Santa Fe Learning Centers USA/Mexico
Information on Appreciative Inquiry and other processes used in our programs.
As developed by David Cooperrider and S. Srivastva of Case Western University, Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a methodology and philosophy of organizational change and development that identifies best practices of the past and seeks to amplify the values and core principles that led to success. It uses the best practices and peak experiences of individuals in the organization to help collectively visualize the optimistic and ideal future. AI facilitates co-creating provocative propositions that are bold statements about what the organization could be and in turn, forge action plans to achieve the proposals.
AI is a solution-focused philosophy that sees the glass half full rather than half empty. Although problems are not ignored, they are not allowed to be the focus of the inquiry and drain the energy of the organization. AI is holistic because it can easily involve large percentages of the organization’s individuals, customers and other stakeholders.
Who uses AI?
Avon International and especially Avon Mexico were facing an interesting challenge. Their mission is to support and understand women’s self fulfillment needs globally. Yet there were few senior women managers at Avon and no women on the executive committee at Avon Mexico. Using the “Four D” Appreciative Inquiry process, Avon Mexico won the Catalyst Award given annually to organizations for its policies and practices that benefit women. The first woman officer on the executive committee was appointed within six months of the AI project. The key learnings included:
- “Avon Mexico profits increased. The intervention helped a successful company become even more successful.”
- AI is like disappearing stitches that blend into the organization
- Mexico is a “relational” culture with a rich oral tradition making the inquiry process more comfortable for the participants.
GTE received the American Society for Training and Development Award for the best cultural change initiative founded on AI principles in 1998. Studies of professional athletes have shown that positive feedback is most effective. Athletes shown what they are doing right on videotape improve faster than those shown what they did wrong. Bishop Swing of the United Religions Initiative is finding AI helpful in promoting world peace when other methods have failed (see Fast Company, November 2000).
WHAT IS THE BASIC AI PROCESS?
AI is different from usual problem solving approaches:
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Problem Solving Identify the problems or issues Explores below the surfacecauses Solutions are brainstormed Solutions are analyzed and prioritized Action Plans for implementation An organization is a problem to be solved….
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Appreciative Inquiry Involves large numbers of staff Explores core principles Values what “gives life” Explores best practices Imagines “what might be” Determines “what should be” Creates “what will be” An organization is a mystery to be embraced…..
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The AI process can be divided into the following areas of work:
D-1 Define and Discover, key issues facing the organization and the Team. Selecting an inquiry topic is not a problem solving session. Issues can revolve around the need for change. This can be due to both internal and external environmental forces. The value of positive change is explored. Difficulties are framed in positive language such as the “glass is half full…how can we fill it the rest of the way?” Discovery takes place through interviews which bring out stories about what “gives life” to the individual, team and its work. Mini interviews or dialogue can identify the theme or common topic to be used for the more in-depth interviews. Topics to be explored could include: team performance, leadership, reengineering, shared vision, communication, growth goals etc. Synthesizing the best stories to find the core principles is performed by the team. Searching for inspirational quotes and “catalytic mechanisms” in the stories helps preserve the “juice” in the stories….helps describe what about the story was “life giving.”
D-2 Dreaming, envisioning the ideal organization, exploring what is possible by analyzing the data and the shared meanings discovered. Guided visualization exercises can develop new dreams and ideal images of the future. Meaningful dialogue about the stories takes place and what values and principles in the stories can be shared and embrace. What about the stories is worthy of including in a dream for the future? Discovery and Dreaming often occur concurrently during the interview process.
D-3 Design, Forging “Provocative Propositions that weave together positive core values and vision consensus. Provocative Propositions are bold statements about what the organization will be and do next. They are based on commonly held values and visions of the future obtained from the data collected and analyzed in the interview process.
D-4 Destination or Delivery, Co-construction of the preferred future, brainstorming, planning and committing. Brainstorm ideas of different ways to implement plans to support the Provocative Propositions. Consider the resources needed to implement the plans. Consider the social architecture and organizational changes that would be required to implement the Propositions. Make commitments to take action and to be change agents to achieve the Propositions’ results. Celebrating the success of the process and its outcomes is beneficial. Celebrating creates cohesion and a sense or worth and well being.
What the founder has to say about AI:
“Appreciative Inquiry is about the co-evolutionary 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, ecological, and human terms. AI involves, in a central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential. It centrally involves the mobilization of inquiry through the crafting of the “unconditional positive question” often-involving hundreds or sometimes thousands of people. In AI, the arduous task of intervention gives way to the speed of imagination and innovation; instead of negation, criticism, and spiraling diagnosis, there is discovery, dream, and design.
AI seeks, fundamentally, to build a constructive union between a whole people and the massive entirety of what people talk about as past and present capacities:
achievements, assets, unexplored potentials, innovations, strengths, elevated thoughts, opportunities, benchmarks, high point moments, lived values, traditions, strategic competencies, stories, expressions of wisdom, insights into the deeper corporate spirit or soul, and visions of valued and possible futures.
Taking all of these together as a gestalt, AI deliberately, in everything it does, seeks to work from accounts of this “positive change core”—and it assumes that every living system has many untapped and rich and inspiring accounts of the positive. Link the energy of this core directly to any change agenda and changes never thought possible are suddenly and democratically mobilized. “
From: A Positive Revolution in Change: Appreciative Inquiry by David L. Cooperrider Case Western Reserve University and Diana WhitneyThe Taos Institute