Doubting Thomas, painting by Caravaggio (1602-03)

Appreciative Inquiry is so different to conventional methods of organisational change that some people will find it hard to accept. Whether your obstacle to implementation is the boardroom sceptic who needs to be convinced of the benefits of AI before releasing a budget, or the person in an AI workshop who finds it hard to let go of the habit of always looking for the flaws in any new idea, here are some tips that you may find useful in getting AI accepted by your organisation or clients.

Establish credibility

Make sure that people are aware of examples of where AI has already been used successfully elsewhere in the organisation, or relevant examples of similar organisations that have used AI.

Anticipate possible objections and preframe them out

Put yourself in the shoes of the people you will be telling about AI. Notice what objections they may raise, and make sure that your presentation of AI addresses these objections before they are raised.

“Now you may be thinking that this approach is about rose-coloured spectacles and ignoring problems – in fact it’s a more effective way of heading off problems before they even occur, because…|”

Appeal to “away from” motivation

Many people in business are risk-averse and motivated by solving problems, rather than by possibilities and benefits. AI enthusiasts, by contrast, tend to be very “towards” – so the possibilities for miscommunication are obvious.

To get “away from” motivated people on side, explore the problems they face (the more you do this, the more it will remind them of the seriousness of the problems), and make sure they realise how much worse these problems could get if they don’t adopt AI, and the pitfalls of using traditional deficit-focused methods.

Dealing with “macho” people

One of the characteristics of a “macho” person, according to Influence specialist Shelle Rose Charvet’s article The Macho Test, is that they act as if they already know everything there is to know.

If you are dealing with a person like this, you need to ask yourself this question about your presentation or document:

Is it anywhere stated or implied that there is something they don’t already know, or that I am telling them what to do?

Note that the use of any kind of jargon will come across to them as implying that there is something they don’t know. Unfortunately a lot of the terminology commonly used by AI practitioners would fall into this category, so make sure you keep it simple and focus on the practicalities rather than the theory.

Jerry and Monique Sternin, Positive Deviance pioneers

Following on from our recent posting about the Positive Deviancy approach, we were pleased to see another good article on this method, this time by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow in the Boston Globe. The article gives some great examples of how Positive Deviancy is being used to reduce MRSA in American hospitals, and improving academic performance in schools.

One of the wonderful things about this approach is how it recognises ordinary people as the experts at what they do:

At Albert Einstein, for example, a patient transporter named Jasper Palmer had a technique for removing his gown, balling it up into a small package, and stuffing it inside his inverted gloves for disposal. A highly effective way of thwarting germs, it has since been deemed the Palmer method and widely adopted.”

There’s also a wonderful quote from Positive Deviance pioneer Monique Sternin:

It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.”

Who do you know who is a good example of Positive Deviance? For example, I’m privileged to know Andy Jackson, chief executive of the Manchester-based charity Dreamcatchers, who consistently gets great results in the youth work field by doing what works. He is definitely worth talking to if you want to improve outcomes in youth work, secondary education, or engaging young people.

This is true even when the feedback is delivered solely with the intention of helping you improve – still more so if, as so often, there is a hidden agenda or an emotional load attached to the feedback.

So, when we were visiting Harrogate College the other week, we were intrigued to hear about a way of improving performance that is peer-led and involves no feedback whatsoever, but still gets results.

Teaching Squares, developed by Anne Wessely of St Louis Community College, is beginning to spread through the education world. It’s a way that teachers can improve their own performance by learning from observing others.

It works like this: four teachers from different faculties team up and work out a schedule of observing each other taking a class. They are not there to assess or offer feedback, just to learn and to look out for tips and methods they could incorporate into their own teaching. After completing the classroom visits, they reflect individually on what they have learned from others that they could incorporate into their own teaching, what they want to continue doing, and what changes they have made in their own teaching as a result of their observations. Finally they meet for lunch and share the results of their reflections.

Of course, this could work with three teachers or five, but the consensus seems to be that four is a good number which gives a variety of peers to observe without getting logistically overcomplicated.

