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Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
Sprache: Englisch

Beschreibung

Create a shared vision built on core strengths and values to improve your organization

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) equips leaders with a revolutionary approach to achieving positive organizational change. Rather than the traditional managerial method of first evaluating a problem and then proposing a solution, AI teaches you to ask, “What is going right here, and how can we grow more of it?”

In Practical Appreciative Inquiry, expert organizational consultant and facilitator Sarah Lewis teaches you how to apply the AI methodology in an array of management situations. Step by step, this practice-oriented guide helps you leverage the versatility and flexibility of Appreciative Inquiry to make rapid, positive change.

Covering all key aspects of AI, this concise yet comprehensive resource provides a wealth of ideas and activities designed to develop an AI leadership mindset, build resilience within your organization, motivate performance, increase team innovation, support change processes, create AI interventions, and much more. Each chapter features discussion questions, teaching exercises, links to online resources, and real-world case studies of AI in practice.

Whether an experienced practitioner or a newcomer to change management, Practical Appreciative Inquiry: A Toolkit for Applying Appreciative Inquiry to Organisational Challenges, Opportunities, and Aspirations is a must-read for all leaders, managers, and team members wanting to improve their organization, as well as consultants, trainers, and organizational development experts interested in AI.

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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

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Leseprobe

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

About the Author

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

PART ONE: Background and Practice Theory

1 What Is Appreciative Inquiry?

What Are the Origins of Appreciative Inquiry?

How Is Appreciative Inquiry Different to Other Change Methodologies?

How Does Appreciative Inquiry Engage with Organisational Problems?

What Is Dialogic Organisational Development?

How Can We Ensure That Our Appreciative Inquiry Practice with Organisations Is Evidence‐Based?

Critiquing Appreciative Inquiry

Conclusion

Learning Points

Discussion Questions

Teaching Practice

Resources and Further Reading

References

Notes

2 The Appreciative Inquiry Summit

Introducing the 5D Model of Appreciative Inquiry

The Principles of Appreciative Inquiry

Narrative, Stories and Sensemaking in Appreciative Inquiry

Research that Supports Appreciative Inquiry as a Practice

The Effectiveness of Appreciative Inquiry in Transformational Change

Conclusion

Learning Points

Discussion Questions

Teaching Exercises

Helpful Resources and Further Reading

References

Notes

3 Preparing, Delivering and Following‐up an Event

Contraindications for an Appreciative Inquiry Event

Common Myths Attached to Appreciative Inquiry

Preparing for an Appreciative Inquiry Event

Delivering the Event

The Quality of Conversation

The Quality of the Questions

The Volunteer Principle in Appreciative Inquiry

After the Event

Conclusion

Learning Points

Discussion Questions

Teaching Exercise

List of Tables

Chapter 3

Table 3.1 Characteristics of appreciatively oriented conversations. Develop...

Chapter 4

Table 4.1 Roles in the commissioning process.

Table 4.2 Contrasting traditional and appreciative inquiry approaches to ch...

Table 4.3 Some common concerns and frequently suggested solutions.

Table 4.4 Reflecting principles of appreciative inquiry in your practice.

Chapter 6

Table 6.1 Why appreciative leaders are better positioned to work with uncer...

Table 6.2 Seven principles for leading through uncertainty.

Chapter 7

Table 7.1 Psychological capital.

Table 7.2 Outcomes.

Chapter 11

Table 11.1 What makes us perform well?

Chapter 12

Table 12.1 Positivity‐creating activities.

Table 12.2 Strengths‐identifying questions.

Chapter 13

Table 13.1 Working from home challenges and possible appreciative inquiry r...

Table 13.2 Some of the mental and physical health benefits of positive emot...

Table 13.3 Techniques to help maintain motivation.

Table 13.4 Principles for designing virtual appreciative inquiry from Stirl...

Table 13.5 Four categories of types of work from Trevor and Holweg article....

Chapter 14

Table 14.1 Design principles for the project.

Table 14.2 Project process.

Chapter 15

Table 15.1 Some principles for engaging with planned change projects.

Chapter 16

Table 16.1 Zimbardo and Boyd theory of time perspective.

List of Illustrations

Chapter 1

Figure 1.1 Positive Energy: the shared experience and demonstration of posit...

Chapter 2

Figure 2.1 The 5D model of appreciative inquiry.

Figure 2.2 Further uses of discovery interviews.

Figure 2.3 Principles.

Chapter 3

Figure 3.1 The ARE IN model of participants for appreciative events.

Figure 3.2 Different types of conversation. Developed from

Conversations Wor

...

Figure 3.3 A sample of generic appreciative inquiry type questions.

Chapter 5

Figure 5.1 Appreciative inquiry for flourishing organisations.

