The Power of Appreciative Inquiry

The Power of Appreciative Inquiry, A Practical Guide to Positive Change, by Diana Whitney and Amanda Trosten-Bloom, Berrett-Koehler 2010

Every so often the business community is touched by a very different new organization development methodology, one that opens up vistas of thought and action.  Appreciative Inquiry, like Peter Senge’s long-lived approach, is one such innovation.    But Appreciative Inquiry requires thoughtfulness and some patience – it’s not for every team or corporation, although its success stories are quite positive and encouraging.

In The Power of Appreciative Inquiry the authors offer an opportunity for people to improve performance by encouraging them to study, discuss, learn from, and build on what's working, rather than simply trying to fix what's not.  Whitney and Trosten-Bloom use examples from many different types of organizations to illustrate – companies like Hunter Douglas, for example.  Although the authors take us through the entire eight-step principles process used by Hunter Douglas, including its misses and near misses, it’s all good, all learning experience that goes into creating a new organization.  This book is not, however, a cookbook describing how to launch AI (Appreciative Inquiry), but rather a newer, updated volume showing AI in action.

Readers will find Table 2 in Chapter 2, and Chapter 8 -  Dream:  Visions and Voices of the Future, extremely helpful because it illustrates a different path, one that is so unlike the practice common in manufacturing, to react immediately to changes or problems.  But in fact some failures are simple indicators that require more observation and more time.  In the healthcare industry, for example, a simple clerical error can be the clue that unlocks a universe of technology and record-keeping, even treatment, challenges.  In this segment the authors ask participants to think about a Collective Dream, and to further define its image by asking and reflecting on a Focal Question.  Here is one of their great examples:

            It is twenty years from today – just one generation from now.  Your children have grown to adulthood.  They have their own children – your grandchildren.  The world that your children and grandchildren have inherited is a good world, a better world than the one you once knew.

_ what does it look like?  How and where do people live?  What do they do for work?  How do they travel?  How do they learn?

_ Imagine that you are sitting with your youngest grandchild, telling her the story of how this world came to be.  What decisions and choice did you and others make in the early twenty-first century to pave the way for this brave new world they are enjoying?  What seeds did you and others plant?  How were the seeds fertilized?  Harvested?

What a lovely challenge, a lovely opportunity to dream and construct a new better world.

Mill Girl Verdict:  We could use more of this.