Gestalt Community of Practice

The cycle of experience is a model for tracking naturally occurring, here-and-now phenomena. The OSD model for more strategic, planned change is ‘unit of work.’ A unit of work is a clearly coherent and bounded experience, process, or event. In an organisational context, unit of work can represent completion of a project, a finished meeting, or the end of a conversation. Even moving from start to finish through the Cycle is a unit of work. 

Following a Cycle of Experience, in a Unit of Work proceeds in 4 steps as we work through the following process: 

1. Assessing what is  
2. Choosing what to attend to 
3. Acting on the choice
4. Closing out the activity 

In an idealised Unit of Work, we would have achieved the following: 

• Initial Contact 
• Shared Figure
• Selected Direction
• Agreed Contracted Work 
• Conclusions 

This frame of reference is very effective in allowing us to attend to the process essential to reaching a desired outcome of an intervention.  When an individual / group repeats the work over and over again, where we would say that  the work does not 'stick'  we can reflect on the process to inquire where we could accord more attention to arrive at the idealised UoW.  Was there a shared figure to begin with ? What are the learning points? Have we concluded with an appreciation of the work to withdraw and close this piece of work?  

Let's take this opportunity to share our learning experiences in how we can use the Unit of Work as a frame to design effective OD intervention.

For a detailed explanation of Unit of Work, please make reference to this article from Gestalt OSD.