Figure 5.2 The power zone. Extended from Niemiec write‐up of Mayerson and Ch...

Figure 5.3 Model of SOAR. First developed by Jackie Stavros and Gina Hinrich...

Figure 5.4 The basis for the development of the SOAR model: capacity buildin...

Figure 5.5 The I‐IPOD model.

Chapter 7

Figure 7.1 Positive effect of social capital on resilience.

Figure 7.2 Relationship of strengths and resilience.

Figure 7.3 Resilience boosting effects of specific strengths.

Figure 7.4 Preparation interview.

Figure 7.5 Facilitator plan for event.

Chapter 8

Figure 8.1 Relationship between diversity and performance.

Figure 8.2 How to use appreciative inquiry to aid project development.

Chapter 9

Figure 9.1 Synergenesis: Using appreciative stories to generate new ideas.

Chapter 10

Figure 10.1 Organisational energy.

Figure 10.2 Company event: Complex organisation, simple principles.

Chapter 11

Figure 11.1 An appreciative approach to giving corrective feedback.

Figure 11.2 PRISMM model.

Figure 11.3 Event invitation.

Figure 11.4 Growing our positive performance culture.

Figure 11.5 Guidance notes for the discovery conversation.

Figure 11.6 Growing our positive performance culture at xxxx: part two.

Chapter 12

Figure 12.1 Social dynamics of high performing teams.

Figure 12.2 Case study interview format.

Figure 12.3 Agenda for first team event.

Chapter 13

Figure 13.1 Process for online appreciative inquiry from Gwen Stirling‐Wilki...

Chapter 14

Figure 14.1 Possible purposes of a review.

Figure 14.2 Possible review foci.

Figure 14.3 Adding in the positive/negative deviance dimension.

Chapter 16

Figure 16.1 Pyscho‐Social Workplace Hazards.

Figure 16.2 Facilitator's agenda for session.

Guide

Cover Page

Title Page

About the Author

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

Index

WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

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Practical Appreciative Inquiry

A Toolkit for Applying Appreciative Inquiry to Organisational Challenges, Opportunities, and Aspiration

Sarah Lewis

All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies. [For any titles with third‐party copyright holders, replace the previous sentence with: All rights reserved.] No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

The right of Sarah Lewis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with law.

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Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of WarrantyWhile the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this work, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives, written sales materials or promotional statements for this work. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a specialist where appropriate. The fact that an organization, website, or product is referred to in this work as a citation and/or potential source of further information does not mean that the publisher and authors endorse the information or services the organization, website, or product may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data Applied for:

Paperback ISBN: 9781394198122

About the Author

Sarah Lewis is a chartered psychologist, an Associated Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and a founder and principal member of the Association of Business Psychologists. She holds a master's degree in occupational and organisational psychology, attained with distinction, and a certificate in systemic consultation. She is a specialist appreciative inquiry practitioner and an expert at facilitating large group events.

She is the managing director of Appreciating Change and is an experienced organisational consultant and facilitator who has been actively involved in helping people and organisations change their behaviour for over 30 years. Her clients include local government, central government, not‐for‐profit organisations and private sector clients, particularly in the manufacturing, financial and educational sectors. She works both nationally and internationally.

Sarah lectures at postgraduate level in the UK and continues to be a regular conference presenter in the UK and internationally. She writes regularly for publication and has five previous publications

Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management

Positive Psychology at Work

Positive Psychology and Change

Positive Psychology in Business

Creating Energised Commitment to the Dialogic Approach

Sarah also runs a boutique online shop supplying positive psychology and appreciative inquiry training and development tools at http://www.theppshop.store.

Sarah's work can be viewed on her website: www.acukltd.com, and she can be contacted on ++ 44 (0)7973 782 715 or by emailing [email protected].

Foreword

It is my pleasure to write a foreword to Sarah Lewis’s newest book on appreciative inquiry, a powerful method for organisational change. While appreciative inquiry is over 30 years old, it can seem like a new, fuzzy‐wuzzy thing for many managers. Nothing could be further from the truth. As Sarah documents throughout the book, appreciative inquiry integrates a great deal of evidence‐based research on the psychology of organising and has decades of successful application to draw on.

Sarah is a seasoned practitioner and a good writer. Still, for someone looking to gain insight and expertise in using this powerful change method, the question must arise: Why this book instead of one of the many others on offer?

