Appreciative Inquiry

This is the introduction to Charles Elliott's book on appreciative inquiry.

Consider these two true stories.

Rosemary Willson is a successful New York publisher. Her marriage broke up three years ago and she has custody of her 11-year-old son, Joel. Despite Rosemary's determination to provide him with every material and emotional advantage, Joel is clearly having a hard time growing up as a lone child of a single parent. He has long had behavioural problems at school, has become truant and is truculent when challenged about this at home. He has never shown much affection for his caregiver, Joanne, though she is highly trained and does everything she can to win the boy's trust and regard.

Rosemary has decided the situation is now so serious that she must tackle it more systematically. She tells Joanne to keep a list of Joel's misdemeanours and to make sure to ask his teacher each day how he has behaved when she picks him up from school.

"He has to learn," says Rosemary. "I will go through the list with him every evening-quietly, methodically, thoroughly, explaining why what he has done is wrong or unacceptable. We will soon see a big improvement. He's a bright enough youngster; he just needs to have things pointed out to him in a consistent way. Once he sees that we are on to him, he'll change...."

Joel's behaviour has gotten no better; in some important respects, it has become worse since this list-and-tell regime was begun.

Two thousand miles to the south west, the Lakota people in New Mexico also have a delinquent youngster. He has been seen damaging people's cars and trucks in the car lot outside the store. When challenged, he has been rude and dismissive of the authority of the elders.

The whole clan is called together one evening and forms a large circle. The young man's father walks with him into the middle of the circle and then joins the other adults on the perimeter. The father begins to speak first.

"You are our first born, our most precious one. Your mother and I rejoiced the first time we felt you kick in her stomach. We ran from house to house, telling all these people that you were alive and well and strong. And so you were. You were born crying with a shout so loud they heard it three hundred yards away above the radio. How proud we were! How happy! You have always made us happy. Your first few steps-oh, how you fell over into a puddle. The look on your face! How we laughed...."

On and on, the father recounts, sharing the happiest memories of his son's life. No word of criticism is uttered. The father's task is to remind the young man of all that he means to the family, the clan, the people; of all the joy and happiness he has brought; of the delight his wider family have in him.

When he is finished, it is the uncle's turn. He is followed by the two grandfathers. The sky is darkening, the stars plainly visible. It will be long past midnight before they have finished. After the men, the women speak, in gentler tones, in softer cadence-for it is on them that much of the work, from first labour pains to saving enough for schoolbooks, has fallen.

Finally, the clan chief speaks. He summarises all that has been said. He speaks slowly, with long pauses, as though searching for the deepest ways of saying what has to be said. His theme, from which he never deviates, is the same: the pride and pleasure this young man has brought to all the Lakota people; the living, the departed and those not yet born. Like all the earlier speakers, he never mentions the vandalism and the malicious damage, the shame, the anger, the futility, the mindlessness. All that is left unsaid, unhinted. The sole refrain is that this young man is a beautiful gift to the whole people, one of inexpressible value.

When the old man has finished speaking, he makes a small sign. The ring of people stands still, almost at attention, looking ahead of them at the young man in the centre of the circle. Then they melt wordlessly into the night.

Which youngster has the better chance of transformational change: the one whose faults are catalogued and reviewed each day? Or the one who has been ritually assured of his place in the hearts of all his people?

This contrast is what the appreciative approach is all about.

How to use this book

Before we go any further, it might be helpful to explain what this book seeks to do and how it does it.

Primarily, I want readers to both understand and feel what appreciative inquiry is and how it can be used to change organisations and communities. Feeling is as important as understanding, because the methodology teaches us that the energy for change comes from both the heart and the head. Appreciative inquiry takes the energy of the "positive present"-with the Lakota boy, the best possible interpretation of his meaning to his people-and uses it to build vision of a positive, desired future, one that is grounded in reality. It then helps people mobilise forces for change to turn that vision into reality-to help the Lakota boy grow into a responsible, fulfilled person.

