AS WE ENTER THE SECOND DECADE OF THE 21ST CENTURY, we see and experience a world in constant and relentless change. In the decade since the first edition of this book was published, the shifts and emerging versions of reality have approached change at the speed of imagination. We live in a time unimaginable even by our parents’ generation—a time of rapid and continuous shifts in how human beings experience, describe, and interact with the world around us. This macro shift calls for new levels of knowledge and a higher capacity to understand and live in an environment that is no longer experienced as stable, predictable, or even comprehensible.

In this chapter, we will describe some of these changes that are observable in both the natural and social sciences and look at the impact of those changes on organizations and on the theories and practices in the field of organization development and change. Finally, we will look at Appreciative Inquiry (AI) as a theory that can be a perspective and approach for any model or method in the practice for organization change and transformation, that is, any process traditionally used in the field of organization development. We will provide information and examples of ways in which the intentionally positive and strength-based theory of Appreciative Inquiry can be applied to traditional OD models and methods in ways that enable human systems to develop the capacity and flexibility to live in a world that is created by the interactions of those who inhabit it.

We used Charles Handy’s quote (above) in the first edition of this book published in 2000. As we write this second edition a decade later, we find ourselves in the midst of the kind of world that Handy predicted! The change was, indeed, “unimaginable!”

One of the most articulate of the writers struggling to describe the magnitude and speed of change in the last decade is Thomas Friedman in The World Is Flat. We add his comments here to share with you what seems to us to be a remarkable explanation for the phenomenal changes we are experiencing. Friedman writes of “a tale of technology and geo-economics that is fundamentally reshaping our lives—much, much more quickly than many people realize.” He tells the story of a visit to India and a conversation that woke him up to the realization that globalization is already here. He writes: “I wish I could say I saw it all coming. … The longer I was there, the more upset I became—upset at the realization that globalization had entered a whole new phase, and I had missed it.”

His Indian colleague explained to him: ‘‘What happened over the last years is that there was a massive investment in technology when hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in putting broadband connectivity around the world, undersea cables, all those things. At the same time, computers became cheaper and dispersed all over the world, and there was an explosion of e-mail software, search engines like Google, and proprietary software that can chop up any piece of work and send one part to Boston, one part to Bangalore, and one part to Beijing, making it easy for anyone to do remote development. When all of these things suddenly came together around 2000, they created a platform where intellectual work, intellectual capital, could be delivered from anywhere. It could be disaggregated, delivered, distributed, produced, and put back together again—and this gave a whole new degree of freedom to the way we do work, especially work of an intellectual nature.”

Friedman describes the evolution over time: “This has been building for a long time. Globalization 1.0 (1492 to 1800) shrank the world from a size large to a size medium, and the dynamic force in that era was countries globalizing for resources and imperial conquest. Globalization 2.0 (1800 to 2000) shrank the world from a size medium to a size small, and it was spearheaded by companies globalizing for markets and labor. Globalization 3.0 (which started around 2000) is shrinking the world from a size small to a size tiny and flattening the playing field at the same time. And while the dynamic force in Globalization 1.0 was countries globalizing and the dynamic force in Globalization 2.0 was companies globalizing, the dynamic force in Globalization 3.0—the thing that gives it its unique character—is individuals and small groups globalizing. Individuals must, and can, now ask: Where do I fit into the global competition and opportunities of the day, and how can I, on my own, collaborate with others globally? But Globalization 3.0 not only differs from the previous eras in how it is shrinking and flattening the world and in how it is empowering individuals. It is also different in that Globalization 1.0 and 2.0 were driven primarily by European and American companies and countries. But going forward, this will be less and less true. Globalization 3.0 is not only going to be driven more by individuals but also by a much more diverse—non-Western, non-white—group of individuals. In Globalization 3.0, you are going to see every color of the human rainbow take part.”

Friedman continues: “Today, a fourteen-year-old in Romania or Bangalore or the Soviet Union or Vietnam has all the information, all the tools, all the software easily available to apply knowledge however they want. … As bioscience becomes more computational and less about wet labs and as all the genomic data becomes easily available on the Internet, at some point you will be able to design vaccines on your laptop. … The upside is that by connecting all these knowledge pools we are on the cusp of an incredible new era of innovation, an era that will be driven from left field and right field, from West and East and from North and South. Today, anyone with smarts, access to Google, and a cheap wireless laptop can join the innovation fray.”