First, this book rises above many by focusing on principles. These, not recipes, are more likely to help you adopt appreciative inquiry successfully. As I can attest from personal experience, when practitioners adopt new practices in a “paint by numbers” approach, they are just as likely to fail as succeed and not be clear why. This book will help you avoid that pitfall. While the first few chapters introduce you to the standard practices of appreciative inquiry, more importantly, they teach the underlying principles that make these practices powerful. Throughout the book, as Sarah introduces different scenarios and applications, she returns over and over to the foundational principles that make appreciative approaches to leadership and change work. In addition, she goes far beyond the standard 4‐D model in offering many other practices that can be usefully integrated into a change process. Helpfully, she is mindful of numerous reasons why one might not want to use an appreciative inquiry in specific situations and offers excellent insights into the traps to avoid as one brings this approach into an organisation.

Second, this a great resource because of Sarah’s review of adjacent topics, like project management, diversity and inclusion, organisational resilience, performance management and even conventional, top‐down planned change. She shows how appreciative approaches can enhance their effectiveness. In some cases, she even demonstrates how principles drawn from those practices can be applied to improve the effectiveness of appreciative inquiry.

Third is Sarah’s exceptional integration of research and practice. Like most books on methods of change, numerous stories of successful practice make the principles come alive. However, more unusual is her references to management research that provide evidence supporting the change principles and practices described. For practitioners trying to convince leaders to try something new, these are valuable resources to draw on.

Finally, I would point to the lively, informal writing style that makes it easy to keep turning the page. Sarah makes complex concepts easy to understand and demonstrates their practical utility through numerous anecdotes, figures, tables and cases. Anyone with experience in the trenches of organisational change will recognize the characters and situations she describes. I appreciate the good‐humoured way she identifies the many common, self‐defeating mindsets managers can bring to change issues and how to respond to them gently and with respect for the complexities and burdens of leadership.

Gervase R. Bushe

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

September 2024

Preface

Once again, I find myself devoting irretrievable hours of my life to writing a book. At this point, with the deadline only days away and my hands tingling with RSI, I can only ask myself: why? What do I have left to say on the subject, and is anyone interested?

Every book has a different gestation. This one was spurred first by my commitment to producing many hours of video recording for an online university course, which necessitated the production of a lot of text; and secondly by the desire to pass on some of what I have learnt about the practice of appreciative inquiry in many different situations. By using the second to shape the first, I hoped to create a legacy document that might prove valuable to others. This is it.

The ambition of this book is to demonstrate the versatility and flexibility of the appreciative inquiry methodology. Primarily, this is a book for practitioners. It is aimed at the general or specialist organisational member looking for ideas and activities they can pick up and use to improve their organisation, as well as at consultants and organisational development experts. Yet it is also important to me that those of a curious mind or with a more academic bent can follow the information presented back to its source: that the theory and science behind the practice be readily available.

These dual ambitions have resulted in the decision not to provide in‐text references. Instead, I have chosen to use footnotes. This is in service of creating a smoother reading experience for those looking more for how than why. I believe this may be the point at which to confess that I have been unable to source a few references. I can only apologise for the frustration I know this can cause.

Another ambition is that this book be of value to both experienced practitioners that are looking to extend their practice, and to those new to the field. To assist both audiences, the book is divided into two parts. Part One provides an overview of the theory and science of appreciative inquiry and includes some guidance on creating the commission. Part Two, while including discussion of interesting ideas, is more focused on the ‘doing’ of appreciative inquiry. To this end the chapters in the latter part of the book are focused on particular areas of intervention.

Key to supporting the practice learning is the provision of case studies. A large proportion of these come from my own practice. They have been selected not on the basis that they were necessarily great pieces of work, but for their value in showing how theory can be put into practice. By exposing my thinking behind the practice design, and by highlighting the compromises made when a model of practice meets a messy situation, I hope to expose the reality of putting the theory into practice, and to provide material for classroom discussions of how to do it better!

In addition, recognising that appreciative inquiry is appearing more frequently in management and organisational education and that a textbook could be helpful, the book provides some teaching aids including suggested discussion topics and a teaching exercise at the end of each chapter.

As someone seemingly wedded to producing books, a particular challenge I face, which gets harder with each new book, is how not to end up repeating myself! I have endeavoured to keep the degree of overlap between this and my previous texts to the necessary minimum while still allowing this book to be a stand‐alone read. At the same time, I have indicated where the subject is covered in more depth in a previous text for those who might be interested.

Since I wrote my last Wiley‐Blackwell publication, I have set up an online shop that sells positive psychology and appreciative inquiry training and development tools. Most of the products we sell I use in my work. This means that they are referenced both in the case studies at times and in the further resources where I believe knowledge of them may be helpful to practitioners.

And, as a final note, I am pleased to report that no AI (artificial intelligence) has been used in the creation of this text. Although I fear my writing on AI (appreciative inquiry) may have been used to support the creation of an AI (artificial intelligence) capable of having done so had I asked it to!

