Appreciative Inquiry

Brief Description:

Appreciative Inquiry builds a vision for the future using questions to focus people's attention on past and future success. These questions are then taken to the wider community. Issues addressed often revolve around what people enjoy about an area, their hopes for the future, and their feelings about their communities.
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Description:

The questions are designed to encourage people to tell stories from their own experience of what works. By discussing what has worked in the past and the reasons why, the participants can go on to imagine and create a vision of what would make a successful future that has a firm grounding in the reality of past successes. Questions often revolve around what people enjoy about an area, their aspirations for the future, and their feelings about their communities.
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Used For:

Promoting positive thinking by identifying and building on what works and involving lots of people through outreach by the core group who create the questions in the first place.
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Suitable participants:

The process begins with a core group setting the focus of the Inquiry, and developing and testing the appreciative questions. These are used by many people in the community to gather information through stories as well as set out their hopes and wishes for the future.
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Cost:

Cost usually between £1,000 and £15,000 depending on size of organization and ability to pay.
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Time Requirements:

The interview questions can be developed, tested and analysed in a few hours or in a workshop. Data from the interviews can be looked at and turned into information by a few people or, preferably, by the whole community. Everyone can then decide collectively how to best go forward. AI works best when there is something that needs to be worked on in the whole community and where there is a long-term commitment to change.
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When To Use / What It Can Deliver:

• When there is a complex situation which needs some collective will to address.

• When you want to bring people together to work on something of mutual interest.

• When you want to build a vision of the future as well as work with others to make things happen in the short-term.

• It can help to deliver a shared vision and improved relationships and working together.

When Not To Use / What It Cannot Deliver:

• When one person is clear about a desired outcome.

• When there is no interest in involving others in a creative way or when their opinions are not valued.

• When there is no interest in sharing responsibility or decision-making.

• When it is important to involve all key stakeholders and you cannot recruit a good core group.

• It cannot deliver a pre-formed solution. Each community develops its own response to its own situation.

Strengths:

• It is story-based. People speak from their own experience
• Community involvement
• Easy to include the people who normally don't take part;
• It builds on what has worked in the past
• Creates a strong vision
• Partnership working. AI helps to develop partnerships by helping people to identify the values and behaviour they want the partnership to have in the future.
• Uses a set of principles to apply to other decision-making methods

Weaknesses:

• Appreciative Inquiry is a philosophy first and a method second, so it is fairly loose.
• Some people view the lack of direct attention to problems as a weakness.
• Appreciative Inquiry pays little attention to who should be involved.

Origin:

Organisational Change Management developed by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastra at Case Western Reserve University in the USA. They wanted to challenge the problem-solving approach to the management of change, by showing that organisations are not machines to be fixed but organisms to be appreciated and affirmed.
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Case Studies:

• Ryedale Community Plan (CaseStudies)

Related Methods

• Forum Theatre
• Future Search

Restrictions In Use

Further Information

Online Resources: http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/ - Case Western Reserve
University where AI was first developed

Contact: Anne Radford
Telephone: 020 7633 9630
Fax: 020 7633 9670
Email: AnneLondon@aol.com
Web: http://www.aradford.co.uk

Publications:

Griffin, T. (Ed.) (2003), The Appreciative Inquiry Summit: A Practitioners Guide for Leading Large Group Change, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco.

Whitney, D. and Trosten-Bloom, A. (2002), The Power of Appreciative Inquiry: A Practical Guide to Positive Change, Berret-Koehler, San Francisco.

Popular Methods

21st Century Town Meeting

Citizens Jury

Deliberative Polling

Open Space

Participatory Appraisal

Participatory Budgeting

Webcasting