Appreciative inquiry was developed at Case Western Reserve University in the early 1990s, primarily as a methodology to help corporations and institutions improve their competitive advantage or organisational effectiveness. I have used it in this context and found that it can produce dramatic results, as you will learn from the examples and case studies presented later on. More recently, I have applied it at the community level in developing countries. Here, appreciative inquiry appears to work equally well. It involves a significant shift in emphasis from local problems to local achievements, from participation to inspiration. By identifying and reinforcing positive and constructive actions, relationships and visions within a community, it encourages local ownership in activities that contribute to sustainable development and secure livelihoods at the village level.

Whether it is used to help a multinational corporation position itself for the 21st century or a community of nomadic herdspeople build new livelihoods, an appreciative inquiry usually proceeds through four stages:

1. Discovering periods of excellence and achievement. Through interviews and story-telling, participants remember significant past achievements and periods of excellence. When was their organisation or community functioning at its best? What happened to make those periods of excellence possible? By telling stories, people identify and analyse the unique factors-such as leadership, relationships, technologies, core processes, structures, values, learning processes, external relations, or planning methods-that contributed to peak experiences.
2. Dreaming an ideal organisation or community. In this step people use past achievements to envisage a desired future. This aspect of appreciative inquiry is different from other vision-creating or planning methodologies because the images of the community's future that emerge are grounded in history, and as such represent compelling possibilities. In this sense appreciative inquiry is both practical, in that it is based on the "positive present," and generative, in that it seeks to expand the potential of the organisation or community.
3. Designing new structures and processes. This stage is intended to be provocative-to develop, through consensus, concrete short- and long-term goals that will achieve the dream. Provocative propositions usually take the form of statements such as, "This community will do whatever is necessary to build a school and have a full primary cycle within the next year." Or, "This company will champion innovation by creating new teams that integrate marketing and product development more effectively." Or, "This village will protect what remains of the local forest and will plant one thousand trees over the next two seasons to ensure the forest's survival for future generations." Provocative propositions should stretch an organisation or community, but they should also be achievable because they are based on past periods of excellence.
4. Delivering the dream. In this stage, people act on their provocative propositions, establishing roles and responsibilities, developing strategies, forging institutional linkages and mobilising resources to achieve their dream. New project plans will be developed and initiated, new relationships will be established and the group will proceed with vision and a renewed sense of purpose. As a result of the appreciative process, people will have a better understanding of the relevance of new initiatives to the long-term vision of the organisation or community.

That's how it's supposed to work. In reality, of course, it never turns out quite the way you expect. My aim is to introduce the reader to the theory (modestly) and the practice (more extensively) of appreciative inquiry. Why? Because I have come to believe that it offers a genuinely new and rewarding way to tackle issues of sustainable change in a vast array of organisations and institutions-from the relatively simple to the hugely complex; from the corporate to the not-for-profit; from New York to the African bush. It is not organisational snake oil, a wonder tool that will solve every organisational ill from bankruptcy to hostile legal suits. Starting from a classically Cambridge position of skepticism, however, I have become convinced that the dynamic at the heart of appreciative inquiry cannot only transform organisational processes but also can do so in a way that becomes self feeding and therefore sustainable in the longer run.

To be more specific, appreciative inquiry is unusual in that it combines the five features that emerge again and again in discussions of organisational sustainability. They are as follows: (1) the incorporation of a wide range of stakeholders in assessing the past and planning the future; (2) transparency of organisational self-reflection; (3) the inclusive determination of decision-making criteria which include (4) non-quantifiable, non-financial elements that may crucially affect the long-term health of the organisation; and (5) the wide dissemination of power and influence throughout the organisation, as implied in (2) and (3).

How should readers use this book? Let me suggest the following guidelines:

• If you want to understand why appreciative inquiry works, read part 1. This section will introduce you to the psychological and social underpinnings of the methodology.
• If you want to learn how to conduct an appreciative inquiry, go directly to part 2. This section will take you through a typical appreciative inquiry, with all the untidiness, confusion, risk-taking and mixed emotions that will be familiar to anyone who has worked with organisations and communities.
• If you want to read about appreciative inquiry in action, turn to part 3. This section presents case studies of appreciative inquiry at work in organisational and community settings.

Naturally, I hope most readers will read all three sections, inevitably with variations in emphasis.

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