“Selling” Appreciative Inquiry to skeptics in your organisation

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.

Using the NLP ‘Logical Levels’ model with Appreciative Inquiry

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.

Appreciative Inquiry in the NHS – teambuilding

Following on from the Appreciative Inquiry teambuilding session we did for the Occupational Health team at Mid-Essex Hospital Trust, we’ve received a nice write-up in their Stafffocus magazine (14 October 2009) by Denise Mortimer who commissioned the event.

Appreciative Inquiry for teambuilding

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!

Appreciative Inquiry: better ways of doing the Design stage

Read almost any textbook on Appreciative Inquiry and you will find a frustrating vagueness about what to actually do in the Design stage. This stage, which follows on from the Discovery of what is already working well, and the Dream about how the organisation could be at its best, is generally agreed to be about designing the “organisational architecture” – the new systems, groupings and information flows which will make it possible to have more ‘peak experiences’.

But how to go about it? The advice is generally to keep the Dream in mind, think about what systems etc will be needed, and then devise one or more “Provocative Propositions” – inspirational, stretching, present-tense statements which describe the organisation at its best, and give people something to live up to.

Actually doing this in practice, especially in a whole-organisation “AI summit” where there is limited time and most of the participants are not trained AI practitioners, is challenging. Particularly as if taken literally, the textbooks would have you come down one or two levels of detail from the big-picture vision described in the Dream stage to the nuts and bolts of systems design – and then soar up again to the realms of metaphor to craft your provocative proposition!

Here’s an alternative that we have been playing with – I expect there are other AI practitioners that do something similar already, but you wouldn’t know it from the published books on AI that I’m aware of. I’m talking specifically about how to set up the Design stage in the AI summit format – whether this is for a Positive Engagement event for the whole of an organisation and its stakeholders, or for a small teambuilding away day.

1. Possibility Statements

After the creative expression of the Dream (as a collage, presentation, living sculpture or whatever – people can get very creative), ask the participants to craft a “possibility statement” (an alternative and I think more user-friendly name for “provocative proposition” – you can call it whatever will best convey what it’s for and will best fit the organisational culture). Here are the criteria that we used for a recent event for the fine social enterprise and recruitment consultancy Vedas in Burnley, UK:

To me, it makes sense to craft Provocative Propositions right after the Dream – people are still inspired, and the Propositions are at a similar big-picture level of abstraction to the Dream vision. The Propositions can then act as a bridge into the more detailed work of the Design stage, as participants collaborate in designing what has to be in place to make the various elements of the Dream actually happen.

2. Using “Fishbone Analysis” in the Design stage

Usually, fishbone analysis or “Ishikawa diagrams” are used to find the root cause of problems – as in this illustration from Wikipedia.org:

Please restrain your horror at the use of the word “problem”, because we are going to use it for pretty much the opposite – an inclusive process to find the route to the Dream.

For each table of 4-8 people in the AI summit, we give them a blank fishbone diagram on a sheet of flipchart paper. In the ‘head’ of the diagram, they write the part of the Dream that they want to bring into reality.

In the boxes at the end of each ‘spine’ of the fishbone, they write an area for which action needs to be taken to make the Dream happen. You can leave this up to the participants, or you can give them preprinted ‘classic’ Fishbone categories like: Equipment, Process, People, Materials, Environment, and Management.

Along each spine of the fishbone, participants place post-it notes with the actions that have to be taken, or the things that have to be in place, to make that area support the Dream goal. Our tip is to use a different colour post-it for each area, and use small notes so there’s enough room for them on the diagram. The process will go faster if smaller groups of participants take an area or two each – but make sure everyone gets to see the end results for each area, to make sure nothing is missed.

The beauty of this process is that it’s inclusive – everyone gets to contribute – and it’s fast. A team can rough out what’s needed in a very short time.

3. Turning the fishbone into an action plan

At this point the design elements have been identified, but dependencies have not, and the elements will probably not be in time order. To turn the fishbones into plans, we stick several sheets of flipchart paper to a wall, and establish a series of horizontal lines – one for each area on the ‘spines’ of the fishbone.

