and combine them with individual psychological work using metaphorical cards. The point is not an impressive image; it is the path from image to a precise question, from question to hypothesis, and from hypothesis to an action that can be tested.
My aim is to help an owner see more options, define their role more clearly and choose a next step that fits their goals and the actual conditions of the business. This is a structured way to explore a situation and bring decisions back to practice, not a promise of instant results.
If a difficult question keeps returning—about the owner’s role, pricing, team, partnership, product or the next stage of growth—we can begin with one working session. We will clarify the question, boundaries, expected value and format. The decision about continuing remains yours.
Oksana Kurant
Psychologist and systemic business consultant
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