Using AI to Unleash the Power of Your People

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Using AI to Unleash the Power of Your People

• Welcome!

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Appreciative Inquiry

• The study of what gives life to human systems
  when they are at their best.
• A methodology for positive change
• An invitation to a positive revolution
• A process for whole system transformation (e.g.
  Avon Mexico)

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Appreciative Inquiry

• is a positive, strength based
• alternative to problem solving
• as a means of initiating
• and managing change in
• organizations.

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Why Should You be Interested?

• Appreciative Inquiry can give your organization
  a competitive advantage by
• Fully engaging the creativity and talent of your
  existing employees unleashing their potential
• Magnifying the speed at which you can execute
  positive innovations
• Creating an organizational culture that attracts
  the best and brightest talent to it, and keeps it.

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Two Approaches to Initiating/Managing Change

• Problem Solving Approach
• Asks What are the problems here?
• Focuses on Problems, deficiencies, whats wrong,
  whats broken, what isnt working. Seeks fixes
  to problems.
• Appreciative Approach since 1987
• Asks What works well here? What is this
  organization like when it is at its best?
• Focuses on Peak experiences, best practices,
  life giving/life enriching forces.

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Appreciative Inquiry is based on the ancient
wisdom that

• Whatever you focus your
• attention on
• G R O W S

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The Case of BP Pro Care
79 Customer Satisfaction Desire to
improve First they held focus groups with
Dissatisfied Customers
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The Case of BP Pro Care

• Using this approach
• the bottom dropped out
• Customer satisfaction plunged
• Staff morale plunged

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The Case of BP Pro Care

• The Appreciative Inquiry Alternative
• Interviews with satisfied customers
• ...Outstanding Customer Satisfaction Experience
• Generative Benchmarking
• 95 fully satisfied customers after 8 months

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British Airways

• Lost Baggage

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British Airways

• Exceptional arrival experiences

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Because whatever you focus your attention on
grows

• Appreciative Inquiry seeks to discover the root
  causes of success rather than the root causes of
  failure.

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The term Appreciative Inquiry comes from

• appreciate
• to value or admire highly
• to recognize with gratitude
• to increase in value, like money in a good
  investment
• inquiry
• to seek to understand through the asking of
  questions

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• Appreciative Inquiry is used to make some
  existing positive quality in the organization
  appreciate, by systematically inquiring into
  where this quality already exists within the
  organization, even if it currently exists only in
  very small amounts. (e.g. Avon Mexico)

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• Appreciative Inquiry is used to get more of
  something.

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What do you want more of in your
company/organization?

• Profits/Productivity?
• Employee loyalty? Customer loyalty?
• Effective teamwork?
• Increased creativity and innovation?
• Shared leadership?
• High morale and enthusiasm for the job?
• Fiscal responsibility accountability?

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• Whatever positive quality you want more of in
  your organization, Appreciative Inquiry can help
  you get it by discovering where the quality
  already exists in your organization, and then
  leveraging this to create more.

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• Business Results
• Using
• Appreciative Inquiry

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Green Mountain Coffee Roasters

• Enhancing Profitability Through
• Business Process Excellence 2003
• The 25 cent Challenge attempted for 10 years
• Net income 2004 year end 2005 Year End
  Increase
• (in 000) 7,825 8,956 1,131
• (source GMCR Financial Statements) 14.45
• Feb. 05 Feb, 06 Increase
• Stock Price 26.02 38.02 46.1
• (source Yahoo Finance)

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Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
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• According to their web site, GMCR has had double
  digit net sales growth for the last 27
  consecutive quarters. (as of January 2010)

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Business Results Using AI

• GTE Telecommunications (Verizon) 67,000 employees
  (during communications industry restructuring,
  job cuts)
• In just one years time (1996 to 1997)
  employees support for GTEs business direction
  jumped 50 percent and their perception that
  information is shared openly rose nearly 140
  percent.

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More Business Results Using AI

• GTE Telecommunications (Verizon)
• credit verification process, resulting in 3
  million collected in 1996.
• payment process, saving 7 to 8 million
  annually.
• insufficient funds process, saving 4 million in
  1996 (Cheny Jarrett, 1998, p.46)

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More Business Results Using AI

• GTE Telecommunications (Verizon)
• Over 10,000 innovations were attributed to the
  Appreciative Inquiry process.

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More Business Results Using AI

• John Deere (Harvester Works Division)
• reduced their product development cycle from 5
  years to 3 years
• produced immediate savings of 6 million
• positively transformed labour management
  relations

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More Business Results Using AI

• Roadway Express
• (teamster union shop)
• employee driven improvements translated into 17
  million in additional revenue for a year, and 7
  million annual profit

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Two More Examples

• Nutrimental Foods of Brazil
• Spectacular increases in profits (200 after 1
  year, 300 after two years) and decreases in
  employee absenteeism
• Hunter Douglas Window Fashions
• Increased productivity/decreased waste in
  manufacturing to levels they had previously
  thought were mathematically impossible.

