Appreciative Inquiry is the exploration of what gives life to human systems when they function at their best. This approach to personal and organizational change is based on the assumption that questions and dialogue about strengths, successes, values, hopes, and dreams are themselves transformational.

It’s about the search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them. In its broadest focus, it involves systematic discovery of what gives “life” to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most constructively capable in economic, ecological, and human terms.

I want to share with you a powerful approach for creating explosive and sustainable growth within your organization using cutting edge management development tools. Most of the materials that exist on this subject are still in academic journals and are hardly suitable for quick or pleasurable reading.

As people grow weary of change efforts, there is now a renewed sense of optimism for a process that recognizes inquiry and change can happen simultaneously - the moment that a positive question is contemplated. This is not to imply that we ignore problems - they just need to be approached from the other side.

Obviously, we have all had ups and downs in our careers and in our lives. But for the moment try to focus or recall a high point, a time in your work experience when you felt most alive, most engaged, or most successful. Perhaps you may recall when your business was at its peak or was considered a high-performance organization.

The crafting of this inquiry is all that is necessary to begin but it can also be the most difficult for people to do alone. Let me briefly explain some of the other concepts that combine to make Appreciative Inquiry work so effectively.

Putting Appreciative Inquiry into practice.

First, organizations should not be considered broken, in need of being fixed; or viewed as problems to be solved.

Secondly, consider the application of appreciative inquiry as we recall the times we were most alive; at our best as individuals or organizations. While eliciting renewed energy, we can begin to dialogue about designing a future-state based on actual experiences rather than imagined or hoped-for change. Because these experiences are real, we have confidence that they can be recreated.

Contrast this with the all too frequent situation of listening to plans for the future that a leader or manager has created in isolation: and then you walk away either in disbelief that it will happen or with a “wait and see attitude.”

In order to supercharge your organization consider two models for bringing about successful change.

The first is one that most of us have operated by for many years. It’s known as problem-solving.

Within the problem-solving methodology, we start by looking for problems, identifying the causes, analyzing the causes, and then attempting to identify possible solutions after we have already put ourselves in an energy draining, deficit-based, and depressing state by focusing on problems, their sources, and times we would prefer to forget.

Results show that appreciative inquiry outperforms other change methods.

Problem Solving can be slow and Conservative while creating a temporary Organizational Depression.

AI can produce High-Velocity Change, Rapid Innovation, Energy for Action – Based on Hope, Cooperation and Commitment, and leave a Culture of High Performance.

Although this may sound just like positive thinking or like a Pollyannaish approach to serious problems, let me assure you that it is not.

The framework for creating an Appreciative Inquiry Summit can be quite involved and require the collection and analysis of a lot of information to create the themes for the future.

For companies though; problem solving is beginning to look like a very outdated method that would involve consultants entering an organization looking for problems with the only logical result being a discovery of more problems.

In AI, the arduous task of intervention gives way to the speed of imagination and innovation; instead of negative thinking, criticism, and spiraling diagnosis.

Appreciative Inquiry suggests a growing disenchantment with exhausted theories of change, especially those wedded to vocabularies of human deficit, and a corresponding urge to work with people, groups, and organizations in a more constructive, life affirming, strength-based and spirited way.

The appreciative inquiry process describes how to create change by paying attention to what you want more of rather than focusing on problems and searching for their causes.

The beauty of appreciative inquiry is that is not a fixed model for creating change but rather; it is created and constantly re-created by the people who are invited into in the process.

Even if we feel that we are positive the majority of the time, consider how we limit ourselves in the brief periods when we are not. A senior manager at GTE described appreciative inquiry and then cautioned the group that he wasn't advocating buying into mindless happy talk. But he asked them, when you get a survey that says 94% of your customers are happy, what do you automatically do?

Perhaps you've already guessed the answer.

Most people interview the unhappy 6%, instead of asking the 94% what made them happy.

Can AI work in business to improve the bottom line?

Great question. Consider that currently employees in most companies only hear about the company's profitability when it is dismal and therefore certain incentives and privileges cannot be granted to employees.

What would happen if employees were brought together and asked to create the scenario of what it was like to work for a company when profits were plentiful? I'm confident most would recall receiving well-deserved raises, a general sense of well-being while at work, perhaps more festive events, celebrations and company parties. The atmosphere would be conducive for creativity and innovation would be welcomed.

In fact, while discussing bottom-line financial results, one of the largest proponents of appreciative inquiry has been Cap Gemini, Earnst and Young.

The key point is simply to recognize that instinctively and intuitively we either accept that important ideas can profoundly alter the way we see ourselves, perceive our reality and conduct our lives or  we can choose to maintain the status quo and wait for change to be inflicted upon us.

The noted psychologist Carl Jung concluded that important problems are rarely solved but only outgrown. This “outgrowing”, proves on further investigation, to require a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest appears on the horizon and through the broadening of outlook, the problem loses its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms but faded when confronted with a new and stronger life urge.

Are the people in your real estate office focused on growing or the myriad of challenges that face them each day? 

If you want genuine, effective and personalized services rather than cookie cutter solutions, Click here to schedule your free consultation and see how the Proven Strategies Appreciative Inquiry Challenge will make managing your office easier while increasing your market share.