Appreciative inquiry
Contents
Definition
A strategy of asking positively framed questions to focus on what is going right within an organization. The aim is to help alleviate resistance to change and to improve processes, products, services, communication, leadership and other issues by focusing on the best possible outcomes and practices using the ‘four-d’ cycle of discovery, dream, design, and destiny
Description
Appreciative Inquiry is about the co-evolutionary 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. Appreciative inquiry involves, in a central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system's capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential. It centrally involves the mobilization of inquiry through the crafting of the "unconditional positive question" often concerning hundreds or sometimes thousands of people. (David L. Cooperrider)
In appreciative inquiry, the hard task of intervention is replaced by the speed of imagination and innovation; instead of negation, criticism, and spiraling diagnosis, there is discovery, dream, and design. seeks, fundamentally, to build a constructive union between a whole people and the massive entirety of what people talk about as past and present capacities: achievements, assets, unexplored potentials, innovations, strengths, elevated thoughts, opportunities, benchmarks, high point moments, lived values, traditions, strategic competencies, stories, expressions of wisdom, insights into the deeper corporate spirit or soul - and visions of valued and possible futures. Taking all of these together as a gestalt, appreciative inquiry deliberately, in everything it does, seeks to work from accounts of this "positive change core" - and it assumes that every living system has many untapped and rich and inspiring accounts of the positive. Link the energy of this core directly to any change agenda and changes never thought possible are suddenly and democratically mobilized.
According to the appreciative inquiry philosophy, human systems grow in the direction of what they persistently ask questions about, and this tendency is the strongest and the most sustainable when the means and ends of inquiry are positively correlated. The most prolific thing a group can do, if its aims are to liberate the human spirit and consciously construct a better future, is to make the positive change core the common and explicit property of all.
Application to nuclear industry organizations
The nuclear industry has traditionally been inclined to ‘drive forward looking in a rear-view mirror’ by devoting extensive resources to event investigation and techniques such as quality assurance audits, root cause analyses, exception reports and other methods that focus on what happened that was not expected — in other words, a negative deviation from procedures or anticipated results. Indeed, it is and will remain imperative that such examinations be conducted in order to determine what changes could be made to prevent recurrence of the abnormalities. However, the appreciative inquiry approach is potentially an excellent complement to these tools in order to also learn from the countless positive experiences that occur on a daily basis in the nuclear field. In addition to potentially improving plant performance, there are parallel possibilities for improving employee pride, ownership, morale, retention and recruitment.