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5 Generic Processes

• 1. Choose the positive as the focus of inquiry
• 2. Inquire into stories of life-giving forces
• 3. Locate themes that appear in the stories and
  select topics for further inquiry
• 4. Create shared images of a preferred future
• 5. Find innovative ways to create that future

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• The 4D Model

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Who is harassing women and when are they doing
it? What circumstances give rise to harassment?
What kinds of harassment policies do we need?
What is preventing womens advancement in the
company and how can we reduce the barriers?
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When have there been times that men and women
have worked together in this company and the
experience was very positive for both? What
circumstances made these positive experiences
possible? How can we recreate these conditions so
that men and women have more "best" experiences
working together?
Who is harassing women and when are they doing
it? What circumstances give rise to harassment?
What kinds of harassment policies do we need?
What is preventing womens advancement in the
company and how can we reduce the barriers?
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When have there been times that men and women
have worked together in this company and the
experience was very positive for both? What
circumstances made these positive experiences
possible? How can we recreate these conditions so
that men and women have more "best" experiences
working together?
Who is harassing women and when are they doing
it? What circumstances give rise to harassment?
What kinds of harassment policies do we need?
What is preventing womens advancement in the
company and how can we reduce the barriers?
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• "When people are asked to participate in a
  change effort targeted at changing behaviors -
  specifically their behaviors - they are
  ambivalent at best. When people are asked to
  bring their best forward for the benefit of the
  organization they do so with enthusiasm and
  pride." Diana Whitney, David Cooperrider,
  Maureen Garrison and Jean Moore in "Appreciative
  Inquiry and Culture Change at GTE Launching a
  Positive Revolution"

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Developing an Appreciative Mindset

• Gervase Bushe
• www.gervasebushe.ca
• The Appreciative Self
• Tracking
• Fanning

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1st D - Discovery

• This is generally done using one on one
  interviews lasting between 1-2 hours
• Conscious decisions about who interviews whom
  add value to the process.
• Uses pre-written questionnaires. All of the
  questions have a positive focus.

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1st D - Discovery

• Introductory Questions
• Topic Questions 3-5 topics
• Concluding Questions

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• Time to Try It!
• Use Introductory Questions - conversation

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Brief Debrief

• How was that?

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Best in Class

• Please do this one as an interview 90/10

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Brief Debrief

• How was that?

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Compiling and Handling the Data

• Interviews are summarized on Interview Summary
  Forms and distributed as widely as possible
  among organizational members prior to the Dream
  phase.

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2nd D Dream group activity
Imagining the best possible future for the
organization that is grounded in the very best of
what has already been. A vision/image of that
best possible future is collectively created.
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• Organizations are not pushed by their past
  they are pulled by the collective image they
  hold of their future.
• The wake does not drive the boat!
• The heliotropic principle

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The Generative Metaphor Intervention

• Medic Inn
• transformed organizational culture from one of
  hostility, suspicion, backbiting and negativity,
  into one of openness, cooperation and
  collaboration
• transformed the hotel from a 1 star to 4 star
  facility in one year

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• Time to Try It!
• Imagine that every problem or inadequacy of
  your organization is solved, and your
  organization is now in its best possible state.
  What does that look like?
• Draw some images on the blank sheet.

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Provocative Propositions

• Written in bold affirmative language in the
  present tense
• provocative offer stretch and challenge, but
  are achievable
• Grounded in the best of what is
• Reflect peoples highest aspirations they
  provoke passion

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CommunicationRed Deer Public Library

• We communicate openly, honestly, accurately and
  in a timely manner while being sensitive to the
  context and individuals involved. We recognize
  that individuals have different preferred methods
  of communication, and we accommodate these
  differences as much as possible. All staff have
  access to a single internal point of contact to
  communicate essential information. We provide
  appropriate channels to facilitate the free flow
  of information up, down and throughout the
  organization and to our external stakeholders.

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RDPLs Action Steps

• Hold a 1-hour training session for the use of the
  blog learn _at_ lunch
• Have sections on the blog for each department
• Use one or more of the monitors as an info
  board specifically for staff
• Have a computer in the staff room
• Designate the blog as the central source of info
  for staff encourage its use.

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3rd D - Design
First we shape our structures and then our
structures shape us. Winston Churchill Design
with an Appreciative Lens Appreciative Inquiry
is an invitation to embed your most cherished
values in the structures that guide individual
and collective action.
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Designing with an Appreciative Lens
It is an invitation to design the social
architecture of your organization or community
so that your values are inevitable. the
relationships, practices, programs, processes,
products, services, policies, communications and
technology
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The AI Design Process

• Identify the elements of your social architecture
  that were most talked about in your discovery and
  dream activities.
• Consider the data what did your discovery and
  dream activities say about the ideal for each
  element?
• Write a set of Design Principles that describe
  and affirm your ideals, that put your values into
  the elements you selected.

