Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is an organisational development process or philosophy that engages individuals within an organisational system in its renewal, change and focused performance.

Appreciative Inquiry was adopted from work done by earlier theorists and practitioners and further developed by David Cooperrider of Case Western Reserve University. It is now a commonly accepted practice in the evaluation of organisational development strategy and implementation of organisational effectiveness tactics.

Appreciative Inquiry is a particular way of asking questions and envisioning the future that fosters positive relationships and builds on the basic goodness in a person, a situation, or an organisation. In so doing, it enhances a system’s capacity for collaboration and change. Appreciative Inquiry utilizes a 4-stage process focusing on:

1. DISCOVER: The identification of organisational processes that work well.
2. DREAM: The envisioning of processes that would work well in the future.
3. DESIGN: Planning and prioritizing processes that would work well.
4. DESTINY (or DELIVER): The implementation (execution) of the proposed design.

The basic idea is to build organisations around what works, rather than trying to fix what doesn’t. It is the opposite of problem solving. Instead of focusing on fixing what’s wrong, AI focuses on how to create more of what’s already working. 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. It can be enjoyable and natural to many managers, who are often sociable people.

AI has been used extensively to foster change in businesses (a variety of sectors), health care systems, social profit organisations, educational institutions, communities, local governments, and religious institutions.

Appreciative Inquiry involves the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential. It assumes that every living system has many untapped and rich and inspiring accounts of the positive and instead of negation, criticism, and spiralling diagnosis, there is discovery, dream, and design.

Appreciative inquiry at Clear Horizon

At Clear Horizon we use elements of appreciative inquiry in much of our work. We think it really delivers for an organisation. However, as evaluators we are bound to report on problems as well as possible solutions, so for that reason we tend not to use it in its entirety in evaluation processes. MSC was once described as the ‘appreciative inquiry of monitoring and evaluation!” We can see that MSC uses many of the same principals, but MSC differs as it does not exclude negative stories.

References

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Websites

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