Introducing real, sustainable change, whether at an organisational, team or individual level is probably the biggest pre-occupation and challenge for the vast majority of our clients. Whatever their technical background or business sector they are constantly being asked to make things work better, faster and more effectively. Their years of education and past experience has given them the skills, techniques and processes to focus on what is going wrong, how to diagnose the root cause of the problem and how to treat and resolve it.
Yet despite all of this the problems keep coming and getting people to engage in sustainable change has never been more difficult. In this article we are going to look at an approach that turns this situation on its head - which focuses on what is working well and takes what is good and finds ways to amplify it into excellence.
Why we need to accentuate the positive?
'What gets most of your time at work - what is not working or what is working well?'
We are all familiar with the type of project/programme reviews that focus on what went wrong - with the valuable objective of learning from our mistakes and getting it right next time around. These post-mortems help us to examine the things that went wrong with a project, what were our weaknesses in delivery or how did the individual/team fail to deliver what the client wanted. Not surprisingly they often lead to defensiveness, blaming of others and a CYA mentality! When we focus on what went wrong we can often risk losing the motivation and energy of our people-impacting their sense of professionalism and confidence and making the next challenge even more daunting.
What we sometimes fail to capture are the examples of what went right? What did we do that was really good, what were our strengths and what were the positive elements? When we do this we find that people are much more prepared to talk and share information, to get engaged and to spread enthusiasm within teams and departments. So although we know it is important to fix faults and put things right we also need to recognise the benefits of capturing the positives, what we are doing well and how to build on that in a way that builds motivation and energy rather than depleting it.
We are not always used to talking about the good things about ourselves often preferring to look at our own or others shortcomings so if we are to learn how to tap into our existing and latent strengths we may need some help to do it. We think that Appreciative Inquiry (AI) might provide us with that help.
What is Appreciative Inquiry?
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is based on the assumption that organisations change in the way they inquire and that an organisation which only inquires into problems or difficult situations will keep finding more of the same but an organisation which tries to appreciate what is best in itself will find/discover more and more of what is good.
AI was adopted from work done by earlier action research theorists and practitioners and further developed by David Cooperrider of Case Western Reserve University and Suresh Srivastvain the 1980s. In their work they emphasise the benefits of encouraging a positive context in our thinking and to consider that any organisation 'is a miracle to be embraced' rather than 'a problem to be solved.'
AI is now a commonly accepted practice in the creationof organisational development strategy and tactics to improve organisational effectiveness.
AI is a particular way of asking questions, of envisioning a future that fosters collaboration, positive relationships and builds on what is good in a person, a situation, or an organisation. By using this approach, we also enhance our capacity for collaboration and change.
The principles behind A.I. are based in the rapidly developing science of Positive Psychology. The idea of building on strength, rather than just focusing on faults and weakness is a powerful idea and one which Greenbank has been building into our work whether it be in our training and development programmes or in our executive coaching assignments.
A simple example
AI can be successfully used in a variety of situations from project management, operational performance, customer service, team building and executive coaching. Let's look at one simple example of how it can be used….
A company is concerned about their customer retention rates. The more familiar route of inquiry would be to look at all the information around those customers who we lost. A possible costly and perhaps not wholly reliable approach as we seldom get to learn all of the real reasons why our customers go elsewhere.
The AI approach would be to focus on the customers who we have successfully retained. Who are they and why do they stay with us? If we can discover why they stay with us and what we do when we are working at our best with them we can then look at ways of ensuring we spread this to all of our customers. The focus of our efforts is still about achieving high performance and change but the route we take to achieve it is more positive and energising.
The 4D cycle:
If you want to try using AI there is a practical 4D cycle that you can be used to get teams working together to develop new strategies and tactics for change and imported performance:
- Discover the "best of what is"-identify where the company's processes are/have worked perfectly
- Dream "what might be" - envisioned processes that would work perfectly all the time
- Design "what should be"- define and prioritise the elements of perfect processes
- Create a Destiny based on "what will be"-the team collaborates actively in the creation of the design
The basic idea is to build organizations around what works, rather than trying to fix what doesn't. It is the opposite of problem solving. Instead of focusing on gaps and inadequacies to remediate skills or practices, AI focuses on how to create more of the exceptional performance that is occurring when a core of strengths is aligned. It opens the door to a universe of possibilities, since the work doesn't stop when a particular problem is solved but rather focuses on "What is the best we can be?" The approach acknowledges the contribution of individuals, in order to increase trust and organisational alignment. The method aims to create meaning by drawing from stories of concrete successes and lends itself to cross-industrial social activities.
We have used this cycle ourselves when working with teams and the results have been excellent. The focus of the conversations mean that they tap into their existing strengths and release new ideas focused on ways to excel rather than ways to avoid failure. Not only are the results more positive but it is more fun and the level of collaboration and engagement means that after the workshop everyone is really committed to making their plan work.
We encourage you to give it a try at your next meeting or when you next pull a task force together to look at better ways of working and accentuate the positive-eliminate the negative!
Want to read more?
A couple of books we would recommend are:
The Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry by Sue Annis-Hammond-a great, concise introduction to AI which you can read in a couple of hours
Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management: Using AI to Facilitate Organizational Developmentby Sarah Lewis, Jonathan Passmore, and Stefan Cantore - a heftier handbook with a range of change management ideas as well as ways to use AI to introduce effective change
