What is Appreciative
Inquiry?
• Theory and practice of organisational change and
development
• That grew out of a dissatisfaction with Action Research
• That recognizes and foregrounds human systems of belief,
meaning and action in organisations
• That treats organisations as living human systems
• And has been developed by David Cooperrider, Suresh
Srivastva and others from Case Western University
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The Appreciative
Inquiry Challenge
•
How to work effectively with organisations when we recognize them
as living human systems: emotion, language, beliefs, values
•
How to practice if theory and practice are co-existent and
simultaneous
•
How to work with the symbolic nature of the human universe
•
How to work with an awareness of the systemic relationship
between client and consultant
•
How to be life enhancing in our interventions, how to move away
from deficit centered language and thinking
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How is it different to other
methodologies?
• Problem solving
• Science based research
methodologies
• Planned change methodologies
Appreciative Inquiry &
Problem Solving
Problem solving
Identification of problem
Appreciative inquiry
Discovering the best of what is
Analysis of causes
Envisioning what could be
Analysis of possible solutions
Designing what should be
Action planning (treatment)
Innovating what will be
Basic assumption: organisation is
a problem to be solved
Basic assumption: organisation is
a mystery to be embraced.
Hammond 1996
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Appreciative Inquiry
&Scientific Method
Scientific Method
Appreciative inquiry
Objectivist: There is an objective
universe more or less separate
from and independent of the
observer
Constructionist: The universe is socially
constructed. We can never see the
world ‘as it really is’
Positivist: Privileges the physically
observable
Holistic: Rejects dualistic
understandings, gives credence to
mental causality, social dynamics
Reductionist: Reduce higher order
phenomena to elements (the
parts)
Connective: Interested in the
connections between elements and
complex patterns (the sum)
Fixed accounts
Generative accounts
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How is it different to other
change methodologies?
• Creative rather than curative
• Dynamic rather than procedural
• Language as a living process rather than as a tool
• Embraces rather than pathologies humanness
• Focus on possibility rather than certainty
• Many ways rather than one right way
Different understanding
of relation language
and change
Positivist
Constructionist
•
Linear Causality
•
Circular Causality
•
Truth
•
Accounts
•
Static meaning
•
Dynamic meaning
•
Neutral
•
Fateful
•
Fixed time
•
Possibility time
•
Objective universe
•
Socially constructed multiverse
Scientific method based
Appreciative Inquiry Interventions
interventions
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How does appreciative
inquiry make a difference?
• Through appreciating organisations as living systems
• Through attending to the creative process as opposed to the
curative
• Through recognizing mental processes as causal
• Though recognizing organisation as a miracle of cooperative
human interaction
• Through language
• Through social innovation
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Appreciative inquiry
and change
‘The key to creating change in the organisation is
creating new theories /ideas/images that enter the
everyday language of system members’
(Bushe 2001)
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Assumptions of
appreciative inquiry
• In every society, organisation or group, something works
• Every living system has untapped and rich inspiring accounts
of the positive
• The act of asking a question influences in some way
• What we focus on becomes our reality
• The language we use creates our reality
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Assumptions of
appreciative inquiry
• People have more confidence and comfort to journey to the
future when they carry forward parts of the past
• If we carry parts of the past forward, they should be what is
best about the past
• It is important to value difference
• The way we know people, groups and organisations is fateful
(Hammond 1996)
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Appreciative inquiry:
principles
• The constructionist principle
• The simultaneity principle
• The poetic principle
• The anticipatory principle
• The positive principle
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The four D model
• Affirmative topics, always homegrown, can be on anything
the people in the organisation feel gives life to the system’
• Discovery: Discover and disclose positive capacity
• Dreaming: A sense of how things could be
• Design: Creation of the ideal organisation
• Destiny: An inspired movement
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Appreciative Inquiry
Discover and Value
‘the best of what is’
Destiny
‘What will be’
Affirmative
Topic Choice
Dreaming
‘What might be’
Design through
Dialogue
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‘What should
be’
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The Constructionist
principle
• Reality is socially constructed
• We create our realities in relationship and communication
• We see what we talk about/we hear what we listen out for
•
Its a multi-verse not a universe
•
Meaning is context bound
•
We seek always to make sense and to go on
• Organisations are networks of conversation
• The future is socially constructed
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Social Constructionist
based methodologies
•
Working with metaphors
•
Strange loops of belief and paradoxical accounts
•
Coordinated management of meaning
•
Domains of conversation
•
Stories
•
Lego Serious Play
•
Appreciative Inquiry
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Simultaneity principle
• To ask a question is to intervene
• Client and consultant, manager and team, organisation and
environment are all in systemic relationship - each
influencing the other
• It is not possible in human terms to stand outside the system
• The questions we ask are fateful and impactful
• There is a moral element to our choice of inquiry
• Practice can not be divorced from theory, diagnosis can not
be divorced from intervention
There is no before
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Appreciative inquiry:
affirmative topic choice
• Talk as a medium to achieve change
• The placing of attention
• The ‘sense’ created by talk
• The ‘research question’ is the intervention and is
fateful and impactful
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Discovery
•
Identifying the best of what is, what works
•
Creating and amplifying accounts of the good, of peak experiences
•
Affirming good things (by paying attention, appreciating)
•
Creating data
•
Creating a launch pad for the future
•
Creating strategic possibilities
•
Generating hope and other good emotions
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The anticipatory
principle
•
•
•
•
•
Human systems are essentially heliotropic
They grow towards positive anticipatory futures
These futures are socially constructed
All behaviour in the present points towards the future
When a future is sufficiently meaningful and attractive,
behaviour will become oriented towards achieving that future
• The greater the self organisation, the greater the energy that
goes into growth and the less that goes into creating order
The power of the positive image
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The poetic principle
• An organisation is more like a text than a machine
• An organisation has many authors
• The many authors create, co-create, and recreate the
organisation
• Changing different authors’ stories will change the
organisation
• Stories don’t reflect what is happening they are what is
happening
• The future is co-created by many authors
Dreaming
•
Imagining possible futures, in detail (positive anticipatory images)
•
Using discovery launch pad
•
Creative not deductive
•
Creating possibility, creating data, creating change
•
Shared positive experience
•
Exploring strategic possibilities
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Design
•
Linking future and present
•
Creating paths or accounts of connection
•
What are we doing now that points towards that future?
