Appreciative Inquiry: The Strengths Revolution in Change

by Peter Mark Adams

Appreciative Inquiry is about the coevolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them. In its broadest focus, it involves systematic discovery of what gives life to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most constructively capable in economic, 1 ecological, and human terms.

Introducing Appreciative Inquiry Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a process for leveraging the deep potential the knowledge, experience, talent, commitment and enthusiasm of any organizational system, no matter how large or small. AI combines a positive, solution driven orientation with a participative process of exploration and discovery. It seeks to incorporate as many stakeholders as possible in the process. In an age of virtual communities, this can effectively involve thousands2. AI has been successfully used with as few as 2 participants (appreciative coaching) and as many as 4,500 (World Vision3). It has been applied to everything from business process improvement (Roadway Express) to employee engagement (the 64,000 employees of GTE/Verizon4) as well as for global humanitarian projects (World Vision, United Nations Global Compact5, and Business as an Agent of World Benefit6). It has been used with equal effectiveness in advanced business environments

Coopperrider, D.L. & Whitney, D (2001) A positive revolution in change in Cooperrider, D. L. Sorenson, P., Whitney, D. & Yeager, T. (eds.) Appreciative Inquiry: An Emerging Direction for Organization Development. 2 Godwin, L & Kaplan, S AI Version 2.0: New Models of Appreciative Inquiry in the Digital Age AI Practitioner May 2008 3 Ibid 4 Appreciative Inquiry and Culture Change at GTE at http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/ 5 http://www.unglobalcompact.org/ 6 http://worldbenefit.case.edu/inquiry/features.cfm

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(Nokia) and in poor rural communities (150,000 people in 8 countries who participate in the WORTH program7).

Defining AI

Appreciative Inquiry is composed of two main strands, Appreciation and Inquiry:

Appreciating is: 1.valuing; recognizing the best in people or the world around us; affirming past and present strengths, successes, and potentials; perceiving those things that give life (health, vitality, excellence) to living systems

Inquiry is: 1. the act of exploration & discovery. 2. Asking questions; open to new potentials & possibilities

AI is a Strengths-Based Approach to Change & Transformation

We normally think of strengths-based approaches as resting upon a convergence of each persons unique talents or signature strengths with the demands of some occupation. In teams and work groups a similar logic is expressed through matching each persons principle team roles8 with the demands of a project. On the much wider scale of an entire organization or community, this becomes unrealistic. Instead an optimal strategy is to maximize the level of participation whilst ensuring that everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute and this is precisely the strategy that AI attempts to utilize in every situation. AI can also be considered a strengths-based approach in terms of its core philosophy. We can see this exemplified in the main features of AI:

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http://www.pactworld.org/cs/worth/the_story_behind_worth Belbin, M (1981) Management Teams: why they succeed or fail

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The starting place for every AI is always each persons recollection of their most positive experience of the subject of the inquiry

In leveraging the combined knowledge, experience and talent of as many stakeholders as possible, AI optimizes the opportunity for new thinking, fresh insights and truly innovative ideas

Bringing an entire organization or community to articulate its ideals, values, hopes and vision for the future, strengthens and builds the sense of community

By operating in a way that is removed from the normalizing (hierarchical and functional) structures of day to day life, it helps to break up the tendency towards group think the inability to see beyond implicit shared, and often very limiting, assumptions

AI has the potential to touch something deep within the human spirit the desire to be heard, to be taken account of, to contribute to and find meaning in what we do

Since AI only operates with a positive orientation, it leverages that great reservoir of physical, mental and emotional strengths that positivity makes accessible to us9 and which contributes directly to success10. Positivity itself is inherently life-affirming.

The Effectiveness of AI As we have seen11, the main problem with most approaches to organizational improvement is that they fail to engage the people who they most impact. They confuse information with communication, start their change management process too late, undercommunicate or otherwise pay insufficient attention to creating opportunities for real participation. As a result they tend to drive a wedge between themselves and the community they are destined to serve. Unsurprisingly, the failure rates in terms of inability to deliver

Fredrickson, B The Broaden & Build Theory of Positive Emotions Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society August 2004 10 Diener, King & Lyubomirsky The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success? Psychological Bulletin, 2005 Vol 131 No 6 11 See The Art and Science of Organizational Change Management on this site

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the expected business benefits are extremely high, and have remained so for the last 20 years. Unlike other organizational change management processes, AI combines the process of solution development (the content of the change) with raising the energy, enthusiasm and commitment to realize it (the process of change) into one seamless whole. But this can only happen in an environment that is supportive of the level of participation necessary to generate high levels of engagement. Some organizations may find the conflict between control and participation too much for them reconcile. Under these circumstances, AI is probably not a viable option. One other case where AI may not be viable is in a crisis where strong directive effort may be required to ensure an adequate reaction. In such circumstances AIs participative and collaborative process may be too cumbersome to provide a rapid response. That said, with modern approaches to AI such as the AI Summit it is possible to execute a large and highly effective AI process in just 1-2 days. Any delay or overhead would principally be in the planning and administration necessary to ensure an effective summit process.

Copyright Peter Mark Adams 2009

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