Organizational Development for Knowledge Management at Water ...

Appreciative Inquiry 3
An approach to accelerating receptivity to new ideas, behavior change, and the adoption of
best practices.
Supports: organizational learning, culture change
LEVEL OF EFFORT
SIZE OF UTILITY
SCOPE OF WORK
MED
SCALABLE
WIDE
To appreciate is to value, to recognize the best in people and the things around us, while to
inquire is the act of exploration and discovery and asking questions. Appreciative Inquiry (AI),
then, is an approach that discovers and promotes the best in people and those things around
us. Hammond describes appreciative inquiry as a way of thinking, seeing and acting to bring
about purposeful change (Hammond, 1996).
The approach was discovered by Dr. David Cooperrider and his colleagues who were
studying at the Weatherhead Graduate School of Management at Case Western Reserve
University. Traditional organizational interventions identify problems and hunt for solutions; the
appreciative inquiry approach locates and tries to understand that which is working, learning
from it and amplifying it, serving as a complement to other interventions, or, perhaps, offering a
way other interventions can be approached. It is based on the simple premise that
organizations (teams, communities, countries) grow in the direction of what they are repeatedly
asked questions about and therefore focus their attention on (Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1990).
The principles Cooperrider and Srivastva created for appreciative inquiry as explained in
terms of organizations and groups by Hammond and Hall (reference below) are:
1. In every organization or group, something works.
2. What we focus on becomes our reality.
3. Reality is created in the moment and there are multiple realities.
4. The act of asking questions of an organization or group influences the group in some
way.
5. People have more confidence and comfort to journey to the future (the unknown) when
they carry forward parts of the past (the known).
6. If we carry parts of the past forward, they should be what is best about the past.
7. It is important to value differences.
8. The language we use creates our reality.
The appreciative inquiry approach has been successfully used in organizations. As the
focus in organizations moves back to people and the knowledge they create, share and use, the
empowering aspects of the appreciative inquiry approach can build self-confidence in—and
receptivity to—new ideas and accelerate behavioral change.
3 Adapted from Bennet and Bennet (2007)
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