Participants can then transfer the sticky note for each element they have identified onto a timeline, in the order dictated by any dependencies that they identify between the design elements. When the timeline for each Dream component is laid out, it’s easy for participants to see dependencies between the different timelines too, and adjust the placing of the individual actions accordingly.

Timescales and milestones can be added later, probably by a smaller team with responsibility making the goals happen.

I hope that’s given you some ideas – if you use them, or something similar, please share your experiences by leaving a comment.

New Appreciative Inquiry facilitator training dates

We have a new date for the two-day Practical Appreciative Inquiry facilitator training:

Manchester 21-22 October 2009

Details here if you want to book a place: Appreciative Inquiry facilitator training

We’ve had rave reviews both from the public courses and when we’ve run it in-house – you know you’re doing something right when someone who has attended your course sends her boss on the next one!

If you have 4 people or more that you want to send on the course, think about running it in-house for extra cost-effectiveness.

Appreciative Feedback Form

Have you ever wondered how you could use the 4-D appreciative inquiry format for gathering feedback? This is a draft of what we will be sending out to people who have completed our courses.

One of the virtues of making the 4-D structure explicit in the form is that it acts as another reminder for the students.

Feel free to adapt the questions to your own needs.
————-
Now that you have had some time to reflect on and use what you learned on
the Practical Appreciative Inquiry facilitator training, it may be the
appropriate time to ask for some feedback. We are road-testing a 4-D
feedback request structure – feel free to copy or adapt it if it works for
you:

1. Discovery
What did you appreciate about the course? What were the best aspects for
you?

2. Dream
What would the course have been like in an ideal world?

3. Design
What practical changes could we make to the course to make it better?

4. Delivery
How have you been using the Appreciative Inquiry methods you learned on the
course? What are you doing differently now?

———–
Let us know what you think!

What Appreciative Interviewers need to understand

Belief, rather than doubt, is the proper stance. This is not a time for skepticism or for questions that imply a need for “proof”.

- Jane Magruder Watkins and Bernard J Mohr,
Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination

1. Assume vitality and health, rather than ‘deficit’.
You are looking for incidents and examples of things at their best.

2. The inquiry is the intervention.
You are not just gathering data. The questions you ask impact the emotional state of the interviewee and the ongoing, ever-changing image they have of the  organisation and the change process.

3. It’s not just the questions, it’s how you ask them.
The non-verbal elements of your communication (voice tone, body language, the surroundings in which you do the interview) form a “meta-message” which influences people’s emotional state and shapes their expectations about the value and genuineness of the exercise.

When you are genuinely focused and interested, the interviewee will experience being fully heard and understood, and empathy will develop rapidly.

4. You are after stories, not opinions or analysis.
You want the interviewee to be reliving the experiences they are talking about and telling you what they thought and felt at the time, rather than examining them in a detached way and telling you what they think about them now. This way, you will get genuine rapport and trust develops, and you will get genuine experiences rather than the “official line” or what the interviewee thinks you want to hear.

5. Once you have the story, you can move on to values, life-giving factors and wishes.
The motivating power of values and wishes comes from their emotional charge. The emotions that the interviewees’ stories awake in them will enable them to identify what is really important about those experiences, and what they want for the future.

Appreciative Inquiry postings on the Practical EQ blog

There are some earlier blog entries about Appreciative Inquiry on Andy Smith’s Practical EQ blog (look for ‘Appreciative Inquiry’ in the categories), including an introduction to Appreciative Inquiry and applying AI to the NLP SCORE model.

Therapy works better when therapists focus on client’s strengths

The invaluable BPS Research Digest reports on a study by Christoph Flückiger and Martin Grosse Holtforth which found that getting therapists to focus on a client’s strengths for just ten minutes before the first five sessions of psychotherapy (an example of resource priming) improved relationships with the client, and led to greater improvements by session 20.

So, what implications would this have for managers wanting to get the best from their teams, customer-facing staff who want to improve their interactions with customers, or sales people who want to deepen their relationships with their prospects?

The abstract of the study is here: Focusing the therapist’s attention on the patient’s strengths: a preliminary study to foster a mechanism of change in outpatient psychotherapy