Appreciative inquiry (AI) is a positive approach to leadership development and organizational change. The method is used to boost innovation among organizations. A company might apply appreciative inquiry to best practices, strategic planning, organizational culture, and to increase the momentum of initiatives. This approach has also been applied at the societal level for discussion on topics of global importance. For example, non-profit and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) might design initiatives across global regions and industry sectors after analysis using appreciative inquiry.
The Appreciative Inquiry model was developed at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. It was based on research by David Cooperrider and Ronald Fry. The core idea behind Appreciative Inquiry is that a problem—solving perspective creates inefficiencies and sub-optimal outcomes. As firms aim to improve efficiency, survive, perform better, and boost competitiveness, AI proponents argue there's an over-emphasis on "fixing what's wrong" through a deficit-based approach. In other words, a "problem-solving" approach is fundamentally negative since it implies criticism and remediation.
Instead, Appreciative Inquiry seeks a positive approach. The model uses analysis that focuses on the best and most effective aspects of living systems and organizations at a societal level. Appreciative Inquiry discovers the untapped positive potential of an organization. For example, a model might focus on a system's opportunities, assets, spirit, and value. The discovery of potential harnesses the energy needed to facilitate a change rooted in breakthrough, discovery, and innovation. In 1990, Cooperrider and Fry established five principles of appreciative inquiry, including:
Typically, organizations take the principles from Appreciative Inquiry and create change using a 5D-cycle, which represents a process or working model. Below are the five cycles that most organizations implement. At this stage, it’s essential to clarify the focus or purpose of the project. This includes identifying the starting point, purpose, and what needs to be achieved or improved within the system. In other words, what is it that we want to focus on and achieve together? Through dialogue and inquiry, the goal of the second stage is to find out what works within the organization or community. The focus is to discover what the organization does well, its successes, and areas of excellence. This stage includes gathering the past achievements and successes identified in the previous stage to help imagine what the organization would look like with a new vision for the future. It allows those who are in the organization to dream of what could be achieved. Participants and employees get a chance to identify their hopes or aspirations for the future by creating a wish list. The design stage combines the second and third stages. It combines the best of what is along with what might be to achieve what should be. In other words, it merges the strengths with the wish lists to formulate the ideal organization.
The last stage establishes how the design is to be delivered and executed. This might include how it will be embedded within the organization, identifying the teams or groups throughout the organization or community that can bring about the change. Many organizations have used Appreciative Inquiry. For example, the United States Navy used the method for its leadership development program. In the early 2000s, the Navy had faced a growing need and desire to change its culture and how the organization was viewed since it had experienced challenges with recruiting and retention. The Navy introduced Appreciative Inquiry through a series of interviews from the bottom-up within its hierarchal structure. The goal of the interview process wasn't merely to ask about the Navy's problems and how to solve them but to inquire as to what represented the best of the Navy from each interviewee. The Navy's approach was to combine the best values of the organization with asking what should be and envision what could be. Instead of viewing the Navy as a problem that needed to be solved, the goal shifted to a "what can be" strategy. The Navy used a 360-degree feedback method to draw on each person's knowledge that included multi-dimensional leadership. It's focused on each person's circle of influence, such as the direct reports, peers, and supervisors, to help create a shared vision of the Navy's leadership needed in the future.
After identifying the vision, they generated ideas and the needed changes to create and implement that vision. Creating an alignment between everyone involved empowered the participants by bringing forward ideas and change initiatives, which altered the discussion from negative to positive feedback.
