Appreciative Inquiry

I am an Appreciative Inquiry Coach and would love the world to adopt this very positive and wonderful way of working, interacting, and living in order for life, politics, and just about everything else regarding human beings, to be a more positive thing.
 In the mid 80s, David Cooperrider introduced Appreciative Inquiry, the idea that rather than focusing on trying to fix problems, which means constantly focusing our attention on problems, corporations look, with appreciation, at what is actually working.  His idea was that through the four step process he has named Discovery, Dream, Design and Destiny, human systems (meaning businesses, communities and families) could essentially accentuate the positive, and build on what is working well, in order to repeat and enlarge their successes.
The process should involve everyone concerned, rather than just management, or in the case of families, parents, so that everyone has input and therefore a stake in the outcome. When everyone has a say in what is working well, and everyone casts an appreciative eye at the system, participants are able to build commitment and confidence, so that they feel they have taken part in any resulting successes, and continue to participate in creating more successes.  This is a living process that can start simply by questioning what is working.  We have been taught to "learn from our mistakes", and so it is easy to fall into problem solving, again, focusing our attention on mistakes and problems. If we carry around a mental list of “don’ts”, when it comes time to act, will we know how to do so? Heightening awareness of what works gives us the confidence in what we are doing and how we are doing it, to continue to improve and build on success.

Enjoy the meadow

I wrote yesterday about "The Art of Possibility" and the authors speak in one of the later chapters about passion in music, and not getting so bogged down in playing individual notes or bars that you lose the overarching flow of the passage. I had a job once where the CEO, a famous scholar, used to say to us "Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good". These things seem to me to be related.
Think of yourself walking though a meadow on a lovely warm day, the sun a golden honey ball of warmth, the grass or turf under your feet a brilliant green, the scent of freshness in the air intoxicating, the trees in the near distance swaying gracefully in a light breeze, when suddenly you notice a tall weed in your line of vision.  How will the rest of your walk in the meadow be after that?  Will it be spoiled by the note of imperfection, will your disappointment overcome your pleasure and joy in the day? Will you dwell on the single weed, and perhaps begin to look for more instances in the picture that mar its perfection? Will you begin to notice the bugs, or that there is a cloud of gnats ahead? 
Or are you the kind of person who thinks "Oh imagine that, a weed in such a lovely meadow" and go on from there. Perhaps you are the kind of person who will think that even in a meadow as lovely as this, there is room for a weed, the lowliest of all plants, to lift its head and reach for the sun. Will you continue to enjoy the meadow, or your vision of the meadow, or will you shut down?
The musician who is caught up in the overarching beauty of the music, will never be crushed by a few mistaken notes, but the musician who insists that each note be perfection, loses the meaning that he was meant to channel to his audience.  Which would you rather be?

Appreciative Inquiry, Alzheimers, and the Art of Possibility

I was asked by a friend to substitute for her today as the facilitatior of an Alzheimer's support group.  I am filled with admiration for how these people come together twice a month to support each other, and to share information, and to give each other a space where they can cry freely, bitch when they need to, and have a friendly group who understands, as no one else can, what exactly they are going though, even though in the Alzheimer's community there is a saying: if you know five people, (or ten or a hundred)people with Alzheimers, you know five (or ten or a hundred) different diseases, because no two people with Alzheimers are the same, or have the same reaction to meds, or decline in the same way. When the meeting was in progress, I was reminded of a wonderful book I read often, "The Art of Possibility" by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander.  Their premise is that "the more attention you shine on a particular subject, the more evidence of it will grow.  Attention is like light and air and water." As an Appreciative Inquiry coach, it is my basic way of dealing with how a company or business should proceed in team building, or a change in the organization.  "If we focus on obstacles and problems, they multiply lavishly." I like to focus on what is already working and what has been successful, as a guide.  So today, for the last 15 minutes of our meeting, I asked these courageous caregivers to try to think of one good or lovely thing that has come to them in spite of the heartbreak of a loved one slipping away by degrees. One woman said that in her search to care for her mother, they discovered that at the age of 90, she was a fine artist, something they had not previously known. Another remembered that all her married life, her husband of 63 years had daily told her "I love you still", and even though he had lost so much of his memory, he still tells her that, and the sweetness of it. Others said that they were learning to make a life for themselves, and almost all found a way to be grateful for something.  We left the meeting light of heart with the good things in mind, accepting the way things are, but finding something for which to be grateful.  I hope that each day, you too, can find something in the way things are for which to be grateful.
And I hope that you will pick up a copy of the Zanders' book, and read it often.  It is for me a twice a year read, and no matter how many times I read it, I always find an "aha", and I am always happy to be reminded of all the possibilities that exist if only we look for them.