(It is not hyperbole to note that collaborative, innovative, and strength-based processes emerge when people dialogue in an appreciative mode. The process itself enables them to co-create a future that is “owned” by all involved in the dialogue; and this mutual “ownership” results in collaborative processes for co-creation. Once individual members of a group or organization internalize the power of focusing on the positive aspects of a situation, the more facile the group or organization gets at managing the reality of constant and relentless change.)

Unlike the world of 2000, Appreciative Inquiry as well as other innovative and strength based approaches to the field of organization development (OD) and change are recognized and sought after by those who live and work in “human systems.” We are seeing methods and practices that deal with whole systems. Traditional practices are being revised and adapted in order to take into account the speed of change, the complexity of the environment, and the unpredictability of human behavior. The concept of “social construction,” so problematic for many years, is more and more understood to be causal. We do, indeed, create what we imagine together!

In a major paper titled “Organization Discourse and New Organization Development Practices,” written by David Grant and Robert J. Marshak and published in 2008 in the British Journal of Management (eight years after the publication of the first edition of this book and nearly twenty years after the emergence of AI in the work of David Cooperrider and colleagues at Case Western Reserve University) the authors write:

“A new ensemble of organization development (OD) practices have emerged that are based more on constructionist, post modern and new sciences premises than on the assumptions of the early founders (of OD). These include practices associated with Appreciative Inquiry, large group interventions, changing mindsets and consciousness, addressing diversity and multicultural realities, and advancing new and different models of change. … In particular, studies of organizational discourse based upon social constructionist and critical perspectives offer compelling ideas and practices associated with the establishment of change concepts, the role of power and context in relation to organizational change, and specific discursive interventions designed to foster organizational change. … Recently, organizational change research has undergone a ‘metamorphosis,’ one that encompasses a pluralism of approaches and a strengthening of the links between organizational studies and the social sciences (Pettigrew, Woodman, & Cameron, 2001, p. 697). We contend that one possible outcome of this metamorphosis is that there may now be an emerging set of new organization development (OD) practices—what we refer to collectively here as ‘New OD.’ Taken together, these practices emphasize a number of philosophical assumptions and associated methodologies that differ in varying degrees from key assumptions of those who founded the OD movement in the 1950s and 1960s.”

These shifts are described by Marshak and Grant in Table 1.1 above:

Table 1.1. Classical vs. New OD

R. J. Marshak and D. Grant (2008). Organizational Discourse and New Organization Development Practices. British Journal of Management, 19, S7–S19.

In another paper, Gervase Bushe and Bob Marshak compare diagnostic and dialogic forms of OD, as shown in Table 1.2.

Table 1.2. Contrasting Diagnostic and Dialogic OD

After reading the Marshak and Grant’s work, the late Udai Pareek (an “elder” in introducing organization development in India and founder of the Indian Society for Applied Behavioral Science, added the following interesting information about the impact of this shift on young people growing up in this rapidly changing world. (This generation is often called the “Millennials.” In Table 1.3 below, Pareek describes the older generation as “geezers” and the “Millennials as “geeks” and describes the shift from one generation to another in these turbulent times.)

Table 1.3. The Shift from Geezers to Geeks

Pareek also writes that technological advancement seems to have had the following impact on the new generation:

Pareek writes: “It seems that the eras influence the ways in which OD is both conceptualized and practiced.” He suggests that the two contrasting forms might better be called “research versus search,” with research being investigation of a known field, whereas for search more exploration is required. He sums it up with a quote from Bennis and Thomas: “Maps, by definition, can help only in known worlds—worlds that have been charted before. Compasses are helpful when you are not sure where you are and can get only a general sense of direction.”

Appreciative Inquiry is all about being a “compass.” It provides a process for exploration, rapid prototyping, and constant exploration through continuous dialogue that focuses on what one is learning and how that is a precursor for the next exploration.