Appreciative Inquiry (AI)

Is your culture on target?

Getting teams to take on new behaviours is sometimes tough. Do you find people sticking to old, ineffective behaviours even you have presented a better way? Do key people in your organisation sometimes seem to miss the point? Is there an undercurrent of negativity in your team?

Are you ready for a positive view?

When planning a change it is worth focussing on the positive. Here is a process that allows groups to design their future and build relationships around the encouraging elements of who they are. Appreciative Inquiry is a transformation process built on people and the positive stories they tell.

Sometimes we get stuck in a negative view

Internal dialogue is a powerful stabilising force. Organisations have an internal dialogue made up of the stories people tell themselves and each other as they interpret what happens around them. These stories are told in small confidential groups. The views are not raised in official forums. The stories told in these groups reveal what people really think and feel about what is discussed in those official forums. When a plan fails it may be because the ideas supporting the plan have not been supported by this unofficial, off-the-record internal dialogue.

 

If you are initiating a change in your organisation, choosing to work with this internal dialogue is a very good idea.

 

We often view our organisation as a problem to be solved. This view creates a negative bias to interventions. And this negative bias may ultimately prevent us from implementing or sustaining change.

Why not let people tell the positive story

The key to generating change is conversation. When we assist people to tell stories about what is positive we can unlock enormous potential. Appreciative Inquiry is designed to involve groups of people in meaningful conversation to learn, envision and build mutually desired futures.

Appreciative Inquiry works from the following set of assumptions:

  1. In every society, organisation or group, something works.
  2. Our reality is based on our perceptions which we may create in the moment. There may therefore be as many realities as people in the group.
  3. What we focus on becomes our reality.
  4. The language we use creates our reality.
  5. When we ask questions we influence the group.
  6. We gain confidence to journey into the future (the unknown) when we take parts of the past (the known) with us.
  7. Those parts of the past we take with us should come from what is best about the past.
  8. Diversity offers capacity. We should value our differences.
  9. Rational decisions will not be implemented if they are resisted by inner dialogue. This is true of individuals and organisations. For change to take root we must change the stories we tell each other.

 

Rather than seeing your organisation as a problem to be solved you may now view your team and the work you do as a High Road to Opportunity.


The Appreciative Inquiry process

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is very uplifting. There are four major steps:

 

Discovering Appreciating “The Best of What Is.”The team develops a picture of all of the positive elements of their history.
Dreaming Envisioning “What Could Be”.Creating a composite picture of what the organisation would like to become.
Designing Co-Constructing “What Should Be”.Defining the agreements to ensure the implementation of the design.

 
Delivery Sustaining “What Will Be”.Implementing the agreements.

 

We regularly use the first two steps, in different ways, in team workshops. Invariably we find the process of Discovering and Dreaming releases a burst of positive energy in a group.

 

This positive approach to organisation change provides significant advantages over traditional problem-based methodologies.

  1. It floods the organisation with constructive conversations focussing on energising possibilities rather than problems.
  2. People enjoy a sense of hope, inspiration and feeling good about themselves and each other. A spirit of creativity is released.
  3. A capacity to learn new skills and behaviours emerges and grows.
  4. Teams tend to organise themselves and make more decisions towards innovative possibilities.
  5. As connect emerging ideas with a positive core for change they develop the capacity for vast and positive change.

How we could proceed

I have been incorporating structured storytelling and reporting in team builds for many years and have been amazed by the positive energy created through the process.

 

Let’s talk about how this can work for you.