Acknowledgements

All texts are built on other texts, and this book is no exception. I am indebted to the many appreciative inquiry practitioners by whose work I have been inspired. In particular I owe huge thanks to Anne Radford, a pioneer of appreciative inquiry in the UK, who has been a constant source of inspiration and support.

In addition, Anne was the founder of the online publication AI Practitioner, to which I refer extensively throughout this book. Without her dedication to providing a forum for collecting together the developing theory and practice of the field, much of value would have been lost. We all owe her deep appreciation for setting up this legacy repository and for sustaining it as a labour of love for so many years. I personally am grateful to Anne for her lighting of the way, her friendship and for her generous sharing of her deep knowledge of the subject. Anne was also a leading light in the UK AI network.

This network, from which I took much inspiration, is sadly now no more. In its time, it was invaluable as a home for AI practitioners across the UK and, I believe, helped us all raise the level of our game. I found it an invaluable source of expertise and learning. I have also, for many years, been involved in the European AI network, another source of great expertise in both the living and the practice of appreciative inquiry. This, I am pleased to report, is still thriving and can be found at https://www.appreciativeinquiry.eu. To the many dedicated volunteers who ran, or run, both these networks I owe a deep debt and offer heartfelt thanks.

In addition, I am indebted to the many organisations I have worked with over the years honing my skills. Many of them feature, suitably anonymously, in the case studies in the text. In all cases I greatly appreciate the opportunities they created to learn how to apply appreciative inquiry skills in many situations.

Finally, of course, I am grateful to my family. My urge to communicate my passion and to share my learning, at length, through the written word, is as incomprehensible to them as to me, yet every few years they put up with me dedicating myself to writing a book. All that time that could have been spent on other things, such as country walks or redecorating! I am very grateful for their patience, and for my husband’s ability and willingness to rustle up drawings for the diagrams I am incapable of creating on a computer. There are three in this text.

My sincere thanks to all involved. And as ever, while any light the text may shine on the practice of appreciative inquiry is due to the sterling work of others on which I have drawn, any errors and mistakes are mine and mine alone.

PART ONEBackground and Practice Theory

1What Is Appreciative Inquiry?

The term appreciative inquiry refers to an approach to achieving change in organisations. This approach is, to some extent, codified in a series of models of practice. At the same time it is a philosophical system of beliefs about the nature of truth, knowledge, and reality, and of how change occurs, or not, in human systems. This combination of profundity and practicality is the basis for appreciative inquiry's versatility, flexibility and robustness. That said, it is not a panacea for all ills. It is as important to know when it is not an appropriate approach as when it is.

In this first chapter we briefly consider the development of appreciative inquiry as a change methodology and outline some of the places to find case study accounts of appreciative inquiry practice beyond those recounted in this book. We look at what distinguishes appreciative inquiry as an approach, particularly the view it takes of organisations as living human systems. The chapter then considers how that difference in perspective affects the mode of practice and the approach to creating change. In examining when it is appropriate to use appreciative inquiry, we look at the nature of different organisational problems and the rise of dialogic organisational development as a broad field of distinctive practice within which appreciative inquiry fits. This chapter notes also that appreciative inquiry is a field application supported by scientific theory from academic sources. We look at this though the lens of evidence‐based standards of intervention and consider the challenge for field‐based practice. Finally we look at, and consider, the validity of some of the critiques of appreciative inquiry since its introduction to the field of organisational development at the end of the 1990s.

What Are the Origins of Appreciative Inquiry?

In 1987, as part of his Ph.D. research, supervised by Suresh Srivastva, into organisational change and development, Cooperrider [1] made a serendipitous discovery: that asking about and focusing on the good aspects of organisational life can produce positive change.* His breakthrough realisation was that organisations can positively and effectively engage with problems without necessarily addressing them head on, without even framing them as problems. This continues to be a revolutionary idea in the world of organisational change where it is still widely believed that to solve a problem you need to talk about the problem as a problem. Appreciative inquiry suggests that we can address, work on and solve problems while talking about the situation in a different way: in an appreciative way. How does appreciative inquiry work?

Figure 1.1 illustrates the process by which a positive inquiry into a positive experience, a practice which forms the basis of appreciative inquiry practice, has an impact on emotional states, relationships and the ability to access resources. This process, through the generation of positive energy, shared aspirations, motivation and ideas, creates the potential and impulsion for action. Positive deviance [2] is a positive psychology term that refers to exceptional performance. It's these examples of exceptional performance that appreciative inquiry brings into focus as a resource for organisational learning, growth and development. The diagram below also illustrates how appreciative inquiry generates hope, a key motivational emotion.

Figure 1.1 Positive Energy: the shared experience and demonstration of positive affect, cognitive arousal agentic behaviour among unit members in their joint pursuit of organisationally salient objectives.

