Change is correlated with pain. As any Organizational Development
(OD) consultant will agree, change in organizations is met
with general apathy at best and stiff resistance at worst.
As the old adage goes, "No pain, no gain". How
can we then celebrate change? How can we make change a "desired
future" for our people and organizations? Appreciative
Inquiry (AI) is the change paradigm that makes this a possibility.
Appreciative Inquiry is a process to bring about painless
change. It is both a change management method as well as
a philosophy of change. It is the most widely accepted and
fastest growing change management paradigm for organizations,
communities and even nations. This article compares AI with
conventional models of change and proposes how through a
dialogue involving all concerned, a desired future can be
achieved. It explains the AI principles and the 4-D model
for positive change.
It was in the 1990s that Seligman (1999), the founder of
Positive Psychology, first became critical of the focus
on `mental illness' rather than `mental wellness', despite
there being a body of humanistic psychologists, like Carl
Rogers, Erich Fromm and Abraham Maslow, who developed successful
theories involving human happiness. Seligman himself went
on to counterargue his theory of learned helplessness with
learned optimism. He noted in 1998, "We have discovered
that there is a set of human strengths that are the most
likely buffers against mental illness: courage, optimism,
interpersonal skill, work ethic, hope, honesty and perseverance.
Much of the task of prevention will be to create a science
of human strength whose mission will be to foster these
virtues in young people."
"Appreciative Inquiry is about the coevolutionary
search for the best in people, their organizations, and
the relevant world around them. In its broadest focus, it
involves systematic discovery of what gives `life' to a
living system when it is most alive, most effective, and
most constructively capable in economic, ecological, and
human terms. Appreciative Inquiry involves, in a central
way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen
a system's capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten
positive potential. It centrally involves the mobilization
of inquiry through the crafting of the `unconditional positive
question' often involving hundreds or sometimes thousands
of people." The above definition is taken from "A
Positive Revolution in Change: Appreciative Inquiry",
by Cooperrider and Whitney (1999).
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