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| Problem Solving Was Never This Easy |
This article was published in the October 2006 ISPI publication “Performance Improvement”and is the copyright of ISPI.Problem Solving Was Never This EasyTransformational Change through Appreciative Inquiryby Marvin Faure Rare is the annual report that does not make much of that company's efforts to change. Indeed, what is leadership itself if not the ability to inspire other people to change? And yet it appears that upward of 80 percent of change management efforts fail (Zackrison & Freedman, 2003). Why do so many change management efforts fail? Or more positively: Why do some change efforts work? It may be that the change efforts that work do so because their leaders have paid greater attention to creating the right conditions for change, rather than focusing directly on trying to obtain specific changes. Approaches that include the alignment of objectives, work processes, and reward and punishment systems can be successful but may still run into opposition if the people affected feel manipulated or imposed upon. There must be a better way, a way that truly harnesses each individual's talents and energies in the service of the common good. There is indeed mounting evidence that there is an alternative. A number of authors, writing in very different fields, share a common belief in the extraordinary levels of motivation to change that can be unleashed through a focus on the positive, on what works well, and on what gives life and strength. A few examples are Seligman (1990) and Fredrickson (1998) in psychology; Buckingham and Coffman (1999) in performance management; De Jong and Berg (2002) in social work; Ornish (1998) in health; Gallwey (1972) in sport; Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) in education; and most relevantly for our purposes here, Cooperrider and Srivastva (1987) in organizational development. All of them suggest that although the initial motivation to change may start from dissatisfaction with the status quo, the much greater motivation needed to sustain long-lasting and deep-reaching, or transformational, change (that is, change that affects the basic nature of the system itself) arises not from a desire to move away from an unsatisfactory present but from a deep yearning to reach an inspirational vision. This article is intended to demonstrate what makes appreciative inquiry (AI) successful in generating transformational change. To do so, it draws on my practical experience. I will first address what is innovative about Al and then detail the actual process and conditions under which it can lead to truly transformational organizational change. What Is Innovative About Al? What Is AI? Appreciative inquiry has been described as "not a methodology but a way of seeing and being" (Watkins & Mohr, 2001), "the study and exploration of what gives life to human systems when they function at their best" (Whitney & Trosten-Bloom, 2003), and "the cooperative search for the best in people, their organizations, and the world around them" (Ludema, Whitney, Mohr, & Griffin, 2003). In essence it is both a deceptively simple philosophy and a rigorous approach to managing change in human systems. Appreciative Interviews: The Crucial Innovation of Al It is often said that one-on-one appreciative interviews are the single most critical tool in Al and the one part you never eliminate. Focused on the central theme of the change effort, these interviews engage and energize the participants from the start. During the interview, each person has the opportunity to tell his or her story of past successes, of what worked best for him or her, and why this was so. Often individuals are asked at the end of the interview to express their hopes and dreams for the future. These appreciative interviews fulfill at least five important functions: 1.Setting a positive, energizing tone. Sharing past successes magnifies these successes in the minds of the group and makes the current challenges feel more manageable. "We've done it before; why can't we do it again?" 2.Valuing the participants. Everybody has a success story to tell, no matter how small. Retelling it in a supportive environment gives a sense of personal achievement that is highly motivational and helps ensure the active participation of all. 3.Creating personal connections. The interview questions are deep, important questions that invite intimacy, thus creating close personal connections. Such personal connections not only facilitate working together on the spot but also transfer later into the day-to-day work environment. 4.Reducing differences. The interviews are usually conducted in improbable pairs of people who would not normally work together or perhaps even speak to each other during their normal workday. The distrust that often exists between such people melts away as they discover their similarities to be far greater than their differences. 5.Reducing anxiety. Many people feel anxious in large group meetings and unsure of what is expected of them and whether their voice will be heard. The intimacy of one-on-one connections provides the feeling of safety and comfort they need. The last function is context specific and may not always be important, but the first four functions speak to the very heart of Al. Positive Focus Perhaps because Al not only remains a new concept to many people but also is clearly at odds with the problemsolving paradigm on which so much of our education and training is based, it is often described in opposition to the traditional approach. Whereas in traditional change management the focus is on analyzing the "problem" and identifying the "best solution" that will then be "rolled out" (in other words, imposed) on the rest of the organization, Al can be seen as a method for positive change in which the protagonists focus on getting more of what works rather than on eliminating what does not work. On the assumption that words create worlds and that you will always find more of what you look for, problem solving is eschewed. AI proponents argue that you should begin the change effort by asking, in any given situation, What works best? and, What do we want more of? Note that the positive focus in AI is not a Pollyannaish refusal to face the organization's