TOPIC 3.3: Principles of Appreciative Inquiry
– Sue Annis Hammond[1]
| Appreciate | the best of what exists, hopes for the future |
| Apply | knowledge of what works and what’s possible |
| Provoke | imagine new ways of organising, creative improvements |
| Collaborate | collective capacity building, expertise and resources |
Figure 3.1: The Appreciative Inquiry 4-D Model, adapted from Mohr, B. & Waltkins, J. (2002) [2]
The 4-D model is infinitely transferable to any context. For example, applications of Appreciative Inquiry as a strategic tool/process to engage people in change may include:
- A group needing to frame up and agree their team approach, plan.
- Different groups needing to establish co-operative arrangements.
- An organisation considering new directions.
- Organisations merging or amalgamating or partnering.
- A researcher designing a data collection method or focus group inquiry.
- Community consultations and participation design.
- A policy officer exploring stakeholder interventions.
- An individual reflecting on his/her career direction.
So – how does AI work?
As we work with the approach, we discover that AI is a philosophy, a way of life. One assumes the position of being the detective for ‘good things’. One develops what we call an ‘appreciative ear’. One purposefully searches for and accentuates the positive. Simple really. We know that high achievers apply the ‘two for one’ 2:1 rule. They generate two positive thoughts for every negative thought. They choose to respond pro-actively and purposefully to setbacks, they learn and improve. We also know that people respond to positive attention (placebo principle) and to positive expectations (Pygmalion effect). We all have difficulties; however, it is our line of inquiry, our capacity to unearth what is helpful, our willingness to discover what we care about and what will sustain us in the future that counts.
Step 1 – Context – imagine you were going to use AI
The Appreciative Inquiry process commences with the specific context and a defined topic. Perhaps you need to address:
- changing a structure
- developing a plan
- aligning service strategy to client demand
- engaging the community
- facilitating a hostile group of stakeholders
- changing a culture
- developing a partnership
- building a team
- amalgamating two teams
- working with a new partner
- Co-designing a new product or service
- establishing a network
- reviewing a reporting framework
- reviewing a contractual arrangement.
Think about the boundaries of your topic? How do you select what’s in, what’s out and who’s in and who’s out?
Applying AI for strategic and operational change
Context specific examples of AI application include:
- Engaging stakeholders to develop a 5-year plan for a university
- Engaging clinicians, professionals and carers to develop an inter-agency agreement to protect children under guardianship of the minister.
- Engaging a community to fight drought, flood or fire.
Appreciative Inquiry is a participant-centred process, so consider at least who is likely to be impacted by the topic or the change you are addressing. It is useful to gather a small representative group to frame the topic and then to work together to establish the key questions to be asked in your Appreciative Inquiry.
Recommended
10 min
Think of a change you are keen to make in your work context.
- What are you trying to achieve?
- Who will be impacted by the change?
- What is the outcome you are after?
Step 2 – Create the questions to explore the topic
Based on the assumption that something works, and that people care enough to have raised the issue, start thinking about the questions you might ask. For example:
- Who are the participants in the process? Who will be impacted by the change?
- What have we got to build on?
- What works best around here? Describe a time when you think the team/organisation(s) performed really well. What were the circumstances during that time?
- When are you most proud to be associated with the team/organisation/network?
- What’s the best possible outcome for you, how best may team/organisation/network strengths be employed?
These questions help to frame the intent of the Appreciative Inquiry and provide a framework for creating questions to facilitate participants’ positive engagement in the change process.
Recommended
10 mins
What is the topic/focus of your inquiry (e.g. collaboration, partnering, design or strategy)?
Think about the questions you want the participants to address.
- What strengths are they bringing to the process?
- What values are important to them?
- What will sustain the proposed change?
- How do they hope the new arrangements will work?
Step 3 – Design an inquiry protocol which suits the context and required outcomes
The appreciative interview protocol is the starting point of the Discovery phase “the best of what is”. Useful guidelines for framing the appreciative inquiry protocol include having four questions relating to the topic and designed to reflect:
- best experiences,
- values,
- life giving force and
- hopes.
This enables participants to take the best of the past (known) into the future (unknown) and provides rich experiential and contextual data from which to identify binding themes and to collectively imagine new and exciting possibilities.
Irrespective of the size of the group, commencing the process with paired interviews is valuable. Participants are encouraged to share stories, examples and hopes with their partner.
After the interview, they remain with their partner and form small groups with three or four other pairs. Each person reflects and shares their partner’s information with the small group. Together the group identifies highlights of their stories, compelling themes, and core values with which they want to move forward.
An example of an appreciative inquiry protocol might be:
Topic: Partnering
Question 1: Reflecting on your experience working with partners or working in partnership to date, what have been the high points? Select an example of when you felt you were making a real difference. What were the circumstances? Why did it feel good? Who were you working with? What did you/your partner achieve? What was special about this experience? Describe the story around your example….
Question 2: What is it that you value most about:
- Yourself, your distinctive competence
- Your partner, their contribution
- Your clients, recipients of your services
Question 3: What ‘gives life’ to government/community/business partnerships… without ‘it’ (this core life giving force), the partnership would cease to exist?
Question 4: What are your hopes for the partnership – what best might it represent, what might it achieve? What key success factors would indicate to you that the partnership is achieving its goals and being effective over time?
Data collation
There are options with regard to the collation and sharing of data that emerges from the Discovery phase. A small group may be requested to identify themes and develop a new vision relative to the
topic of the inquiry or the entire group may (with facilitator support) extract themes and highlights that are used to inform Phase 2 Dream and the development of provocative propositions.
Recommended
10 mins
Imagine you were about to commence working in partnership with a private/non-government provider – what would you be contributing to the partnership?
