‘Minimal changes are needed to initiate solving complaints and, once the change is initiated (the therapist’s task), further changes will be generated by the client (“the ripple effect” {Spiegel and Linn, 1969})” (de Shazer, 1985, p 33)
Just the other day I read a short paragraph online by an eminent colleague in our field writing something terribly similar ‘a central concept of Solution-Focused Practice is that small steps lead to big changes’ (1). And then in another of my favourite Solution Focused books, Becoming Solution-Focused in Brief Therapy (Walter and Peller, 1992), I found ‘Assumption: Small changing leads to Larger Changing’ (p 18). This emphasis on the significance of ‘small’ or ‘minimal’ changes is indeed consistent in the approach and is, as it were, ‘legitimised’ by the concept of the ‘ripple effect’.
Interestingly there is a connection between this, The first small change and the subsequent self generated change, and the way that many of us might conceptualise our role. People come to us when they feel ‘stuck’, they have been bothered for a while by a difficulty, whether that be depression, anxiety or a relationship difficulty. They have attempted solution, perhaps over and over, to no avail and have decided that an expert is required. When the client comes to us it is not our job to cure them, to change them or even to work with them until they achieve their ‘best hopes’ (George et al, 1990, 1999). It is merely our job to work with them until they are in a position to get on with their life again, no longer stuck, until they can face the challenges of their life, rather as we all do. And we can have no idea at what point or indeed how the client will decide ‘I can manage this on my own’. We can bring this focus into the work by using a scale ‘On a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 standing for the way that things were when you decided to make the first appointment and 10 standing for you knowing that you do not need to make another appointment, you feel able to get on with things yourself, where do you see things now?’. So there are two parallel (although diverse) processes here. The first is the simple ‘ripple effect’ the first small change is followed by further client-generated changes, the second is the idea that we work with clients until they achieve sufficient change to feel confident to manage a subsequent change process independently.
However something else struck me and puzzled me reading the three quotations above. They all imply certainty, inevitability. ‘Further changes will be generated by the client’ says Steve, ‘small steps lead to big changes’, and ‘small changing leads to larger changing’. Can this possibly be so? Certainly it seems true and reasonable to argue that larger changes do not happen without smaller changes preceding them but it cannot be the case that every small step is followed by big changes, that ‘further changes’ will always be generated following the ‘minimal changes’. This sort of cause-and-effect thinking seems at odds with the world of not-knowing within which Solution Focused lives and works and thrives. After all we constantly reiterate the thought that we cannot even know what question we asked until we have heard the client’s answer. So how can we describe the relationship between smaller and larger changes in a way that suits our model and our thinking, and there are examples in the literature where it ‘works’. For example Ratner et al in 2012 write ‘Sometimes only the smallest changes is necessary to set in motion a solution to the problem’ (p 21). That ‘sometimes’ is important. In 2007 de Shazer et al. write ‘small steps can lead to big changes’ (p 2). Again they remembered to insert ‘can’. These small differences of description, differences which might seem trivial, are important since the way that we describe our approach affects the words that the client hears coming out of our mouths and the tone in which those words are spoken.
(1) https://www.facebook.com/DenverCenterForSFBT 12th July 2025
de Shazer, Steve (1985) Keys to Solution in Brief Therapy. New York: Norton.
de Shazer, Steve, Dolan, Yvonne, Korman, Harry, Trepper, Terry, MacCollum, Eric and Berg, Insoo Kim (2007) More Then Miracles: the state of the art of solution focused therapy. New York: Haworth.
George, E., Iveson, C. and Ratner, H. (1990; Revised and expanded Edition 1999) Problem to Solution: Brief Therapy with Individuals and Families. London: BT Press
Ratner, H., George, E., Iveson, C. (2012) Solution Focused Brief Therapy: 100 Key Ideas and Techniques. London: Routledge
Walter, John and Peller, Jane (1992) Becoming Solution-Focused in Brief Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel.
Evan George
London
20th July 2025
