Thursday, November 11, 2010

Living Appreciative Inquiry

I have just returned from a transformational learning experience that I want to take hold in my life and embed itself into how I walk through the world.  It was a course on Appreciative Inquiry which is a revolutionary method of Organizational Development and Change based on tapping into the positive core of organizations and moving from there to create and influence a desired outcome.  Not only am I excited to bring this back to my own organization to involve and ignite the talents, expertise and genius of the people I work with, but beyond this, I want to become an 'agent of appreciation and inquiry'. I want to be a student of the positive core of what gives life to living systems, people, families, relationships, organizations when they are most alive, creative, effective, inspired and productive.  I want to develop an 'appreciative lens' as I look at the world and those around me.

I have come to this place in desperate need of focusing on the good again.  We are in our 3rd year of extreme economic difficulty in our family business and frankly, we are struggling to survive.  Our family has been through very trying times in our relationships with each other.  We are 'on the brink' in all aspects and my desire is to be a change agent to do all I can in this crisis.  I believe that it is by no accident that I have discovered and become a student of AI at this very moment in time.  It has given me hope and something else to try when I literally don't know what else to do to bring our businesses back to financial health as well as to bring our family relationships back to being loving, life-giving and sincere.

According to AI's founder, Dr. David Cooperrider, "Appreciative Inquiry is about the liberation of capacity".   Let this journey of liberation begin! 

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