Appreciative Inquiry

Appreciative Inquiry is a process for helping any enterprise to improve its performance. Most management education is based on the analysis of problems followed by finding an optimal solution. The modern manager seeks problems to solve and designs reporting systems that will highlight problems. This can lead to an impression that the enterprise has problems and very little else. Once this impression takes hold all decisions related to the enterprise including investment and long term planning is affected. You may think this is an extreme view and that in reality the postivie aspects of the enterprise are also taken into account but your sub-conscious mind has started to make the link between problems and this particular enterprise.

The other downside of concentrating on problem solving is that it is very difficult to motivate employees if a large portion of time is spent on seeking out problems and possibly who is to blame for the problem.

It is difficult to produce a motivational long term plan if it is built around ensuring problems are not repeated and new problems are identified quickly. Motivation has to be based on positive goals which produce a sense of achievement when they are reached.

Appreciative Inquiry seeks to find what the enterprise does well and then does more of it. If a method of working produces good results in one area it may be worthwhile considering using the same approach elsewhere. The concept is to then feed good performance and starve under performance. If you use a problem solving approach you will end up feeding the under performance with your time and the resources needed to solve the problem.