Appreciative Inquiry

Change at the Speed of Imagination

Jane Magruder Watkins, Bernard J. Mohr, Ralph Kelly

• Publisher: Pfeiffer
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781118015124
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Personalmanagement

Thoroughly revised and updated, the second edition of Appreciative Inquiry offers OD and HR professionals a user-friendly resource for discovering how they can tap into the power of the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) process. An innovative process, AI is an effective way to work with a company as an organic system whose success depends on a holistic approach to connect that organization's human, technical, and organizational functions.

This new edition meets the challenge of making the AI process accessible and updates three key areas of the process: the theoretical basis, fundamental assumptions and beliefs, and the basic processes. It includes step-by-step guidelines on how to apply AI in a variety of organizational situations and shows how it can be used with a wide range of initiatives, such as coaching, leadership development, strategic planning, and teambuilding.

"If there's one book to read on AI, this is it. It provides the context and rationale for this paradigm changing approach to change at any level of system. Buy it, read it, use it and enjoy achieving great results and renewed energy and enthusiasm."
— Barbara Sloan, director, Organizational Development and Learning, New York University, Langone Medical Center

"Appreciative Inquiry brings the freedom and creativity of AI together with the 'nuts and bolts' of how to actually do it all. It contains everything I would want to have as a fresh practitioner, from potential designs to sample questions and excellent Case Stories."
— David Shaked, founder and CEO, Almond Insight, United Kingdom

"This book serves as a complete roadmap for those interested in the philosophy and practice of Appreciative Inquiry. The Case Stories encourage readers to find their own way on the journey by providing examples of successful interventions."
— Terry Egan, professor, Management Studies, Pepperdine University

CHAPTER 1
The Case for a New Approach to Change

“Change is not what it used to be. The status quo will no longer be the best way forward … we are entering an Age of Unreason, when the future, in so many areas, is there to be shaped, by us and for us; a time when the only prediction that will hold true is that no predictions will hold true; a time, therefore, for bold imaginings in private life as well as public, for thinking the unlikely and doing the unreasonable.”

Charles Handy, The Age of Unreason

AS WE ENTER THE SECOND DECADE OF THE 21ST CENTURY, we see and experience a world in constant and relentless change. In the decade since the first edition of this book was published, the shifts and emerging versions of reality have approached change at the speed of imagination. We live in a time unimaginable even by our parents’ generation—a time of rapid and continuous shifts in how human beings experience, describe, and interact with the world around us. This macro shift calls for new levels of knowledge and a higher capacity to understand and live in an environment that is no longer experienced as stable, predictable, or even comprehensible.

In this chapter, we will describe some of these changes that are observable in both the natural and social sciences and look at the impact of those changes on organizations and on the theories and practices in the field of organization development and change. Finally, we will look at Appreciative Inquiry (AI) as a theory that can be a perspective and approach for any model or method in the practice for organization change and transformation, that is, any process traditionally used in the field of organization development. We will provide information and examples of ways in which the intentionally positive and strength-based theory of Appreciative Inquiry can be applied to traditional OD models and methods in ways that enable human systems to develop the capacity and flexibility to live in a world that is created by the interactions of those who inhabit it.

We used Charles Handy’s quote (above) in the first edition of this book published in 2000. As we write this second edition a decade later, we find ourselves in the midst of the kind of world that Handy predicted! The change was, indeed, “unimaginable!”

One of the most articulate of the writers struggling to describe the magnitude and speed of change in the last decade is Thomas Friedman in The World Is Flat. We add his comments here to share with you what seems to us to be a remarkable explanation for the phenomenal changes we are experiencing. Friedman writes of “a tale of technology and geo-economics that is fundamentally reshaping our lives—much, much more quickly than many people realize.” He tells the story of a visit to India and a conversation that woke him up to the realization that globalization is already here. He writes: “I wish I could say I saw it all coming. … The longer I was there, the more upset I became—upset at the realization that globalization had entered a whole new phase, and I had missed it.”

