Approach

Impasse can involve many issues in many forms and requires exploration of known issues and those below the surface. To resolve impasses we need to first identify the obvious and then look beyond.To achieve successful resolution.  My approach includes addressing the effects of influence, culture, and self interest:

• Clarifying the influence from known and often unknown parties. Real or perceived influence is: ‘the power to affect or change someone or something in an indirect way without directly forcing the change to happen ' .  It can be subtle, complex, and powerfully effective unless identified and managed.
  
• Assess perceptions of culture change - 'the way we do things round here' -  and have developed approaches to identify and manage these concerns which frequently interfere with project completion.
• Impute the effects of unexpressed self interest of parties which contribute to the impasse.
• Optimism bias from shop floor to boardroom develops unintentionally.
• Unexpressed assumptions of the effects should the impasse be resolved.

Each stage of our approach creates conditions for graceful resolution of the impasse.  This requires the handling ('containment') of anxieties, anger and other expressions for which our training and experience have developed effective methods. The graceful resolution creates an environment in which work can continue after the impasse in an effective way.

Organisational impasses can involve many issues in many forms for each party to the impasse. New organisational initiatives, projects at all stages, and day-to-day transactions occur within a system of organisational and personal dynamics.  I provide an analysis of the situation together with recommendations for resolution.  The focus is always a graceful outcome, meaning the difficult dynamics which produced the impasse and contained throughout the resolution process and lead to a potential positive working relationship of the parties going forward.