We are not short of things that we can be gloomy about.

All organisations and systems have problems and can spend a very long time indeed talking about them, looking at them, thinking about them, seeking ‘solutions’ that may not actually exist if it’s not that ‘type’ of problem, etc etc

Appreciative Inquiry starts in a different place.  Maybe, just maybe, we are doing some things right ….

Maybe, just maybe, we already have a metaphorical magic potion and we’re just not recognising it and using it enough.

Appreciative Inquiry is a 4 stage process that begins with appreciating what is working and what is special in any given set up.  Imagine the difference already between this and a standard consultancy approach that focusses on the problems and implicitly tells you how hopeless you are.  People love the freshness of the approach – ‘let’s start with what we have and look for what might already be the ‘seeds’ of our future development.’

The 4 stage process is built around 4 ‘D’s’, because that is the way people do these things :

Discovery : The identification of what works well

Dream : The envisioning of how that could be built on

Design : The planning and prioritising of a future that makes the best possible use of the vision

Destiny (or delivery) : The implementation of the design

Another aspect that makes this great process is that ideally each stage involves larger numbers of people than the previous one, as momentum and energy is built.  So, a relatively small number of people may be involved in initial appreciative interviews; a larger number of people may make sense of the collated data and ‘dream’ together; then inspired by the ‘dream’, a still larger number of people get involved in the practical design and then those people in turn ensure that an even larger number of people get involved in implementation.

This isn’t about ‘experts’ telling you what is wrong with you and what you need to do.  This is about people coming together and being the best they can be more of the time.

Appreciative Inquiry can combine well with World Cafe, as part of the appreciation and creativity processes are very much about appreciating the diversity within the system and understanding that not everyone sees things the way you do.

The excellent Appreciative Inquiry commons website quotes University of Michigan Professor Robert Quinn, in his acclaimed book Change the World, who writes: ” Appreciative Inquiry is currently revolutionizing the field of organizational development.”  It’s not about clever consultants, it’s not about senior managers leading restructuring programmes – it is about how human beings work and we all know that we like to be appreciated !