Re-Thinking Human Organization

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• Re-ThinkingHuman Organization Changethrough
  Appreciative Inquiry
• Ronald E. Fry, Ph.D.Department of Organizational
  Behavior
• Case Western Reserve University
• rxf5_at_cwru.edu

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It is a Time for Re-thinkingHuman Organization
and Change
We are at the very point in time when a
400-year old age is dying and another is
struggling to be born, a shifting of culture,
science, society, and institutions enormously
greater than the world has ever experienced.
Ahead, the possibility of the regeneration of
relationships, liberty, community, and ethics
such as the world has never known, and a harmony
with nature, with one another, and with the
divine intelligence such as the world has never
dreamed. --Dee Hock, Founder
CEO--Visa
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Deficit Theory of Change and Cultural
Consequences of Deficit Discourse

• The signal accomplishment of the industrial
  age was the notion of continuous improvement. It
  remains the secular religion of most managers
  has reached the point of diminishing returns in
  incremental improvement programs. Gary Hamel
  Leading The Revolution

• Identify problem
• Conduct root cause analysis
• Brainstorm solutionsand analyze
• Develop action plans

MetaphorOrganizations are problems to be solved!
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Consequences of Deficit Discourse

• Fragmentation
• Few New Images of Possibility Self-Fulfilling
  Frames/Questions
• Exhaustion Visionless Voice
• The Experts Must Know Dependence and
  Hierarchy
• Spirals in Deficit Vocabularies
• Breakdown in Relations/Closed Door
  Meetings/Decrease in Public Space/Cycle of
  despair

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Appreciative Inquiry is a Shift

• No problem can be solved from the same level of
  consciousness that created it. We must learn to
  see the world anew.There are only two ways to
  live your life. One is as though nothing is a
  miracle. The other is as though everything is a
  miracle.
• Albert
  Einstein

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Appreciative Inquiry

• A collaborative search to identify and
  understand the organizations strengths, its
  potentials, the greatest opportunities, and
  peoples hopes for the future.

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What is AI?

• Learn from the best of the our past
• to envision our future
• Celebrate and exploit our Positive Core
• Create bold, positive images of our future to
  drive organizational change
• Work together on ideas that most attract us

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Whos Using It?

• US Navy
• British Airways
• Roadway Express
• MacDonalds
• Dalai Lama
• Nutrimental (Brazil)
• Palestine/Jewish Entrepreneurs
• Avon Mexico
• American Red Cross
• Cleveland Public Schools

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Los 5 Principios de AI

• El Principio Construccionista - Organizations
  move in the direction of what they most talk
  about.
• El Principio de Simultaneidad - Change begins
  with the first question you ask.
• El Principio Poético - Anything can be studied in
  every social system.
• El Principio de Anticipación - Deep change
  change in our active images of the future.
• El Principio Positivo - The more positive the
  anticipatory image, the more positive the change.

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2 Key Questions

• 1. What, in this particular context, has made
  (organizing) possible?
• 2. What possibilities exist, latent or explicit,
  to have even more effective forms of
  (organizing) in the future?

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1. Peak Experience

• A story of a recent
• high point experience

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2. Leading Positive Change

• An exceptional moment of organizing
• for Positive Change
• What do you value most about Your
  contribution?
• What do you value most about the contribution of
  Others?
• the Organization, situation, structure, task,
  etc?

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3. Envisioning the Future we want

• Wake up from a long sleepdescribe the ideal
  state as if it were happening.
• 3 Wishes for your organization so that
  Exceptional Leadership was experienced by
  everyone, everyday

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Starting AI Interview (dialogue
in pairs)

• A--gtB (12 min) - 1 2
• B--gtA (12 min) - 1 2
• A and B (6 min) - 3
• Spirit of discovery eye of the child
• Take brief notes
• At the end.. summary thanks

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The Power of AI Stories

• Stories stick like glue
• Make information easier to rememberWhole brain
• Builds identities and fosters relationships
• Medium for conveying values, visions
• Moves the internal dialogue of the systembuilds
  sense of cooperative potential
• Human Hopesuspends notions of why things cannot
  happen
• Story-getting and Story-telling are
  untapped management tools!
  
  

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• In Groups of Pairs
• Introduce your partner with main
  headline or theme from his/her
  highpoint story
• List common life giving factors
  to Exceptional Leadership that span several of
  your stories (Question 2)
• Share the images for the Future that came up
  (Question 3) and list most common wishes

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AI 4DCycle
Discovery What gives life? (The best of what
is) Appreciating
Dream What might be? (What is the worldcalling
for) Envisioning Results
Destiny How to empower, learn, and
improvise? Sustaining
Affirmative Topic Choice
Design What should bethe ideal? Co-constructi
ng
Metaphor Organization as a wonder to embrace

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What would you call it?(all these things taken
together)

• Achievements
• Strategic opportunities
• Cooperative Moments
• Technical assets
• Innovations
• Elevated thoughts
• Community assets
• Positive emotions

• Community wisdom
• Core competencies
• Visions of possibility
• Vital traditions, values
• Social capital
• Embedded knowledge
• Financial assets

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The Positive Core

• Complete Organizational Wealth Well-being
• An Incredible Energy
• Source of Continuity

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Whole Organizational Connection to the Positive
Core

• Elevates elicits positive emotions of hope,
  inspiration, confidence, joy raises
  intelligence expands the language of life
  (internal dialogue) increases in appreciative
  interchange and mutually elevating relationships
  heightens creativity, ignites decision making,
  increases collective capacity.
• Undoes Negative Impacts releases, makes
  irrelevant, finishes the residual of negative
  past.
• Protects Increases health, resilience,
  accumulation of power - like an increase in
  immune system functioning.

