The “DNA” of Appreciative, Inquiry
As with any new approach to organization change, the question is asked, “What are the essential components of this approach?” Or, “What are the basic building blocks that make a process Appreciative Inquiry rather than some other kind of organization change approach?” In other words, “What is the DNA of AI?”
The DNA building blocks (essential ingredients) of AI are:
1. First, the beliefs and values that emerge from the five core principles plus the additional principle of wholeness, a concept added to the list as the powerful impact of AI as a theory of change became better understood:
(1) Constructionist
(2) Simultaneity
(3) Anticipatory
(4) Poetic
(5) Positive
(6) Wholeness
2. Second, the five generic processes or phases of AI practice:
(1) Focus on the positive as a core value;
(2) Inquiry into stories of life-giving forces;
(3) Locating themes that appear in the stories and selecting topics from the themes for further inquiry;
(4) Creating shared images for a preferred future; and
(5) Innovating ways to create that preferred future.
Like everything in Appreciative Inquiry, even these basic building blocks are constantly being transformed, redefined, and used in creative ways. (For example, in Jackie Kelm’s 2008 book The Joy of Appreciative Living there are several additional principles.) However, for the sake of building a platform of knowledge from which to practice and innovate, we will take those listed here as the current DNA of AI. Taken in tandem, these two building blocks—five plus one principles and five core processes—constitute the basic DNA of an AI approach to an organization development process for change in a human system.
To broaden this perspective, Gervase Bushe (Bushe & Coetzer, 1995) describes five different ways of thinking about how an appreciative inquiry can create change in social systems. These five are: (1) the social construction of reality, (2) the heliotropic hypothesis, (3) the organizational inner dialogue, (4) paradoxical dilemmas, and (5) appreciative process theories of change. He points out that each of these directs us to different ways of thinking about and implementing an Appreciative Inquiry when our purpose is developmental change. Further, he notes that the key data collection innovation of Appreciative Inquiry is the collection of people’s stories of something at its best. He writes: “If we are interested in team development, we collect stories of people’s best team experiences. If we are interested in the development of an organization, we ask about their peak experience in that organization. If enhanced leadership is our goal, we collect stories of leadership at its best. We need to embrace different ways of inquiring appreciatively while recognizing that for an OD intervention to be offered from an appreciative perspective, the whole process needs to reflect this articulated mindset.”
Thus, one does not “do AI” for organization development; one does an organization intervention from an AI perspective. In addition, it is also essential to have a sense of the theoretical and research foundations underneath the DNA of AI—the soil out of which the five core principles, plus the principle of wholeness, and the five core generic processes emerge. The theoretical and research foundations for AI come from:
1. Social constructionist theory and practice
2. The new sciences (quantum physics, chaos theory, complexity theory, and self-organizing systems)
3. Research on the power of image
4. Research on the power of the positive
Standing on this foundation of theory, research and the “DNA building blocks” is the current practice of change in human systems from an AI perspective, that is, that constantly evolving set of steps and activities within each of the five generic processes (phases) that enable organizations to search and build upon the best of what is and to create a future focused on the best that can be.
Figure 3.1 shows how the “practice” of AI rests on the “DNA” of AI, which in turn emerges from the “soil” of AI.
Figure 3.1. The Structure of AI
With a good understanding of the five core principles, the additional principle of wholeness and the five generic core processes, AI practitioners can adapt and/or create appropriate steps and activities for using an AI approach in virtually any situation or context in which human beings play a key role. For example, there is a “case story” in this book about using an AI approach to a currently popular intervention models called “Six Sigma” and “LEAN.” In that example, the principles and practices described in this chapter are applied to models of change management that are usually applied from the perspective of a search for problems to be solved, while the exact same process can be applied from an AI perspective with a search for what works and creates new knowledge. Without an understanding and translation of these principles into practice, AI becomes just another tool or technique, thereby severely limiting its power.