If you are a teacher, you may want to try this out in your own institution. If you aren’t, you may want to think about how you could adapt the Teaching Squares method to your own profession.

Many colleges that use Teaching Squares have made their ‘how-to’ guides available on the web – all the ones I’ve seen have been clear and easy to understand. This one from Leeward Community College in Hawai’i gives you everything you need to know to be able to start using the method.

Robert Dilts, originator of the 'Logical Levels' model - photo by Christian Aubry via Wikimedia Commons

The Design phase is sometimes described as “building a bridge from the ‘best of what is’ (revealed, at least in part, in the Discovery stage) to the best of ‘what could be’ (the vision set out in the Dream stage)”. But how to bridge that gap, particularly when the Dream seems far removed from even the best of the current reality?

As we mentioned in the post about using Fishbone Analysis with Appreciative Inquiry, many Appreciative Inquiry textbooks can seem rather vague in supplying actual step-by-step procedures for getting from the Discovered present to the Dream future.

Here is another method you can use for getting from Dream to Delivery – “Logical Levels” of organisation.

This model, originated by NLP author Robert Dilts, posits six levels at which change can occur. These are the levels, with some key questions for each one:

Spirit (Purpose): What are we here for? What are we as an organisation part of that is greater than ourselves?

Identity: Who are we?

Values and Beliefs: What is important to us? What motivates us?

Capablities: What do we know how to do? What skills do we have?

Behaviour: What are we doing?

Environment: Where do we operate? What is around us?

Dilts suggests that each level organises and influences the ones below it. A change at a lower level may change the levels above, but it is far more likely that change at a higher level will change the levels below it.

• Our Behaviour acts on our Environment
• Our Capabilities (skills) govern our Behaviour
• Our Values and Beliefs determine which of our Capabilities we use
• Our Identity is supported by our Beliefs and Values
• Our sense of Purpose and of being part of something more extensive and important than ourselves shapes our Identity.

When we look for connections with the AI model, we see that:

• ‘Provocative propositions’ are usually statements of Identity and/or Purpose. When they are inspiring, as they should be, they will also resonate with:
• Values, which are what motivate us as well as our criteria for deciding what is right or wrong, will emerge from questions in the Appreciative Interview: “What’s important about this experience? What do you value about it?”
• Capabilities and Behaviour are pointed to by questions such as “What is already working? What should we be doing more of?” This level also equates to the new forms of organisation, workflows and processes that are often mentioned as emerging from the Design stage in the AI literature.
• Environment is what the organisation operates in: customers, other stakeholders, competitors, partners, markets, and regulatory frameworks, as well as physical locations and resources. This is also where we would look for consequences and knock-on effects of our changes.

Each level needs to be aligned with the others – for example, the Behaviours we need to undertake in order to achieve our Purpose and fulfil our Values may require us to expand our Capabilities.

One way of using this model in the Design stage would be to start with the Provocative Proposition (a bit of Appreciative Inquiry jargon to signify a ‘mission statement’ or slogan which sums up the aspirations coming out of the Dream stage, which is meaningful to the people within the organisation or team who have come up with it, and which acts as a ‘stretch’, inspiring people to raise their game and make the Dream a reality) at Identity or Purpose level, and to examine the Behaviours needed to make it a reality.

Or you could start with the Values and work down by asking “What Behaviours do we need to pursue? What Capabilities do we need?” At the same time you could work upwards by asking “Who are we when we truly fulfil these Values?”

As you examine each level in the light of the others, expect more information to emerge at each level. You may find yourself refining the Provocative Proposition in the light of the re-examined Values, or that the Values set expands as you consider the implications of Identity or Behaviours.

When each ‘Logical Level’ of the organisation is aligned with the Provocative Proposition and with the other levels, you have a sound basis for action.

To learn more about practical tools for using Appreciative Inquiry, attend our two-day Practical Appreciative Inquiry facilitator training in London or Manchester.