Today, Champlain College, which houses the David L. Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry,1 lists a variety of organisations using appreciative inquiry. These range from corporations such as Apple, Johnson and Johnson, Coca Cola and Visa, through non‐profits such as the United States Navy, American Red Cross and the State of Massachusetts, to global initiatives such as the UN Global Compact. Case studies can also be found in the core practitioner publication AI Practitioner: The International Journey of Appreciative Inquiry.2 Founded by Anne Radford in 1998, it continues to capture and disseminate appreciative inquiry theory and practice across the globe. Further case studies can be found in the book Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management[3]. A number of case studies are also shared in this book.

How Is Appreciative Inquiry Different to Other Change Methodologies?

There are many factors that distinguish appreciative inquiry from other change practices, as will become evident throughout the book. However, there are four key practices to highlight at this point. One is the specific kinds of question asked by appreciative inquiry, questions that target exploration of, and expand conversation about, the good and the best. Another is its focus on the conscious and deliberate redirecting of attention away from the problem to the aspiration. The third is the creation of a pull motivation through the lived experience of a more attractive future. And the fourth is the involvement of the whole system from the very beginning of the intervention. These practices are explored throughout this book. In essence, while other approaches essentially ask what has gone wrong here and how can we fix it or prevent more of it, appreciative inquiry asks what is going right here and how can we grow more of it.

Behind these surface differences lie differences in understanding the nature of an organisation. Appreciative inquiry views organisations as psychological spaces, full of psychologically alive and complex people: people who experience emotions, have differing relations with each other, who can be fired up, or depressed, just by their imaginations. People who are motivated by things like loyalty, fair play and a sense of justice or betrayal as well as by logic or greed. Appreciative inquiry understands that all of human drama, all the emotions that fuel comedy and tragedy, are present in organisational life. One might say that it views organisations as Shakespearean theatre. Many other approaches tend to treat organisations more like predictable, logical machines.

There are further differences in the mode of practice. Appreciative inquiry is a co‐creative, collaborative methodology, sailing close to the idea of ‘no conversation about me without me’. This means that people are involved in conversations that affect their future from the very beginning. The ambition of this upfront investment is to generate energy for change in all levels of the system simultaneously. Obviously, this speeds up the process compared to a more traditional top‐down linear ‘energy‐pumping’ approach. Involving everyone from the beginning means that more people are simultaneously available to take the lead on different, forward‐focused activities. While this may present challenges of coordination, it means that change can be achieved by a lot of people doing a little, rather than by a few having to do everything. This is a more effective use of organisational energy and makes it less likely any key player will burn‐out through work overload.

Possibly the most important difference between appreciative inquiry and other approaches is that appreciative inquiry views organisations through a social constructionist lens [4].3 Approaching the organisation from this perspective, we view it primarily as a social system that creates, through language, an understanding of itself and of the social world in which it exists. This social world is the context within which possibilities for action do, or don't, exist. As we work to change the social world, through working with perceptions, connections, stories and belief systems, so we work to change the potential for action.

Compared to the facts‐and‐data approach to change, which owes allegiance to the premises of hard science, appreciative inquiry is more akin to anthropology, ethnology or sociology, all of which are interested in the meaning given to objects, the myths, rituals, group norms and mores, the beliefs held by the group about appropriate behaviour that govern the boundaries of the acceptable, the power structures, and the stories told and their significance. This makes appreciative inquiry as an approach to organisational growth and change particularly interesting to those of us who, as psychologists, were trained in the scientific method, yet who also recognise the validity and effectiveness of a social constructionist perspective. As a practitioner, I feel I spend a lot of time balancing on this edge, living in both world views.

How Does Appreciative Inquiry Engage with Organisational Problems?

This is a frequently encountered, valid question. Let's start by clarifying what we mean by problems and problem‐solving.

We solve problems all the time, very effectively, and we tend, as a default linguistic habit, to refer to most challenges in life as problems. When problem‐solving we tend to formulate the issue as a question that needs answering, assemble some data, analyse options against some criteria, select the best option and then implement our decision. For example, I have to organise the logistics of my consultant life. Not so long ago I had to get from a full day's delivery in Dublin in Ireland to Truro in Cornwall for the following afternoon. This turned out to be quite complicated. Solving the ‘how to get from A to B within a given timetable, ensuring I arrive fresh enough to work’ involved researching options to identify the optimal modes of travel, finding overnight accommodation, and paying close attention to all the timings so I didn't miss any connections. It's the kind of challenge that makes my brain melt, but I knew it would be, and it was, solvable with the application of information gathering, logic and brain power. I am sure this kind of logic‐based problem‐solving is very familiar to you.

