Appreciative Inquiry (AI)

The AI methodology was developed by Dr. David Cooperrider from a study in Organizational Behaviour at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, in the middle of the 1980s. Primarily used to help corporation and institutions to improve their competitive advantage or organizational effectiveness, the AI is been recently applied in strategic planning for public policies, including a number of sustainable development projects.

The unique feature of the AI approach is its commitment to seeking and drawing upon the root causes of success rather than those contributing to failure. The objective is to find and emphasize the positive successes and strengths as a means to empower communities, groups and organizations, to plan and manage development and conservation. AI promotes the search for the best in things, for what "gives life" to a system when it is at its most effective and capable state, in economic, social, environmental and human terms.

AI provides an environment for the development of stimulating creative dialogues amongst stakeholders from cross-sectoral areas. It gathers group thoughts, creating a shared vision with the power to mobilize society through individual communication and relationships. It is a method that allows for collective construction and for boosting actions toward a common ideal. Thus, it favors genuine participation and a strong feeling of ownership towards a common and shared vision.

AI is a process of learning and action intended for discovering, understanding, and fostering innovations and transformations in human social system. It does not depend on a standard training manual. It is flexible and innovative and can be used to approach any issue in any group of stakeholders or community. The entire process remains grounded in the actual experiences of individuals. AI motivates the community for interactive participation and self-mobilization.

The appreciative inquiry allows for a change in attitude and thinking of certain firmly rooted stereotypes. When guiding people to evaluate the existing competences and success histories it stimulates dialogue, creating a unique opportunity to identify new possibilities for the use of the available resources. AI offers a collaborative, strength-based approach to strategic change and transformation.

Positive Inquiry

AI’s primary tool is positive questioning. It asks questions that strengthen the capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential. It seeks to demonstrate a constructive perspective of what people talk about as past and present capacities: achievements, assets, unexplored potentials, innovations, strengths, elevated thoughts, opportunities, benchmarks, values, traditions and strategic competencies.

The positive inquiry makes the group feel proud of their own skills, resources, vision, commitments and action. Through a carefully developed set of questions and a process of dialogue, stories of “peak experiences” are uncovered. As these stories come to the surface, new images and possibilities can emerge and become realities in new and unforeseen ways. People begin to see themselves differently and act differently. This story-telling contributes to the development of mutual trust, transparency and institution building.

The process evolves into a participatory search for questions arise that none of the stakeholders can satisfactory answer alone. The positive questioning inspires collaboration and consensus building, initiating discovery through developing shared images of a mutually agreed ideal. The process helps to develop the energy and empowerment that are needed to create sustainable change.

Protocol of interview

The interview protocol entails asking positive questions, seeking what works, what empowers, seeking the best, seeking successes and identifying their causes. It is used as a major tool to stimulate story-telling among the participants. The protocol employs a common language for promoting rich and structured discussions.

The main objective of the protocol is to recall and reinforce good things that happened in the past, thus reinforcing successes and demonstrating that there are many resources available. People have skills, experiences that can be used to increase commitments towards intended objectives.

The interviews will reflect some common grounds which will work as a roadmap that smoothly conducts the participants for action and progress based on a shared and agreed view of a desired future. They will reflect and discuss on their previous experiences and strengths, creating a high level of interaction that will contribute to the productivity of the whole group.

As a result of joint reflection, a unique knowledge appears, whose value is not in the information it contains, but in its creative character. The value of this knowledge is strengthened by participant’s interactions and reflections and their joint movement in some singular directions with the goal of realizing a shared vision.

The AI 4-D Model: Discovery, Dream, Design and Delivery

Appreciative Inquiry uses a planning and management cycle of Discovery, Dream, Design and Delivery that builds upon the root causes of success and motivation among participant as individuals and groups. The AI 4-D Model can smoothly guide a group of stakeholders to construct a shared vision of a desired future, design feasible and realistic action plans and create commitment for its implementation.

Discovery – Finding the positive building blocks and root causes of success

Through interviews and story-telling stakeholders are asked to share their stories of accomplishments, and then to look at the factors, resources and competencies that led to the successes. These could be: successful leadership, relationships, technologies, values, learning processes, external relationships, planning methods, etc.

Stakeholders follow the interview protocol and conduct one-one interviews. The pairs then reconvene into groups to share highlight stories and search for patterns and "root causes” of past successful actions and experiences.

The groups synthesize their patterns into a creative metaphor to communicate their concept of a "positive core” to the plenary. The discovery constitutes an appraisal phase that will lead to the stage of planning and defining objectives to achieve a common vision for the future.

AI begins by identifying what is positive and connecting to it in ways that heighten energy and vision for change. AI recognizes that every organization is an open system that depends on its human capital to bring its vision and purpose to life.The outcome of an AI initiative is a long-term positive change in the organization. AI encourages people to work together to promote a better understanding of the human system, the heartbeat of the organization. ^[1] . It is the opposite of problem solving. Instead of negation, criticism, and spiraling diagnosis, there is discovery, dream, design and destiny (4-D circle). ^[2]

Problem solving versus Appreciative Inquiry