Positive Deviance in action: Maternal and newborn care project in Vietnam

A recent article in the Guardian by Jane Dudman gives a good introduction to the Positive Deviance model, a method of solving ‘intractable’ social and organisational problems through the principle that:

…in every community or organisation, there are some people who do better than others, even though everyone has the same resources. By finding how what works well, the whole community or organisation can implement improved practices.

A second article homes in on one example of how the Positive Deviance approach is being used to reduce antisocial behaviour in Gosport, Hampshire, by finding families where children behave well, discovering what they are doing differently, and how this can be copied by local parents.

The approach has some obvious similarities with Appreciative Inquiry – the focus on what is working rather than problems, looking for examples of positive exceptions, and the need to involve everyone so that they own the solutions.

The Positive Deviance Initiative has produced some accessible guides and tools downloadable from their web site, which are well worth a look for Appreciative Inquiry practitioners (NB if you found that the link to this site in the first Guardian article doesn’t work,  you can use the one above). It also has case studies from many Positive Deviance projects around the world, such as the Maternal and Newborn Care project in Vietnam.

I particularly liked this quote from the Basic Guide to the Positive Deviance (PD) Approach:

“Act your way into a new way of thinking instead of thinking your way into a new way of acting”

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) makes an excellent format for teambuilding. It can be very rewarding for a team to work through the 4-D cycle, each stage building on the one before. A day (or slightly less than a day) gives enough time to really go into some depth, reaffirm bonds within the team, and build morale and confidence.

For the day to run smoothly it’s important to choose carefully the affirmative topic for the inquiry. Often some variation of “How do we work together more effectively?” will work well.

In the Discovery stage, having team members interview each other to unearth stories of when they have experienced or participated in exceptionally good examples of the topic can help to remind interviewees of their own worth, and that there are times – often forgotten in the hurly-burly of day-to-day work – when the team can work exceptionally well together. The interviewers often also feel inspired as they hear stories that resonate with their own experience and values.

To get the maximum value from the Discovery stage, have people who don’t normally work closely together interview each other. Interviewing across different responsibilities or levels of management can build understanding and appreciation of the contribution and viewpoints of people in different roles.

In the Dream stage, team members co-construct a vision of their desired future as a team. This can be a opportunity for people to loosen up and have fun as they create a presentation of their vision using words, collage, or even on occasion poetry, ‘living sculpture’, or song.

For the Design stage we now favour taking specific aspects of the Dream – whichever elements the team feels most motivated to work on – and letting the team use a adapted fishbone diagrams and ‘swimming lanes’ to identify tasks, structures and relationships that need to be in place to translate into an action plan.

Finally, for the Delivery stage team members can make requests, offer to help other team members with their needs, and make commitments to take specific actions or take responsibility for ensuring that something happens.

These photos come from a recent teambuilding day we facilitated for the Occuptional Health team at Mid-Essex Hospital Trust. Denise Mortimer, a project manager at the Trust who commissioned us, wrote the day up for the Trust’s internal magazine:

On 16th September the Occupational Health Department embarked on a team building event with inspiring results! The team were introduced to ‘Appreciative Inquiry’ which is a process that works by acknowledging and building on what is good and what works well, instead of focusing on the negative.  Often we focus on what our problems are and as a result we tend to magnify those problems, which only contribute to a downward spiral of feeling helpless and hopeless.  With Appreciative Inquiry we get to reconnect with what we love about work and when we are at our best, resulting in people feeling inspired to take action and creating more positivity in the workplace.

By the end of the session the group were left feeling inspired with realistic actions that were genuinely created and owned by them. With a lot of laughter and a lot of no-nonsense talk about what needs to happen, the group now have to build on the momentum of the day and they certainly seemed ready to!

We were pleased to help Denise, a graduate of our Practical Appreciative Inquiry facilitator training, to co-facilitate the day. She is now being asked to run other Appreciative Inquiry events within the NHS.

The next Practical Appreciative Inquiry facilitator training runs in Manchester on 21-22 October – there are still some spaces available but you need to get your booking in fast!