Appreciative Inquiry, or (AI), is an adventure into the world of positive change. It lays out an exciting new direction in language, theories and possibilities. It develops a momentum, which becomes irresistible as it extends throughout the organization inviting everyone to play a critical and synergistic role in creating a new future together.
Think of a time… when your team was most alive and performing at its best. They are telling you a story. Are you listening?
That story is repeated everyday in the minds of your teams, customers and clients. That story relates the culture and a history of your organization. It defines a feeling and an attitude that exists today as well as projects a path for your organization’s future. What is your organization’s story?
Change
It is not change that holds people back. Few people will hesitate to say, “Yes!” to winning the lottery even though it would represent dramatic change in their lives.
What holds people back is the fear of a negative consequence or outcome. Negativity is a powerful force, one that locks individuals and organizations into stale, stagnant and unproductive cycles. Positive energy is what allows a breakthrough for organizations to change the patterns that hold them back.
An Effective Combination
Appreciative Inquiry is a strength-based model, designed to focus on the positive core of your organization’s success. Your positive core defines our root cause of success and is made up of your innovations, achievements, hopes, talents, traditions, dreams, culture, passions and vision. Developing and understanding an organization’s positive core is one of the greatest and largely unrecognized resources in change management today.
The Right Combination
If you were given a combination lock and you had to choose between being given all the combinations that won’t work or the combination that will work, which would you choose? This example may seem obvious; however, many organizations focus on the countless combinations on what doesn’t work versus focusing on what does work.
Traditional organizational development gets stuck in a deficit-based model that focuses on, “What’s wrong and how do we fix it?” Although this approach revolves around solving a problem it often overlooks the bigger question of, “What is the right thing to do?”
British Petroleum
A classic example of AI success is the case of British Petroleum’s Pro-Care auto repair service centers. They had been in business for a year and their customer survey’s showed that 95% of all customers were 100% satisfied. Pro-Care was not content and in an effort to improve their service they decided to conduct customer focus groups. Unfortunately, they only asked the 5% dissatisfied customers about their dissatisfaction. Then, on the walls in every station they posted vivid descriptions of the identified causes of dissatisfaction. Within a short time customer satisfaction ratings dropped, along with employee moral and retention.
After hearing about the success gone astray, a team of Appreciative Inquiry consultants made suggestions to help the failing business. They recommended that the focus groups be conducted with the satisfied customers. With great skepticism and a moderate amount of curiosity, the leaders of Pro-Care agreed. The results were stunning. Customer satisfaction rating reversed once again, this time for the better, as people began to learn and replicate the roost cause of success. Adapted from Whitney, D. & Trosten-Bloom, A. (2003). The Power of Appreciative Inquiry: A Practical Guide to Positive Change. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler
Definition of Appreciative Inquiry
AI assumes that every living system has untapped, rich and inspiring accounts of the positive. Link you positive change core directly to any business agenda and changes never thought possible are dramatically and democratically mobilized.
Appreciative Inquiry was pioneered in the field of organization development by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva, two professors at the Weatherhead School of Management.
Progressive consultants around the world are increasingly using this leading edge appreciative approach to bring about collaborative and strengths-based change in thousands of profit and nonprofit organizations and communities.
Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search for the best in people, their organizations and the relevant world around them. It involves systematic discovery of what gives a system ‘life’ when it is most effective and capable in economic, ecological and human terms. AI involves the art and proactive model of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to heighten positive energy, sharpen vision, and inspire action for change.
It mobilizes inquiry through crafting unconditionally positive questions that are then used to interview relevant stakeholders. By asking positive questions, we generate new images of the future. These powerful images of ourselves, our organizations, and the world allow us to create the future we desire.
Inquiry Strategy - 4D Process
An AI intervention brings forward the wisdom of the team in a collaborative effort. Instead of negation, criticism and spiraling diagnosis there is Discovery, Dream, Design and Deliver, know as the 4D Process.
This process builds leadership capacity, transcends communication barriers, creates a learning culture, unleashes the best in every person and enhances the capacity for positive change.
An AI Summit
Each company, team and organization is as diverse as the people within them. AI embraces this diversity with a customized intervention. A common AI intervention is a summit, which is based on the idea that together large groups of people can achieve extraordinary success much greater than any small isolated group can achieve. Summits can run from one to five days long.
A Summit begins with a design team, consisting of external AI professionals partnering with a cross section of internal change agents. Together the team designs a summit to meet the organization’s unique needs. Sometimes there is a specific agenda that drives the summit. In other cases there is an open summit that drives the agenda.
• In every case there are some common characteristics that include:
• Clear focus on a topic of strategic business relevance.
• Clear focus on a topic of strategic business relevance.
• Bringing together all the people who have interest and influence on the topic.
• Involving the 4D Process through a combination of one-to-one interviews and integrating outcomes into a collective large group processes.
• Giving voice to everyone present in equal measure.
What did the Caveman see?
When the Caveman or woman emerged from the dark recesses of their shelter, what did they see? It is reasonable to assume they observed various kinds of vegetation, landscapes and wildlife. Do you think they saw a wheel, a bicycle or a computer?
We contend all the components were there. What they lacked was the knowledge, experience, understanding, system and inspiration required to bring those components together.
AI provides a process that allows your organization to see what is possible. AI awakens the remarkable providing a new view into the latent, strengths, talents, and energy within your team. The changes can be profound.