Examples of organizational constellations

When does an organizational constellation move me forward?

When you keep getting stuck in a situation within the organization or a change does not get off the ground, an organizational constellation can bring movement. Or when you keep falling back into unhelpful patterns and you can’t put your finger on why you can’t move forward. Just like a family constellation, an organizational constellation can bring a different insight by recognizing patterns or underlying dynamics and thus taking a first step towards change.

However, organizational and family issues sometimes intertwine. You have your own backpack filled with experiences that have their origins in how you were raised, among other things. You take this backpack to work, into the organization. Your first employer is therefore your family, we tell participants.

How patterns within the organizational system emerge

To understand how an organizational constellation works, it is important to know how systems work.

A system can be a team, or it can be a business unit or an entire organization. An important property of systems is that they want to be complete. This operation is deployed – often unconsciously to us – by the system.

Only when the system is complete, with all the good and the ugly from the past that goes with it, can it focus all its energy on the future, on the work that needs to be done. A system is not complete if, for example, in a team you are not allowed to talk about the previous manager who left “badly. Or if a decision was once made with fatal consequences and that was not sufficiently discussed, lived through and healed.

If a system is incomplete, it develops patterns that we as employees, managers or consultants find very annoying and want to get rid of. This could be that the system “hires” someone to continually bring in the voice of the previous manager. Or, in the case of the fatal decision, that the pattern has entered the system of not daring to make decisions, or delaying or watering down decisions. Thus the system basically shows: hello, there is still something from the past that demands recognition! Work to be done, then.

How does an organizational constellation allow you to take a new step?

An organizational constellation can give you new insight, giving you a different perspective for action. With an appropriate systemic intervention, constellations can bring movement where something was previously stuck in the system. After all, if someone within the system starts acting differently, then automatically the system itself changes as well.

By the way, an organizational constellation is not the only way in this. It is a method within systemic work, not the only method. It may also be that a systemic coaching or a sharp systemic question brings you what is needed to move.

Some examples of situations we often explore in an organizational constellation

Example 1:
Working too hard

An organization is working extremely hard and absenteeism is so skyrocketing that the director wants to explore with a lineup what the root cause of this might be. Vitality programs or attempts to hold people to their work hours all had little effect. Where does this hard work come from? Or: who or what is being worked so hard for that people – long and short employed in the organization – are literally falling over?

It becomes clear from the constellation that the employees are working so hard to settle an ‘old’ debt of the organization to a former customer group. Once the organization had products that severely disadvantaged this customer group, there arose a systemic ‘debt’ that was never paid off. The customers left at the time without being compensated. The effect was that employees literally worked themselves into burnout to settle a debt that was not theirs. After all, there were only a handful of colleagues working in the company when this debt arose. But it doesn’t matter to the system, the debt and its pattern work through regardless of who was there and who wasn’t.

Now that the root cause is known, the director can move forward with the issue with a new perspective.

Example 2:
A change keeps failing to happen

In an organization, something keeps not wanting to succeed. Often it is because something in the past still wants to be seen. The question is then: what is still keeping us here? What do we need to acknowledge that will allow the system to flow again and make change possible?

For example, one lineup reveals that a previous reorganization did so much damage that the system completely cramped at the prospect of another reorganization. In that reorganization, it was inevitable that people would be laid off. There was no room to say goodbye and (emotionally) process the impact of that reorganization.

However, you can count on the fact that the system will demand attention again later when you, as an organization, only move on the basis of the thought “we just have to move on. An unprocessed reorganization leaves a trauma (wound) in the organization, so that a new reorganization (even a smaller or less impactful one) is responded to with extreme cramping.

By making the questioner aware of this pattern through a constellation, he or she can see what still needs to be done before the transition to the future can be made. And often we see that acknowledging the past, in this case the damage caused by an earlier reorganization, already has an immediate effect on the system.

Voorbeeld 3:
A former employee still haunts the organization

The complaint is that a new employee is just not coming into his or her own. Then the first search you make as a drafter is to find out what happened to that employee’s predecessors: is the spot vacant? Is the spot clean? The moment a spot is not vacant, it will be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for the new employee to succeed at that position. For example, when the team remains attached to the old colleague – by constantly mentioning that name, comparing or staying in close contact with that person – there is little room for a new employee to really take in.

Often the cause for this is inadequate goodbyes. A forced departure due to a reorganization, but possibly also due to an illness or death, causes the system to keep bringing this person back into the picture. An appropriate goodbye often frees up space for the new employee to fully perform his or her duties.