Appreciative Inquiry and Organisational change

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Appreciative Inquiry and Organisational change

• Sarah Lewis

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Appreciative Inquiry

• What is it and whats new about it?
• How does it work?
• How do you do it?
• What are the implications for practice?

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What is it?

• Theory of organisational change
• That grew out of a dissatisfaction with Action
  Research
• Post modern in its ontological and
  epistemological base
• David Cooperrider, Suresh Srivastva

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So whats new in appreciative inquiry?

• Organisations as the triumph of the human
  imagination
• Organisations as products of human interaction
  and mind
• Not how things go wrong - isnt it amazing they
  work at all
• The move from deficit language to life centric
  approaches
• From vocabularies of human deficit to
  vocabularies of hope
• Organisations dont need fixing, need constant
  re-affirmation

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Appreciative Inquiry Problem Solving

• Problem solving
• Felt need identification of problem
• Analysis of causes
• Analysis of possible solutions
• Action planning (treatment)
• Basic assumption organisation is a problem to be
  solved

• Appreciative inquiry
• Appreciating and valuing the best of what is
• Envisioning what might be
• Dialoguing what should be
• Innovating what will be
• Basic assumption organisation is a mystery to be
  embraced.

Hammond 1996
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Appreciative inquiry principles

• The constructionist principle
• The simultaneity principle
• The poetic principle
• The anticipatory principle
• The positive principle

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The four D model

• Identify those peak times when everything
  operated perfectly
• What factors were behind the peak experiences
• What intervention will make the peak experience
  the norm?
• Affirmative topics, always homegrown, can be on
  anything the people in the organisation feel
  gives life to the system

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The four D model

• Discovery Discover and disclose positive
  capacity
• Dreaming A sense of how things could be
• Design Creation of the ideal organisation
• Destiny An inspired movement

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Appreciative Inquiry
Discover and Value the best of what is
Affirmative Topic Choice
Destiny (co-construct the future) What will be
Dreaming (envisioning the future) What might be
Design through Dialogue What should be
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Role of consultant

• Explorers not mechanics
• Active agent not impartial bystander
• Wordsmith
• Collaborator
• Generous, curious, appreciative, systemic

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Implications for managers and leaders

• The main task of management is meaning making and
  creating possibilities to go on
• Organisations are networks of conversation in
  which accounts are created
• More than one account can exist, none is the
  truth, all may be true
• Conversation/communication contains moral order
• Affect action through communication

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Sarah Lewis Jemstone Consultancy 020 8293
0017 sarahlewis_at_jemstoneconsultancy.co.uk www.jems
toneconsultancy.co.uk
Thank you