TOPIC 3.2: Appreciative Inquiry – What is it?

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a participant-centred approach to engagement, innovation, planning, and performance management. The AI approach to change grows out of social constructionist thought. The AI approach offers us all the process and potential to positively explore, collectively imagine, collaboratively design and jointly commit to a path forward. The following video provides a brief explanation of Appreciative Inquiry.

Assumptions of Appreciative Inquiry:

• In every society, organisation or group, something works.
• What we focus on becomes our reality.
• Reality is created in the moment, and there are multiple realities.
• The act of asking questions of an organisation or group influences the group in some way.
• People have more confidence and comfort to journey to the future (the unknown) when they carry forward parts of the past (the known).
• If we carry parts of the past forward, they should be what is best about the past.
• It is important to value differences.
• The language we use creates our reality.

Appreciative Inquiry offers the public manager a useful process for co-design, stakeholder engagement and collaborative planning.