problems. Rather, the stance is that in every given situation there is a mix of good and bad, of things that work and things that do not work. Where a problem solver will focus attention on weaknesses, an Al practitioner will highlight and build on the existing strengths. In so doing, strengths and positives take the place of weaknesses and negatives, without people even needing to discuss them. In Al, participants inquire into each other's most positive experiences (through the appreciative interview process just discussed), locate themes that appear in these interviews, share their hopes and dreams for the future, and then work together to create the common vision that will embody these hopes and dreams (Watkins & Mohr, 2001). As a result, the usual resistance to change is lessened as employees, instead of being told, "This is what is wrong, you must stop doing this and start doing things in a different way," are asked to participate in exploring the questions, What works well? What can we build on? What should we do more of? The focus on strengths engages the curiosity and enthusiasm of employees and avoids the frequently defensive or even aggressive responses provoked when they feel criticized or threatened in their manner of working. For instance, when invited to assist the executive management of a research and development (R&D) facility in fostering a more creative and innovative environment, I began by conducting an inquiry into what the managers already knew about creativity and innovation. Not surprisingly, they knew a lot. The executives interviewed each other and key members of their teams on such topics as: • What are the most creative and innovative things that • have been done here in the last two years? • How did they come about? • What stimulates your thinking and helps you be more creative? With a little bit of help to reframe their findings into recognizable models, the executives collectively knew the characteristics of a highly innovative R&D environment as well as any expert. Why then, were they stuck and unable to make the necessary changes without outside intervention? The answer became clear to me as the intervention proceeded. The majority of the participants were engineers, with a deeply engrained, methodical problem-solving approach to their work. Their whole life centered around identifying problems, determining which were the most important, and then fixing them, one by one, Unfortunately, this approach, which works perfectly well for solving technical problems, was paralyzing them in the face of the social problem of fostering innovation in a complex R&D organization of several hundred people. Unable even to agree on which were the most important problems, they had little hope of agreeing on their potential solutions. The AI process unstuck them dramatically. Once they had reached agreement on the environmental factors that in their own experience favor innovation in R&D, it was relatively simple to create a shared vision for how they wanted their organization to be in the future, and even easier, because back in familiar territory, to agree on action plans for a number of initiatives and organizational or process changes. The positive focus unleashed their energies and freed them from the sterile cycles of argument that had kept them blocked. Benefits of the Positive Focus This positive focus is not only innovative in itself, it also results in at least four welcome consequences that also appear innovative in the context of organizational change. 1. Motivation for Change Through Pride in the Organization's Past Achievements. Focusing on past successes instead of on failures allows the employees to feel proud, proud of themselves, proud to be working with other successful people, and proud of belonging to a company that has been able to achieve such successes. Exchanging stories on past successes reinforces the feeling of being part of a winning team and gives extra impetus to go forward to engineer even greater successes. Perhaps the most exciting use I have been able to make of AI is to create transformational change in leadership. Basing our approach partly on the work of Katzenbach (2003), who has argued that pride is the "world's greatest motivational force," a select group of directors and senior managers conducted an inquiry into the leadership behaviors that are most effective in creating and sustaining pride. The ambitious objective of this program-sponsored directly by the CEO-was to create rapid proliferation of the right behaviors throughout the management, relying on an initial cadre of pride builders to come up themselves with the best ways to do this. This was a substantial departure from this company's usual top-down approach and is much closer to the improvisational approach identified by Bushe and Kassam (2005) as being extremely effective in achieving transformational change. Truly transformational change can occur when the initiatives thus created are nurtured and allowed to grow and proliferate. 2. New Paths for Change. Another effect of inquiring into past successes is to open up wide horizons and multiple paths to the future. This occurs because the success stories typically cover many different areas, juxtaposing incidents from very different situations in an unpredictable way and thus creating the conditions for innovation. The simple shift in focus toward debating opportunities, and away from focusing on problems, blows apart that famous box that tends to limit thinking strictly to solving the problem as defined. In the R&D case mentioned earlier (where the objective was to foster a more creative and innovative environment), one of the ideas was to offer a mini-MBA in partnership with a local university. This represented a new path for change because the nature of the partnership, the program itself, and the level of investment in people represented by the program were all new to this company. The program was intended to increase business acumen in R&D and included real-time coaching on business plans, which paid off rapidly in the quality of new R&D project submissions. 