His Indian colleague explained to him: ‘‘What happened over the last years is that there was a massive investment in technology when hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in putting broadband connectivity around the world, undersea cables, all those things. At the same time, computers became cheaper and dispersed all over the world, and there was an explosion of e-mail software, search engines like Google, and proprietary software that can chop up any piece of work and send one part to Boston, one part to Bangalore, and one part to Beijing, making it easy for anyone to do remote development. When all of these things suddenly came together around 2000, they created a platform where intellectual work, intellectual capital, could be delivered from anywhere. It could be disaggregated, delivered, distributed, produced, and put back together again—and this gave a whole new degree of freedom to the way we do work, especially work of an intellectual nature.”

Friedman describes the evolution over time: “This has been building for a long time. Globalization 1.0 (1492 to 1800) shrank the world from a size large to a size medium, and the dynamic force in that era was countries globalizing for resources and imperial conquest. Globalization 2.0 (1800 to 2000) shrank the world from a size medium to a size small, and it was spearheaded by companies globalizing for markets and labor. Globalization 3.0 (which started around 2000) is shrinking the world from a size small to a size tiny and flattening the playing field at the same time. And while the dynamic force in Globalization 1.0 was countries globalizing and the dynamic force in Globalization 2.0 was companies globalizing, the dynamic force in Globalization 3.0—the thing that gives it its unique character—is individuals and small groups globalizing. Individuals must, and can, now ask: Where do I fit into the global competition and opportunities of the day, and how can I, on my own, collaborate with others globally? But Globalization 3.0 not only differs from the previous eras in how it is shrinking and flattening the world and in how it is empowering individuals. It is also different in that Globalization 1.0 and 2.0 were driven primarily by European and American companies and countries. But going forward, this will be less and less true. Globalization 3.0 is not only going to be driven more by individuals but also by a much more diverse—non-Western, non-white—group of individuals. In Globalization 3.0, you are going to see every color of the human rainbow take part.”

Friedman continues: “Today, a fourteen-year-old in Romania or Bangalore or the Soviet Union or Vietnam has all the information, all the tools, all the software easily available to apply knowledge however they want. … As bioscience becomes more computational and less about wet labs and as all the genomic data becomes easily available on the Internet, at some point you will be able to design vaccines on your laptop. … The upside is that by connecting all these knowledge pools we are on the cusp of an incredible new era of innovation, an era that will be driven from left field and right field, from West and East and from North and South. Today, anyone with smarts, access to Google, and a cheap wireless laptop can join the innovation fray.”

(It is not hyperbole to note that collaborative, innovative, and strength-based processes emerge when people dialogue in an appreciative mode. The process itself enables them to co-create a future that is “owned” by all involved in the dialogue; and this mutual “ownership” results in collaborative processes for co-creation. Once individual members of a group or organization internalize the power of focusing on the positive aspects of a situation, the more facile the group or organization gets at managing the reality of constant and relentless change.)

Unlike the world of 2000, Appreciative Inquiry as well as other innovative and strength based approaches to the field of organization development (OD) and change are recognized and sought after by those who live and work in “human systems.” We are seeing methods and practices that deal with whole systems. Traditional practices are being revised and adapted in order to take into account the speed of change, the complexity of the environment, and the unpredictability of human behavior. The concept of “social construction,” so problematic for many years, is more and more understood to be causal. We do, indeed, create what we imagine together!

In a major paper titled “Organization Discourse and New Organization Development Practices,” written by David Grant and Robert J. Marshak and published in 2008 in the British Journal of Management (eight years after the publication of the first edition of this book and nearly twenty years after the emergence of AI in the work of David Cooperrider and colleagues at Case Western Reserve University) the authors write:

“A new ensemble of organization development (OD) practices have emerged that are based more on constructionist, post modern and new sciences premises than on the assumptions of the early founders (of OD). These include practices associated with Appreciative Inquiry, large group interventions, changing mindsets and consciousness, addressing diversity and multicultural realities, and advancing new and different models of change. … In particular, studies of organizational discourse based upon social constructionist and critical perspectives offer compelling ideas and practices associated with the establishment of change concepts, the role of power and context in relation to organizational change, and specific discursive interventions designed to foster organizational change. … Recently, organizational change research has undergone a ‘metamorphosis,’ one that encompasses a pluralism of approaches and a strengthening of the links between organizational studies and the social sciences (Pettigrew, Woodman, & Cameron, 2001, p. 697). We contend that on...