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The Idea of Positive Change

• Any form of organization change, re-design, or
  planning that begins with comprehensive analysis
  of an organizations positive core and then
  links this knowledge to the heart of any
  strategic change agenda.
• Because human systems move toward what they
  persistently ask questions about, positive change
  involves the deliberate discovery of everything
  that gives a system life when it is most
  effective in economic and human terms.
• Link the positive core directly to any strategic
  agenda, and changes never thought possible are
  more rapidly mobilized while simultaneously
  building enthusiasm, corporate confidence, and
  human energy.

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Positive Change begins with Positive Topic Choice

• Human systems move in the direction of what we
  deeply and persistently ask questions about
• Transformational topics are possible in any
  situation, and will generate more positive
  changeevery time.
• The skill of framing and re-framing

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What would you rather study?Low MoraleorHigh
Enthusiasm
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Exceptional Arrival Experiences

• Preface
• Our goal is to provide an exceptional travel
  experience both in the air and on the ground.The
  handling of a flights arrival and baggage
  reconciliation is of equal importance to any
  other aspect of a passengers journey. The
  arrival experience is the time to leave a
  wonderful lasting impression. It also provides
  the opportunity to recover from any service
  shortfall the customer may have encountered.
  Focusing on Exceptional Arrival Experience
  demonstrates commitment to both our customers and
  to one another.

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Exceptional Arrival Experiences (continued)

• Describe your most memorable arrival experience,
  as a customer or, as airline personnel. What made
  it memorable for you? How did you feel?
• Tell me a story about your most powerful service
  recovery. Describe the situation.
• What was it about you that made it happen?
• Who else was involved and why were they
  significant?
• What tools did you use or what did you do that
  others might be able to do when in a similar
  situation?

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Exceptional Arrival Experience (continued)

• If you had a magic wand, how would you use it to
  enhance our overall arrivals experience for our
  customers? What ideas do you have to ensure
  exceptional arrival experiences for all our
  customers? And to make the process easier for us,
  as well!

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Affirmative Topic Creation (Examples)
Community in Full Voice Transformative
Cooperation Culture of Inclusion Remarkable
Margins Magnetic Work Environment Exceptional
Arrival Experiences Business as an Agent of World
Benefit Leadership at Every Level
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FROM Throughput
Roadway Express
TO Winning with Employee-Driven Throughput
Crushing non-union competition by delivering
unsurpassed speed and leveraging employee pride
and involvement.
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Why does AI work?

• Pioneering Research Across Many Fields
• An Emerging Vocabulary of Positive Change

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Positive Images of Future Drives Positive Change
Many Disciplines
Placebo Effect Pygmalion Effect The Role of
Positive Emotions? Imbalanced Inner
Dialogue Cultural Consequences Learned
Affirmative Capacity
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What Good are Positive Emotions?
JOY Play INTEREST Exploration CONTENTME
NT Savor Integrate LOVE All of the
above Positive Emotions broaden our
thought and action repertories B.
Frederickson
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Empirical Support

• In the moment, Positive Emotions
• Broaden Attention and Thinking
  (Fredrickson Branigan, 2002 Waugh
  Fredrickson, in prep)
• Undo Lingering Negative Emotional Arousal
  (Fredrickson Levenson, 1998 Fredrickson,
  Mancuso, Branigan Tugade, 2000)
• Fuel Resilient Coping
• (Fredrickson, Tugade, Waugh Larkin, 2002
  Tugade Fredrickson, 2002)

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Empirical Support

• Over time, Positive Emotions
• Prevent depression
  
• (Fredrickson, Tugade, Waugh, Larkin,
  2002)
• Trigger Upward Spirals to Increase Well-being
  (Fredrickson Joiner, 2002 Tugade
  Fredrickson, 2002)
• Build optimism, tranquility, and resilience
  (Fredrickson, Tugade, Waugh, Larkin, 2002)

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Applications of Appreciative Inquiry

• Culture change
• Strategic Change/Planning
• Full Engagement of People Schools Communities,
  Networks, Movements, Organizations
• Strength of Diversity Cultures of Unity
• Labor-management partnerships
• Good Supervision
• Operational Excellence Optimal Margins
• Mergers New Teams
• Performance Valuation
• AI Organizational Transformation Reports
  from the field. R. Fry, et. al. (Eds.) Westport,
  CN Quorum, 2001.

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There is No such thing as a Neutral Question!
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Application Discussion
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Appreciative Leadership

• To continuously Value the best in people and in
  the organization today
• To continuously Inquire into the possibilities to
  do better in the future
• To nurture and sustain the Positive Core

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The Call for Positive Change

• To survive and succeed, every organization will
  have to learn to turn itself into a change agent.
  The most effective way to manage change is to
  successfully create it. But experience has shown
  that grafting innovation on to traditional
  enterprise does not work. The enterprise has to
  become the change agentIt requires organized
  abandonment of things unsuccessful and
  exploitation of successes.
• Peter F. Drucker
• Managing in the New Society, 2002

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Remember

• Organizing is a miracle to be embraced
• People and Organisations are heliotropic

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We are born to Appreciate!
Exceptionality
n
Essentiality
n
Equality/Voice
n
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Website For These Slides and for Sharing AI
Tools

• http//ai.cwru.edu
• (Appreciative Inquiry Commons, Weatherhead
  School of Management, Case Western Reserve
  University)
• Please submit/share your new tools, stories,
  studies!