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Values-Based Organizational Design

• Value Openness, Transparency
• Architecture Executive Offices First Floor,
  Glass Walls.
• Social Architecture Meeting Participation Open
  to one person from any other department, just had
  to rsvp in advance.
• Social Architecture Financial Information Open
  books to all employees.

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Values-Based Organizational Design

• Value Human Well Being
• Architecture Office Space Secretaries desks
  by the windows Managers offices on the inside
  walls since they spend most of their time away
  from their desks in meetings.
• Social Architecture Executive Sabbatical Each
  executive goes away from the company for 6 months
  every 5 years.

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4th D - Destiny

• The specific action plans and strategies for
  bringing the vision into existence
• How the energy and focus generated by the inquiry
  plays itself out over time. Ideally it helps to
  create an appreciative learning culture

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4th D - Destiny

• 1. Review, communicate and celebrate achievements
  to date to everyone in the organization
• 2. For each provocative proposition, generate a
  list of all possible actions that will bring it
  into being
• 3. Self organize for Inspired Action Projects
• 4. Support Success of the Self Organized Projects
• 5. Systematically apply AI to all aspects of the
  organization

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The Five Core Principles Defined

• The constructionist principle
• Social knowledge and community destiny are
  living, human constructions created through the
  conversations that we have with each other.
  "Reality is a negotiated interpretation." Shapiro
  Carr, 1991

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The five core principles defined continued

• The principle of simultaneity
• Inquiry and change occur simultaneously . It
  is not the case that "first we do the analysis
  and then we decide on change." The very process
  of inquiry/analysis creates its own changes.

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The five core principles defined continued

• The anticipatory principle
• Current behaviour is guided by images of the
  future. Organizations are not pushed by their
  past (the wake does not drive the boat) they are
  pulled by the collective image they hold of
  their future. Self-fulfilling prophecy
  Pygmalion effect, placebo effect.

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The five core principles defined continued

• The poetic principle
• Human organizations, including communities, are
  an open book, constantly being revised and
  co-authored. Its past, present and future are an
  endless source of learning, inspiration and
  interpretation.

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The five core principles defined continued

• The positive principle
• The momentum for change requires positive
  thinking and social bonding-qualities like hope,
  inspiration and joy in creating with one another.
  Positive questions guide organizational
  development and foster long-lasting and effective
  changes. People, businesses, organizations and
  communities move in the direction of their
  questions. "What impact is my question having on
  our lives together ... is it helping to generate
  conversations about the good, the better, the
  possible ... is it strengthening our
  relationships?"

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Reshaping Org. Culture

• AI gives you a powerful, positive process to do
  this

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Roadway Express

• Wanted to reduce costs because of the pressure
  they were experiencing from non-unionized
  trucking companies.
• They didnt use cost cutting initiatives

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Roadway Express AI Questionnaire

• Question 4 A truly outstanding organization is
  one where each person is given the opportunity to
  display financial responsibility. Understanding
  how what I do impacts the bottom line, doing
  things right the first time, and being aware of
  the costs of doing business are all components of
  financial responsibility.
• Describe a time when you felt you exhibited a
  clear sense of financial responsibility. What was
  it about the situation that enabled you to do
  this?
• What 3 things could be done to strengthen
  everyones sense of financial responsibility?

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Change is InevitableThe best way to predict
the future is to create it.
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Appreciative Inquiry is a positive, visionary
approach that

• energizes and empowers people, and releases their
  potential
• promotes buy-in, reduces resistance
• strengthens relationships
• builds loyalty, morale and commitment
• creates happier, more productive organizational
  cultures.

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• AI is based on a deceptively simple premise
  that organizations grow in the direction of what
  they repeatedly ask questions about and focus
  their attention on. AI does not focus on
  changing people. Instead, it invites people to
  engage in building the kinds of organizations
  they want to live in. Thats hard to resist.
  Gervase Bushe

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• Organizations, says AI theory, are centers of
  human relatedness, first and foremost, and
  relationships thrive where there is an
  appreciative eye when people see the best in
  one another, when they share their dreams and
  ultimate concerns in affirming ways, and when
  they are connected in full voice to create not
  just new worlds, but better worlds.

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Mini Discovery

• What was your peak experience over the last
  1-1/2 hours?
• What is the most significant idea or concept you
  will take away from this morning, and how will
  you use it in your organization?

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Thank you!

• Jim Taylor
• 403 343-7388
• www.rolyat.ca