Organisations, of course, deal with many problems like this all the time, trying to work out what the profit margin is on item Z, or to ascertain the optimal machinery layout in the floor space available and, on the whole, a logic‐based problem‐solving approach works very well in these situations. This means that the more traditional change methodologies can be applied here and will help move things forward.

The difficulties arise, in my experience, when the problem under consideration is not of this nature: when it is not a rational, logical, or analytical problem – for example, when the question is not ‘What is the most cost‐effective way to work?’ but rather, ‘How are we going to get people to work differently?’ Many organisational change and development challenges are of this nature. These include recurring challenges such as, ‘How can we boost morale?’, ‘How do we increase employee engagement?’ or ‘How can we get departments to work better together?’ These are not easily answered through a traditional problem‐solving approach because they are essentially psychological and social challenges, not logical challenges.

Joanna Wilde refers to these kinds of challenges as ‘wicked’ problems' [5]. She defines wicked problems as those that are difficult or impossible to solve because they are social in nature, and they exist in a constantly changing environment. She says, ‘A wicked problem is a problem whose social complexity means that it has no determinable stopping point’. In other words, it can be hard to grasp what the challenge actually is, and even if you think you do, the situation is changing all the time, meaning that any ‘solution’ is likely to be subject to further disruption. Wilde also points that, ‘because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems’. In other words, when working with a ‘wicked’ problem, unexpected outcomes, including new problems, are to be expected.

I think this description of the characteristics of a wicked problem gives a very good flavour of the kind of organisational challenge with which organisations can run into difficulties. They are challenges of a different order, and they require a different approach. This distinction is not always appreciated by organisations who only have one set of change tools at their disposal, often those of traditional problem‐solving. Awareness of the mismatch between traditional ways of thinking about helping organisations develop and the basis of approaches such as appreciative inquiry stimulated a questioning of the fundamental thinking behind organisational development as a discipline and practice and led to the emergence of a new approach: dialogic organisational development.

What Is Dialogic Organisational Development?

In 2009 Bushe and Marshak coined the phrase ‘dialogic organisational development’ to reflect this new understanding of how to work with organisations to achieve change. To help distinguish it from what had gone before, they named the more traditional approaches diagnostic organisational development. In 2015 they brought the different strands of thinking that informed this emerging field of practice together into a seminal book [6], organised a conference, and initiated a conversation about this.4 Even more recently they have published a series of short practitioner‐oriented books each focused on a different aspect of dialogic organisational development.5 As an emerging field the terrain and boundaries of dialogic organisational development are still being established, but it is clear that appreciative inquiry fits well. Let's explore the difference between the two schools they identify, diagnostic and dialogic, in a little more detail.

The diagnostic approach to organisational development is likely to be familiar to you. This way of thinking, which Bushe calls the conventional mindset, talks about organisations in the abstract, as systems, as things, as parts, that can be moved around and reconfigured. It sees organisations as made up of independent, autonomous, rational individuals and groups. At the centre is the idea of the heroic leader whose vision and wisdom can steer their organisation to success. These leaders believe in rational, analytical ways of making decisions. Perhaps unaware of the importance of context to implementation, they gravitate towards one‐size‐fits‐all solutions. And, while they might be cognizant of uncertainty and ambiguity, they usually act, and encourage others to act, as if there was certainty and predictability. Their actions are predicated on the belief that leaders can control what happens in organisations.

Working from this perspective to achieve change, the process is to name the problem, diagnose the fault, and then fix it. This approach tends to produce logic like: ‘Sales have been dropping, why?’ ‘Because the sales team aren't selling very well’. ‘Okay, then we need training for the sales team’. However, a moment's thought reveals there may be any number of reasons sales have fallen, many of which may bear little relation to the selling ability of the sales team. Organisations frequently make these jumps in logic, driven by the need to solve the problem efficiently, that is, with minimum expenditure of time and effort, rather than effectively, that is, in a way that works.

The dialogic approach spreads its net a little wider. In particular it recognises the key role of the processes of sense‐making and storytelling within organisations. People engage with what they see, hear and are told in ways that make sense to them in the context of their experience. Dialogic organisational development appreciates that the ‘reality’ of what is going on from one perspective, and the sense people are making of it from another, may bear only a passing acquaintance; but it also recognises that it is the sense people are making and the explanatory stories they are sharing that fuel their ambitions and actions. Therefore, of key interest is the question, ‘How are people making sense of things and what stories do they tell to explain things?’ This meaning‐making offers a point of intervention to achieve change.

Similarly, in contrast to a common view that people have huge agency in organisations, and that an inability to get things is due to some personal failing, dialogic organisational development recognises people's interdependence and how people constrain and enable each other. It recognises that no one can control what everyone else is choosing to do and that often they can't get much done without the consent of others. It is this aspect of organisations that can be seen to explain why leaders often feel, despite their position of power, powerless to influence their own organisation. The dialogic approach emphasises that change is what emerges from the interplay of all the choices, intentions and strategies of all the stakeholders, and that this can result in both intended and unintended outcomes. Recognising and working with interdependencies is another point of intervention to achieve change.