3. Confidence in the Outcomes. Starting from past achievements anchors the emerging common vision of the company's future in known territory. Instead of being asked to step into the unknown, the employees start from something that they know well, and thus the fear of the unknown is somewhat lessened. Again, in the R&D case the engineers were confident in the outcomes because the agreed changes were grounded in their own experience. Combined with the fact that they had all publicly committed to the changes, this made backsliding difficult if not impossible. So, when faced with the inevitable corporate challenges to spending priorities, they were able to hold firm on what they knew to be important. Twelve months later they were pleased to report significant progress on several fronts, including a big increase in the key measure of the number of innovative projects accepted for development. 4. Positive Emotions. The Al process naturally results in many positive emotions, such as pride, satisfaction, hope, amusement, and gratitude. Such emotions can transform organizations because they broaden people's habitual modes of thinking, making them more flexible, empathic, and creative and enhancing their social connections and making for a better organizational climate (Fredrickson, 2003). Creating a Common Vision: The Use of Generative Metaphors The theory of AI is based solidly on social constructionism (Gergen, 1982). In simple terms this theory holds that our actions are shaped by our view of the world and that this view is itself shaped by our past experiences and especially by our interpretation of those experiences through dialogue and discussion with others. It is through social interaction that we make sense of the past and, more important, shape the future, because our actions are conditional on our vision for and anticipation of that future. If we accept this, then we must accept, first, that there is not one objective reality (that is, ours) but multiple subjective realities, as each of us interprets (and reinterprets) events and the actions of others. Second, these realities, although representing truth for their holder at any given moment, can be modified through dialogue. At the surface level this is almost trivial: we all know that it is sometimes possible to get a person to see things differently and change his or her mind in respect of a future action. The power of Al is in the convergence of these multiple realities into a common understanding across the organization. Through choosing to focus on what gives strength and life, AI lifts the spirits of the participants and allows them to visualize together a better future. When the essence of such visions is distilled into a pithy or provocative phrase that both catches the imagination and inspires new action, Al theorists refer to the emergence of a generative metaphor (Barrett & Cooperrider, 1990; Bushe, 1998). A generative metaphor, then, is a phrase or saying that invites looking at things in a new way and doing things differently. An excellent example emerged during the AI summit I conducted in France. One of the Innovation Teams chose to work on behaviors at work. For many on the team, the general standard of behavior and even common courtesies in the office had reached an unacceptably low level. The generative metaphor they came up with was the catchphrase classe/pas classe (literally, class/not class). They illustrated this with a series of highly entertaining skits exhibiting behavior ranging from the unacceptable (pas classe) to the excellent (classe). They soon got the whole audience shouting out the correct description, and the phrase entered daily vocabulary and persisted in shaping behavior a year later. Involving the Whole Organization Another key characteristic of Al-especially in the form of an Al summit-is the intent to involve the whole organization in the process, under the theory that real change is more likely to occur when those most affected are given the opportunity to decide on the changes for themselves. (This is in fact not unique to AI; a complete class of large group interventions-Future Search, Work-Out, Simu-Real, Open Space Technology, Real-Time Strategic Change, and so onis based on the same theory [Bunker & Alban, 1997].) There are multiple reasons why it is effective to go beyond the bounds of the central organization itself to involve the whole system in an organizational change process, thus including representatives of all those potentially affected by that process, such as customers, partners, suppliers, and so forth. The first reason is embedded in the wisdom of the Chinese proverb "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I may remember. Involve me and I will understand." Few of today's business organizations can thrive with a workforce whose members do not understand why they should do what they are asked to do. It is no longer enough to understand what to do: people in today's workforce both want and, indeed, demand to understand why they should undertake particular tasks or do things in a particular way. Helping people understand why is the key to motivation and effective crossfunctional teamwork, and getting the whole system in the room deeply involved in the process helps immeasurably in answering the why-are-we-doing-this question. Instead of working to a consultant's predetermined, external model, the participants in the Al process use their insider's knowledge to think up for themselves what needs to be done. The second reason for involving the whole system is the sheer complexity of the majority of organizational problems. Faced with the ever-changing nature of customer demands, no small group (however expert) can realistically hope to understand the system well enough to implement a successful redesign without the involvement and cooperation of all concerned, The simple solutions have usually been tried already, and through addressing symptoms rather than root causes have sometimes done more harm than good. When organizational problems are systemic (Senge, 1990), the only effective response is a systemic response. What must be chosen is not only the appropriate response to address the root cause but also in most cases an appropriate series of simultaneous responses to address the contributing factors, many of which are social in nature and not easy to change in isolation. The third reason is that innovations most often arise when people look at old problems in new ways and make new associations between previously unconnected