•
If we were like that, how would we be organized?
•
What can we do now, what can I do now?
•
Generating strategic intent
•
Positive energy for change: excitement, hope, affirmation
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Positive principle
• Change takes energy
• Positive energy is a powerful source for
change
• Positive energy can be created by reexperiencing positive experiences and
• By experiencing positive images of the future
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Destiny
•
Releasing, channeling, facilitating energy into forward actions
•
Appreciating social nature of change, working with energy and flow creative messiness
•
Achieving coherence and co-ordination (not control and constriction)
•
Appropriate processes of coherence (story, story board, action plan,
provocative propositions)
•
Appropriate processes of co-ordination (communication, relationship,
working parties, meetings)
•
Living strategy
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Research into AI: What
matters most?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The power of positive questions
The appreciative inquiry interview
Story telling
Future vision/ provocative propositions
Positive image
Collaboration/co-constructing/common ground
Anticipatory principle
Continuity
Replacing deficit discourse
•
(Yaeger and Sorensen 2001)
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Benedictine University
•
•
•
•
•
Traditional academic culture
Ill equipped to respond to demands for change
Strategic planning - culture change
Decision to use Faculty meeting/ AI
All 86 staff new and returning
High level of participation
Pursuit of an ideal
Grounded in research
Mutual interviewing
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Benedictine University
• Recorded
• Shaped in core values
• Learning
Speed at which able to capture data from all
faculty
Focus on positive & possible produced upbeat
tone
Cynicism set aside, transcending problems,
celebrating strengths
• Process on going
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Quantitative research
•
•
•
•
•
Fortune 500, 94 fast food restaurants, one area
Problem retention salaried restaurant staff
3 groups AI, normal problem solving, nothing
One year collecting base line data - turnover
18 months intervention.
One AI meeting a month each restaurant
Three meeting each general manager
One ‘roundtable’ wash-up
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Results
•
•
•
•
•
AI group 30% higher retention than ‘normal’ group
AI group 32% higher retention than ‘nothing’ group
Al group less inclined to leave
$103,320 savings in hard training dollars
Confounding factor - leadership
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Role of consultant
 Creative not curative
 Focusing on what works, seeking the best
 Working with stories, language, words, emotions, images
 Affecting relationship and belief systems of meaning and action
 Generous, curious, appreciative, systemic: helping create useful
accounts in the present about the past to enhance the future
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Implications for
managers and leaders
 What you look for is what you will find
 What you talk about is what you will create
 More than one account can exist, none is the truth, all may be true
 Conversation/communication contains moral order
 Affect action through communication
 Pull is more powerful than push
 Emotion, belief and values are the bedrock of motivation
 ‘ I want’ (desire) is more generative than ‘I must’ (compulsion)
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Appreciative Process
• Discovering the best of
• Understanding what creates the best of
• Amplifying the people and processes who best
exemplify the best of
• Giving attention to what is working well
• Watching for what you want to see
• Amplifying it when you see it
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AI processes:
Amplification
Amplifying the data
• Quality of stories told (new telling, new insight)
• Recording of stories told - rich in detail, own voice
• Sharing of stories told
Thematic feedback documents
Video
Amplifying the findings/outcomes proposals
• Surveys
• Feedback on surveys
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Creating Change
•
Creating, playing with, connecting accounts
•
Playing with voices
•
Playing with positions
•
Explorations of meaning and purpose
•
Separation of domains of conversation
•
Exploration of systemic connections
•
Articulating context
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Thank you
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