Leadership stories were gathered and allowed people to relate to each other and embrace different kinds of leadership that all participants desired within the Navy. Through an analysis of all of the feedback, the change initiatives centered around several concepts, including the autonomy to act for those serving in the Navy, attention to personal needs, the types of risks leaders take, and teamwork. Appreciative inquiry (AI) is a model that seeks to engage stakeholders in self-determined change. According to Gervase Bushe, professor of leadership and organization development at the Beedie School of Business and a researcher on the topic, "AI revolutionized the field of organization development and was a precursor to the rise of positive organization studies and the strengths based movement in American management."[1] It was developed at Case Western Reserve University's department of organizational behavior, starting with a 1987 article by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva. They felt that the overuse of problem solving hampered any kind of social improvement, and what was needed were new methods of inquiry that would help generate new ideas and models for how to organize.[2] HistoryCooperrider and Srivastva took a social constructionist approach, arguing that organizations are created, maintained and changed by conversations, and claiming that methods of organizing were only limited by people's imaginations and the agreements among them.[3] In 2001, Cooperrider and Diana Whitney published an article outlining the five principles of AI.[4] In 1996, Cooperrider, Whitney and several of their colleagues became centrally involved using AI to mid-wife the creation of the United Religions Initiative, a global organization dedicated to promoting grassroots interfaith cooperation for peace, justice and healing. This early partnership between URI and AI is chronicled in Birth of a Global Community: Appreciative Inquiry in Action by Charles Gibbs and Sally Mahé. AI was also used in the first (1999) and subsequent meetings of business leaders that created the UN Global Compact.[5] In another of the early applications, Cooperrider and Whitney taught AI to employees of GTE (now part of Verizon) resulting in improvements in employees' support for GTE's business direction and as a part of continuous process improvement generated both improvements in revenue collection and cost savings earning GTE an Association for Talent Development award for the best organizational change program in the US in 1997.[6]: 176 On May 8, 2010, Suresh Srivastva died.[7] Bushe published a 2011 review of the model, including its processes, critiques, and evidence.[8] He also published a history of the model in 2012.[9] Basis and principlesAccording to Bushe, AI "advocates collective inquiry into the best of what is, in order to imagine what could be, followed by collective design of a desired future state that is compelling and thus, does not require the use of incentives, coercion or persuasion for planned change to occur."[10] The model is based on the assumption that the questions we ask will tend to focus our attention in a particular direction, that organizations evolve in the direction of the questions they most persistently and passionately ask.[11] In the mid-1980s most methods of assessing and evaluating a situation and then proposing solutions were based on a deficiency model, predominantly asking questions such as "What are the problems?", "What's wrong?" or "What needs to be fixed?". Instead of asking "What's the problem?", others couched the question in terms of "challenges", which still focused on deficiency, on what needs to be fixed or solved.[12] Appreciative inquiry was the first serious managerial method to refocus attention on what works, the positive core, and on what people really care about. Today, these ways of approaching organizational change are common.[13] The five principles of AI are:[10]
Some researchers believe that excessive focus on dysfunctions can actually cause them to become worse or fail to become better.[14] By contrast, AI argues, when all members of an organization are motivated to understand and value the most favorable features of its culture, it can make rapid improvements.[15] Strength-based methods are used in the creation of organizational development strategy and implementation of organizational effectiveness tactics.[16] The appreciative mode of inquiry often relies on interviews to qualitatively understand the organization's potential strengths by looking at an organization's experience and its potential; the objective is to elucidate the assets and personal motivations that are its strengths. Bushe has argued that mainstream proponents of AI focus too much attention on "the positive" and not enough on the transformation that AI can bring about through generating new ideas and the will to act on them.[6][17][18] In a 2010 comparative study in a school district he found that even in cases where no change occurred participants were highly positive during the AI process.[19] What distinguished those sites that experienced transformational changes was the creation of new ideas that gave people new ways to address old problems. He argues that for transformational change to occur, AI must address problems that concern people enough to want to change. However, AI addresses them not through problem-solving, but through generative images.[20] Some of this is covered in a 90-minute discussion about AI, positivity and generativity by Bushe and Dr. Ron Fry of Case Western, at the 2012 World Appreciative Inquiry Conference.[21] Distinguishing featuresThe following table comes from the Cooperrider and Whitney (2001)[full citation needed] article and is used to describe some of the distinctions between AI and approaches to organizational development not based on what they call positive potential:[22]
Appreciative inquiry attempts to use ways of asking questions and envisioning the future in order to foster positive relationships and build on the present potential of a given person, organization or situation. The most common model utilizes a cycle of four processes, which focus on what it calls:
The aim is to build – or rebuild – organizations around what works, rather than trying to fix what doesn't. AI practitioners try to convey this approach as the opposite of problem solving. Implementing AIThere are a variety of approaches to implementing appreciative inquiry, including mass-mobilised interviews and a large, diverse gathering called an Appreciative Inquiry Summit.[23] These approaches involve bringing large, diverse groups of people together to study and build upon the best in an organization or community. UsesIn Vancouver, AI is being used by the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education. The center, which was founded by the Dalai Lama and Victor Chan, is using AI to facilitate compassionate communities.[24] See also
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