Dialogic organisational development also argues that that far from being purely rational, people are emotional and that their emotional states, their likes and dislikes, their hopes and anxieties, affect what they believe and how they behave, offering yet another sphere of intervention to achieve change.

Frustrating though it can be for organisations that are used to working in a command‐and‐control way, when viewed through this dialogic lens situations are understood to be so uncertain and the local contingencies and context so important that generic tools are of very little value; rather the organisational intervention needs to be very context‐specific. And instead of the logic for the change being dictated from the top, each person involved needs to go on a personal journey of discovery and change to arrive at a place where the changes make sense and are meaningful and motivating in their own social world. Appreciative inquiry offers a way to do this that is faster, more effective and more sustainable than the time‐honoured approach of pushing the change onto the organisation, an approach which often provokes high degrees of foot‐dragging resistance or inertia‐inducing incomprehension. Appreciative inquiry is one of the most established dialogic organisational development interventions.

To summarise, these two approaches encourage organisations to focus on different things. The diagnostic approach encourages and focuses on problem‐solving, creating detailed plans, directing, having the answers, monitoring, fault‐finding and rigid control of plan breaches. While, by contrast, the dialogic approach focuses on creating conditions for change, problem‐setting (note the difference from problem‐solving), co‐creating, having questions, coordinating actions, creating coherence, directing the organisation's attention and nurturing growth by amplifying small changes in the right direction. Compared with a more formal problem‐solving approach, some of this sounds very fuzzy. In the light of this, given the emphasis on evidence‐based practice as the gold standard, it is important to explore how, while working in the field applying dialogic thinking and appreciative inquiry practice to organisational challenges, practitioners can meet these standards.

How Can We Ensure That Our Appreciative Inquiry Practice with Organisations Is Evidence‐Based?

Wilde has some very interesting things to say about all this. She argues that the laboratory is about, and works with, controlled problems, while the field, as we have seen, presents us with wicked problems. To bridge the divide, she argues, knowledge needs to change its nature as it moves from research to practice. The emphasis needs to switch from ‘know what’ to ‘know how’. Research‐produced knowledge needs to be mobilised in a way that influences policy and practice within organisations, while our understanding of consultancy needs to shift from a knowledge‐driven method’ to a ‘helping‐based practice’ if we are going to bring the benefits of the research to the field. What she is essentially saying is that telling people about the research, while it may be experienced as interesting, doesn't necessarily lead to change in practices. Many an academic making the switch from working as a lecturer to providing consultancy has discovered this. The slides, dense with details of significance, that may hold essay‐encumbered students' attention rarely have the same impact on action‐oriented managers and leaders. Instead of boring them to death with highly informative PowerPoints, we have to find a way of putting the knowledge into practice to produce change. We can always supply the underlying research details if requested.

Inexperienced consultants, especially when trying to introduce a new approach such as appreciative inquiry to a leadership team, are often concerned that they need a detailed research case to persuade organisations to adopt this new approach. And in recognition of this request I do provide some of this when teaching appreciative inquiry; no harm having it all up your sleeve. In practice though, most managers aren't academics, and what they're buying isn't your academic knowledge so much as something different, namely your practice expertise.

‘Practice’, says Wilde, ‘is the process by which knowledge from one situation is converted into a different form designed to be effective for the particular situation at hand; it must judge itself by “impact” and not by the “facts” it generates’. And she adds, in a comment I wholeheartedly agree with, ‘It is the dynamic nature of translating knowledge into changing complex environments that makes the work [of consulting to organisations] engaging and rewarding’. The beauty of appreciative inquiry, to my mind, is that this is exactly what it does. It provides a ready‐to‐go practice methodology, based on good science. Meanwhile, positive psychology as a recent research discipline has produced a mountain of research that supports the practice of appreciative inquiry, some of which is introduced in Chapter 2.

Following this, we can see that there is a need to define what we mean by ‘evidence‐based practice’ for working in the field. In this spirit, Barends and colleagues [7] in 2014 suggested that field evidence‐based practice can be defined as ‘making decisions through the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of four sources of information: practitioner expertise and judgement, evidence from the local context, a critical evaluation of the best available research evidence, and the perspectives of those people who might be affected by the decision’. This sounds like an excellent take on the challenge to me.

