Facilitation · 2-4 day intensive summits or multi-week organizational cycles

Appreciative Inquiry (AI)

A strengths-based organizational development model that facilitates self-determined change by focusing on an organization's 'positive core.' Rather than identifying and fixing problems, it uses collective inquiry to imagine and design a desired future state based on what is already working effectively.

When to use Appreciative Inquiry (AI)

Ideal for organizational transformation, strategic visioning, culture shifts, and situations where traditional problem-solving has led to stagnation or low morale.

How Appreciative Inquiry (AI) works

Facilitators can use this framework to structure large-scale summits or strategic planning sessions. By replacing traditional 'gap analysis' with appreciative interviews and generative storytelling, designers can move a group from shared discovery to autonomous, self-organized action.

Phases of Appreciative Inquiry (AI)

  1. Define: Frame the affirmative topic of inquiry, phrased as what the group wants more of rather than a problem. The facilitator works with a core team to agree scope, participants and the positive question that guides everything else.
  2. Discover: Uncover the positive core by exploring what already works at its best. Participants run paired appreciative interviews, share peak-experience stories and harvest recurring strengths, values and success factors.
  3. Dream: Imagine what could be, building on the strengths found in Discover. Groups create shared images of the ideal future through visioning, drawings, skits or future headlines, then look for common themes.
  4. Design: Decide what should be by translating the dream into provocative propositions about structures, processes and relationships. Participants co-write concrete design statements, stretching but grounded in the positive core.
  5. Destiny (or Deploy): Sustain what will be through self-organized action and ongoing learning. Participants volunteer for initiatives, form action teams and agree how progress and new stories will be shared after the session.

Key principles

  • Constructionist Principle: Language and discourse co-construct the reality of the organization.
  • Principle of Simultaneity: Inquiry and change happen at the same time; the first questions asked set the direction for change.
  • Poetic Principle: Organizations are like open books; we can choose which stories to study and amplify.
  • Anticipatory Principle: Collective images of the future act as a mobilizing agent for current behavior.
  • Positive Principle: Sustainable change requires positive affect, such as hope, joy, and social bonding, to increase creativity and cognitive flexibility.

Best for

  • Organizational Development
  • Strategic Planning
  • Culture Transformation
  • Community Building

Considerations

  • Must focus on 'generativity' (creating new ideas) rather than just 'positivity' to ensure transformational change.
  • Requires a high degree of stakeholder engagement and a willingness to move away from deficiency-based thinking.
  • The 'Generative' approach to the Destiny phase (allowing action without waiting for permission) is more transformational than traditional top-down management.

Attribution & sources

Developed by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva (1987)

Primary source

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