Step 4 – Provocative propositions
During the Dream phase “imagining what might be”, participants are asked to envision results and engage in future search. Information from the Discover phase is used as a platform to speculate on possible and desired futures for the organisation, system, network or team. Participants may self-select, depending on their interest and expertise, key themes, which they transform into statements of strategic and social intent i.e. positive propositions which excite them, stretch them and guide them towards a preferred future. The beauty in this process lies in the connections people see and express, and in where they want to go taking what they really value with them. The process provides people with the opportunity to exercise their imaginative competence based on their best experiences, their core human values, their appreciation of interdependencies and their collective goodwill. The process generates a higher order convergence which serves to connect multiple and equally important priorities without resorting to compliant compromises, parallel and competing visions, reductionist or subversive specialisations.
Great provocative propositions are:
- Bold and positive
- Interrupt our thinking
- Grounded in people’s stories
- Simple
Positive provocative propositions may be expressed in many ways (text, diagram, metaphor, bumper sticker, song, dance!). They are proposals, ways forward, guideposts articulated as principles or frameworks for strategic and social intent.
Positive provocative propositions inform the Design phase of the Appreciative Inquiry process as the parties work together to operationalise their shared intent.
Recommended
10 mins
Think of great provocative propositions (vision statements) you’ve observed in business, the not-for-profit sector and government. How was the strategic narrative arrived at?
Step 5 – Operational implications of dreaming
In the Design phase, “co-constructing what should be” participants co-construct their new reality based on their articulation of direction, principles, strategic framework. Questions relate to what would be ideal, how can we make it work, what conceptual, behavioural, operational changes do we need to make? Hard work is willingly undertaken here as concept teams, project teams, task forces, working parties form voluntarily to work through ‘making it happen’. The emphasis is on practically working through the transitions required to achieve the provocative propositions. In the process, propositions may be recast, the spirit of intent may be further questioned, and infinite iterations may emerge.
The essence is that a positive momentum has been generated and, underpinned by a shared ‘headset of intent’; multiple intelligences are legitimised to progress the agenda. Having been through the discovery and dreaming phases, people see where they fit, how they’re connected to and valued in the process of achieving the outcome. This generates a confidence and capacity to contribute which, in organisational life today, is priceless.
Step 6 – Delivering and rediscovering
The 4-D cycle evolves through Design to the Deliver phase “sustaining, learning, adjusting” as participants affirm their achievements. Reflection on key measures of effectiveness, ways of knowing, recognising and acknowledging what has been achieved is encouraged. Simple scorecards with key performance indicators linked to original propositions may be tabled and endorsed. New quantitative and qualitative benchmarks may be proposed so participants progressively validate their improvements. Positive shifts in strategy, structure and culture are marked, quantitatively and qualitatively, and used to inform new questions and conversations as the 4-D cycle is revisited for ongoing planning and review purposes.
Recommended
20 mins
Imagine a situation in which you could very effectively use the Appreciative Inquiry 4-D process to engage people in change and build their commitment in the process (rather than alienate them).
So, what’s so special about Appreciative Inquiry?
For those of us involved in working with groups, large and small, in turbulent contexts where, increasingly, we experience the diminishing marginal returns of traditional practices, Appreciative Inquiry offers a new dimension in managing transitions and getting ‘people on board’. The approach, principles and model provide an integrating framework within which multiple strategies, tailored to context, may flexibly be applied.
Managers change agents and leaders are encouraged to acknowledge our own assumptions about professional practice and embody the spirit of Appreciative Inquiry in our lives. Appreciative Inquiry is a mindset, a deliberate choice to discover what works and to do more of it.
The approach requires willingness on behalf of the manager to systematically search for possibilities and potential and to provide scope for diversity and synergy to co-exist in the pursuit of collective interest based on mutual understanding. The potency of the approach lies in the frames of positive inquiry and the realisation that change and inquiry are simultaneous. A genuine curiosity, preparedness to listen and relentless reframing of issues into opportunities is grist to the Appreciative Inquiry mill. The outcomes are sweet in terms of participant-generated, positive, co-designed and sustainable change.
35 min
- Mellish, L. (2011) Facilitating Strategic AI Interventions. International Journal of Appreciative Inquiry May 2011, Volume 13, Number 2
Examples and Results
In Australia, Appreciative Inquiry has been used extensively in government, in the higher education sector, in schools, with community organisations and in professional service firms. The following journal article sets out an example in a higher education institution.
Results have been reported in terms of improved service cultures, structural realignment without industrial disputation, community renewal projects, integrated government service delivery, reduced costs of duplication and in-house competition, school-based management, resolution of cultural conflicts.
The Appreciative Inquiry approach to change is suited to environments characterised by impermanence, turbulence, multiple and competing agendas, ideological diversity and cultural conflict. Appreciative Inquiry offers hope and space for participants to influence and determine their preferred future. The connections between macro and micro strategies, strategic and operational matters and individual fit within the system become clear.
The approach generates focus, creativity and goodwill. These capacities are self-sustaining, build adaptive competence and sustain complex systems in change.
As managers increasingly work in cross-sector, cross-team, cross-boundary situations, Appreciative Inquiry processes provide a means for building relationships for collective and shared purposes. Having Appreciative Inquiry tools in your toolkit and capability in your team is essential to managing outwards in a networked government.
If you would like to know more about the effectiveness of Appreciative Inquiry and a range of facilitation processes, check the deeper learning readings and activities.
Deeper Learning
Identify an opportunity to apply Appreciative Inquiry at work.
- Identify the context and the topic for inquiry.
- Craft four key appreciative inquiry questions to commence the process.
Note: You may also wish to start thinking about the opportunities to use Appreciative Inquiry in your PSMP Workplace Project, particularly if you anticipate working through a change that requires ‘buy in’ and commitment from stakeholders and staff.