Appreciative Inquiry
Appreciative Inquiry is an approach to organisational analysis and learning that is uniquely intended for discovering, understanding, and fostering innovations in social organisational arrangements and processes. The art of appreciation is the art of discovering and valuing those factors that give life to an organisation or group. The process involves interviewing and storytelling to draw the best of the past to set the stage for effective visualisation of what might be.
Through our collective conversations:
- We discover and value those factors that give life to an organisation
- We envision what might be
- We engage in dialogue to help the individual appreciation become collective appreciation
- We construct the future through innovation and action
- We design how we will make it happen
Appreciative Inquiry requires a move out of deficit language into an appreciation of what works well in an organisation with the belief that you get more of what you pay attention to. It seeks the best of “what is” in order to provide a shared platform for imagining “what might be”.
What is "Appreciative Inquiry?"
What problems do you have? versus What’s working around here?
These two questions underline the difference between traditional change management theory and Appreciative Inquiry. The traditional approach is to look at what’s wrong , carry out a diagnosis and to design a solution. As such the primary focus is on what’s wrong or broken, and therefore since we look for problems, we find them, and by paying attention to the we amplify them.
The Appreciative approach focuses on what is working in an organisation and what make it work well, by focusing on these, we uncover what underpins these successful situations. We can then strive to recreate these conditions and by focusing on these we amplify them.
The thin book of Appreciative Inquiry. Sue Annis Hammond
The Appreciative Inquiry approach
Rather than asking “What is wrong with the working environment, what are its weaknesses?” We might enquire, “Describe a time when you were reassured that the working environment assisted you to deliver services effectively? or, “What do you value most about the environment?” The key is to encourage others to take an interest in each other and their organisations. The challenge is for others to ask… “How can we make this better?”
Appreciative Inquiry concentrates not on what is wrong, but on what works. The Appreciative Inquiry approach doesn’t ignore the current situation, it keeps the focus on what is desired and how to achieve it.
The AI approach engages people in a series of conversations about moments when they felt energised and encouraged by successes and because these experiences actually happened to them, people know how to talk about and explain their successes. It is a question of drawing out this ‘expertise’. The stirring up of these memories has the effect of creating energy and excitement. Through such conversations, we learn about the power that can come from developing an ‘appreciative approach’ regarding situations as opportunities to be grasped and developed.