Appreciative Inquiry

History
What is Appreciative Inquiry (AI)?
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) was pioneered in the 1980s by David Cooperrider and Suresh
Srivastva, two professors at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve
University. AI consultants around the world are increasingly using an appreciative approach to
bring about collaborative and strengths-based change in thousands of profit and nonprofit
organizations and communities in more than 100 countries.
Appreciative Inquiry is a way of being and seeing. It is both a worldview and a process for
facilitating positive change in human systems, e.g., organizations, groups, and communities. Its
assumption is simple: Every human system has something that works right–things that give it life
when it is vital, effective, and successful. AI begins by identifying this positive core and
connecting to it in ways the heighten energy, sharpen vision, and inspire action for change. As
AI consultant Bernard J. Mohr says, “Problems get replaced with innovation as conversations
increasingly shift toward uncovering the organization’s (or group’s, or community’s) positive
core.”
Appreciative Inquiry begins by grounding ourselves and our organizations in the Core Principles
of AI. The five original principles are: Constructionist, Simultaneity, Anticipatory, Poetic, and
Positive.
Basis and principles

According to Bushe, AI "advocates collective inquiry into the best of what is, in order to imagine
what could be, followed by collective design of a desired future state that is compelling and thus,
does not require the use of incentives, coercion or persuasion for planned change to occur."[10]
The model is based on the assumption that the questions we ask will tend to focus our attention
in a particular direction, that organizations evolve in the direction of the questions they most
persistently and passionately ask.[11] In the mid 80's most methods of assessing and evaluating a
situation and then proposing solutions were based on a deficiency model, predominantly asking
questions such as "What are the problems?", "What's wrong?" or "What needs to be fixed?".
Instead of asking "What's the problem?", others couched the question in terms of "challenges",
which still focused on deficiency, on what needs to be fixed or solved. [12] Appreciative Inquiry
was the first serious managerial method to refocus attention on what works, the positive core,
and on what people really care about. Today, these ways of approaching organizational change
are common[13]
The five principles of AI are:[10]

1. The constructionist principle proposes that what we believe to be true determines what
we do, and thought and action emerge from relationships. Through the language and
discourse of day to day interactions, people co-construct the organizations they inhabit.
The purpose of inquiry is to stimulate new ideas, stories and images that generate new
possibilities for action.
2. The principle of simultaneity proposes that as we inquire into human systems we change
them and the seeds of change, the things people think and talk about, what they discover
and learn, are implicit in the very first questions asked. Questions are never neutral, they
are fateful, and social systems move in the direction of the questions they most
persistently and passionately discuss.
3. The poetic principle proposes that organizational life is expressed in the stories people
tell each other every day, and the story of the organization is constantly being co-
authored. The words and topics chosen for inquiry have an impact far beyond just the
words themselves. They invoke sentiments, understandings, and worlds of meaning. In
all phases of the inquiry effort is put into using words that point to, enliven and inspire
the best in people.
4. The anticipatory principle posits that what we do today is guided by our image of the
future. Human systems are forever projecting ahead of themselves a horizon of
expectation that brings the future powerfully into the present as a mobilizing agent.
Appreciative inquiry uses artful creation of positive imagery on a collective basis to
refashion anticipatory reality.
5. The positive principle proposes that momentum and sustainable change requires positive
affect and social bonding. Sentiments like hope, excitement, inspiration, camaraderie and
joy increase creativity, openness to new ideas and people, and cognitive flexibility. They
also promote the strong connections and relationships between people, particularly
between groups in conflict, required for collective inquiry and change.
Some researchers believe that excessive focus on dysfunctions can actually cause them to
become worse or fail to become better. [14] By contrast, AI argues, when all members of an
organization are motivated to understand and value the most favourable features of its culture, it
can make rapid improvements.[15]
Strength-based methods are used in the creation of organizational development strategy and
implementation of organizational effectiveness tactics.[16] The appreciative mode of inquiry often
relies on interviews to qualitatively understand the organization's potential strengths by looking
at an organization's experience and its potential; the objective is to elucidate the assets and
personal motivations that are its strengths.
Bushe has argued that mainstream proponents of AI focus too much attention on "the positive"
and not enough on the transformation that AI can bring about through generating new ideas and
the will to act on them.[6][17][18] In a 2010 comparative study in a school district he found that even
in cases where no change occurred participants were highly positive during the AI process. [19]
What distinguished those sites that experienced transformational changes was the creation of
new ideas that gave people new ways to address old problems. He argues that for
transformational change to occur, AI must address problems that concern people enough to want
to change. However, AI addresses them not through problem-solving, but through generative
images.[20] Some of this is covered in a 90-minute discussion about AI, positivity and generativity
by Bushe and Dr. Ron Fry of Case Western, at the 2012 World Appreciative Inquiry Conference.
[21]
Distinguishing features
The following table comes from the Cooperrider and Whitney (2001) [full citation needed] article and is
used to describe some of the distinctions between AI and approaches to organizational
development not based on what they call positive potential:[22]
Problem Solving Appreciative inquiry

1. "Felt Need," identification of Problem 1. Appreciating & Valuing the Best of "What Is"
2. Analysis of Causes 2. Envisioning "What Might Be"
3. Analysis & Possible Solutions 3. Dialoguing "What Should Be"
4. Action Planning (Treatment)
Basic Assumption: An Organization is a Basic Assumption: An Organization is a
Problem to be Solved Mystery to be Embraced
Appreciative inquiry attempts to use ways of asking questions and envisioning the future in order
to foster positive relationships and build on the present potential of a given person, organization
or situation. The most common model utilizes a cycle of four processes, which focus on what it
calls:
1. DISCOVER: The identification of organizational 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 DEPLOY): The implementation (execution) of the proposed design.[15]
The aim is to build – or rebuild – organizations around what works, rather than trying to fix what
doesn't. AI practitioners try to convey this approach as the opposite of problem solving.
Implementing AI
There are a variety of approaches to implementing appreciative inquiry, including mass-
mobilised interviews and a large, diverse gathering called an Appreciative Inquiry Summit. [23]
These approaches involve bringing large, diverse groups of people together to study and build
upon the best in an organization or community.
Uses
AI is used in organizational development and as a consultancy tool in an attempt to bring about
strategic change. It has been applied in businesses, health care bodies, social non-profit
organizations, educational institutions, and government operations.[24] Although originating in the
US, it is also used in the UK – for example in the National Support Teams and around the world.
Since 2000, The AI Practitioner, a quarterly publication, has described applications in a variety
of settings around the world.
AI has various business applications and can effectively be used to elicit information from
stakeholders.[25] Positivity is paired with a group consensus to envision and begin producing an
optimistic future based on existing strengths and successes. As seen in Harbarian process
modeling, AI has been used in Business process modeling to elicit information about an
organization's present state and desired future state.
In Vancouver, AI is being used by the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education. The Center,
which was founded by the Dalai Lama and Victor Chan, is using AI to facilitate compassionate
communities.[26]

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Appreciative Inquiry

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History

What is Appreciative Inquiry (AI)?

Basis and principles

The five principles of AI are:[10]

Problem Solving Appreciative inquiry

1. DISCOVER: The identification of organizational processes that work well.

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