Also thinking this way, Jacobs and colleagues [8] noted that the way the change intervention was conducted, what he called the implementation climate, was a critical factor for effectively influencing change. In particular he noted the need to work with staff and managers to co‐create expectations. I argue that appreciative inquiry fits these definitions of evidence‐based practice from the field. It is a social psychology–based approach to organisational change and development, and as such is predicated on a particular understanding of the nature of both organisations and people, that is delivered in a contextualised way using practitioner expertise and judgement, fully involving those to be affected by decisions made. To be accepted as a robust, evidence‐based methodology, appreciative inquiry cannot be presented as the panacea to all organisational ills. It needs to be open to critique.

Critiquing Appreciative Inquiry

An important aspect of being evidence‐based is to be able to be critical of both method and findings. Critiques of appreciative inquiry are in short supply, as a number of researchers have noted. For example, Van der Haar and Hosking noted in the early 2000s [9] that within the appreciative inquiry literature at that time both evaluation studies and critical reflections were rare, suggesting that critical reflection needed to become a core practice within appreciative inquiry. Given the paucity of critique I was able to find for this section, I would suggest this is still a valid criticism. Even so, we can identify the application of a critical lens to the theory in the decades after its first announcement.

In 2002 Patton [10] criticised appreciative inquiry for its emphasis on positive stories, suggesting that it was therefore unrealistic and unbalanced. This criticism is alive and kicking, often expressed as a belief that appreciative inquiry ignores or downplays the negative. We address this in detail in Chapter 3, but just to say here that this criticism is associated with a misunderstanding of the true nature of appreciative inquiry practice. Another researcher, Reed [11], argued that there was a danger of appreciative inquiry ignoring power imbalances, and he warned that it should not confuse collaboration with democracy, since without the support of powerful players in an organisation, the outcomes of the appreciative inquiry work risked being sidelined. I learnt the truth of this the hard way and find this to be a very important point of potential weakness. Throughout this book and elsewhere [12],6 I emphasise the need to work closely with leaders and other powerful players in the system. This is addressed in more detail in Chapter 5.

Drew and Wallis [13] argued that appreciative inquiry wouldn't be the first choice in any situation with an urgent need to solve a problem or deal with a crisis. Again this is a sentiment with which I happily concur: if the situation is critical, speed is of the essence, and if people are in such a panic they can barely think, then their greatest need may be to be rescued to a sufficiently safe place that they can once again engage their brains. If I were drowning, I would just want the person on the bank to throw me a rope and tell me to grab it. Only once I was safe would I be able to think about anything beyond my immediate survival. Teams and other organisational systems are, very occasionally, in this state, in which case they are likely to benefit more, in the immediate term, from knowledgeable expert direction.

Schooley [14] also raises a good point, noting that in situations such as public sector government not all stakeholders can be ‘brought into the room’ or forced to participate in an appreciative inquiry summit. Having made this point, they ask whether it is ethical to agree to follow the consensus of the people who participated in an appreciative inquiry process while ignoring those who chose not to participate. What about the issue of the common good? While there are some problems with the notion of appreciative inquiry being a consensus based decision‐making process, it a valid concern, and I think there are ways to address this, which we explore more in Chapter 3.

Rogers and Fraser [15] extended the critique from the process to the practitioner, noting the need for good and particular facilitation and group work skills to manage and guide the process. They warn that without affirmatory facilitation and group work skills to apply the 4D cycle appropriately (as the core appreciative inquiry methodology was commonly known then and which is explained fully in Chapter 2), appreciative inquiry could go dangerously wrong. For example, avoiding hard issues and uncomplimentary data could lead to vacuous, self‐congratulatory findings or even worse, could provide a platform for airing vengeful and destructive sentiment. This again is a criticism to take seriously. When I first discovered appreciative inquiry and started practicing it, I underestimated how much my ability in this new approach rested on my many previous years' experience of group work, facilitation, and indeed skills acquired in my previous career as a residential social worker.

However, it is worth noting that appreciative inquiry is a flexible process, and while adherence to the principles that underpin practice is important (these are explained in Chapter 2), there are many ways to work from the appreciative inquiry perspective. The art is to work out how you can bring your particular strengths and skills to support your appreciative practice.

Conclusion

This chapter has introduced appreciative inquiry as a practice, exploring its place in the field of organisational development. It has noted that appreciative inquiry fits within the definition of a dialogic organisational development approach and that it is particularly appropriate for engaging with problems that are ‘wicked’ in nature. In addition, the chapter has explored the wider issues of ensuring evidence‐based practice and of acknowledging and accommodating critiques of appreciative inquiry. In Chapter 2 we build on this by looking in more detail at the core and original practice of appreciative inquiry, the 5D summit.

Learning Points

Appreciative inquiry is based in a social constructionist, sense‐making view of the social world of organisations.

It is suitable for ‘wicked’ organisational problems.

It can be seen as a dialogic organisational development approach.

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