things (Kelley, 2001), in so-called thinking out of the box. The whole system presence at an Al summit almost guarantees that this will be the case, because the working groups are generally composed of people from mixed backgrounds, linked only by a common desire to improve a given situation. The presence of non-experts asking "dumb" questions or making "dumb" suggestions can cause significant breakthroughs. The effect is magnified in the AT context because the focus on growth opportunities is far more liberating than the limiting search for solutions to problems that takes place in a problem-solving context. The fourth reason for involving the whole system is the disappearance of them. When the whole system is in the room, it is no longer possible to blame them or find excuses for doing nothing in the assertion that they won't agree. They are in the room; they too are intelligent members of the human race, and after the visions have been agreed, they even share our vision for a better future! (Before we get too utopic, we should, of course, expect some healthy debate and even disagreement about the means and processes, but it definitely helps a constructive dialogue when the different parties share a common vision of what they are trying to achieve.) For all these reasons, when company management and I began planning an AT summit in France, we were determined from the outset that the whole organization would be present. This was to include not only those persons directly employed by the company and physically located in France but also the support staff in a European call center and in shared services centers (located, respectively, in Ireland and the Netherlands) and even the contract receptionists in the Paris office. This was certainly one of the keys to success. Here is one of 40 to 50 similar post-summit comments: "What I liked most was that I was able to share my point of view with others with whom I rarely communicate, and that everybody's aspirations, opinions, and uniqueness were taken into account. The richness and diversity of ideas meant that, for the first time, concrete, realistic projects came out of the meeting." Using an AI Summit to Effect Transformational Change The Process Step by Step The most common process model for conducting an Al intervention is the so-called 4-D model of discover, dream, design, deliver. However, I have always had a personal preference for the Mohr/Jacobsgaard 4-I model (Watkins & Mohr, 2001), because I have found the words initiate, inquire, imagine, innovate to be more business friendly. Believing in the fundamental AT precept that words create worlds, I prefer to reduce the risk that the approach be written off from the start due to an easily avoided misunderstanding over potentially emotive words such as dream. Whichever model is chosen, it is essential to structure the process carefully and move through the steps in a logical order. A brief description of how company managers and I did this for an AT summit conducted in the four Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden) illustrates the process (also see Table 1). For those who wish to go further, Ludema and his colleagues have provided an excellent guide to planning and conducting AT summits (2003).
Purpose. Some 70 employees were spread unequally across the four Nordic countries, practically all of them either in sales or close sales support roles, Business results were improving and morale was relatively high. The regional director's major objective was to create one pan-Nordic team, in which he could rely on team members being willing to cooperate and support each other across the region, no matter which country they came from or were requested to work in. Phase 1: Initiate. The process began with the introduction of the senior management team to the concept of Al. The management team approved the process and decided that all employees should participate and that we would begin by training a Core Team of employees to help make the process successful. Two months later we trained the Core Team and designed the interview protocol and communication strategy. The Core Team members themselves briefed their colleagues during town hall meetings, creating surprise and anticipation. Phase 2: Inquire. During the inquiry phase. the Core Team invited all other employees to take part in individual appreciative interviews, designed to bring out the stories and high points of their most positive experiences with the company. The best stories and comments from these interviews were published, helping to create interest and enthusiasm for the process. We conducted further training for the Core Team during this period, and planned the Al summit to take place six months after the start of the process. The AI summit took place over three days. We began by asking people to add their own elements to a large wall chart of the history of the company in the Nordic region and to read a wall display of 25 to 30 posters quoting some of the best statements from the interviews. Following a brief introduction from the senior manager, we then asked people to pair off and interview each other on their best experiences of the previous three months. This set the tone for very active participation as we moved, over the course of the three days, in and out of small group and plenary sessions. During the plenary session to close the inquiry phase, we created a large Mind Map (Buzan, 1993), summarizing the most positive aspects of the participants' experiences at the company. This remained on the wall of the main room throughout, serving as a point of inspiration during the summit. Phase 3: Imagine. We began the imagine phase by creating a second large Mind Map, this one focused on opportunities for positive change, recording existing strengths that people wanted to see developed and extended. This second Mind Map provided the point of inspiration needed to move forward. Borrowing from Open Space Technology (Owen, 1997), we then invited volunteers to form teams to work on the projects that meant the most to them. This resulted in nine separate teams, working on subjects varying from knowledge sharing to brand visibility, pre-deal brainstorming, and internal communication. The first task of the teams was to create and act out short sketches or skits to illustrate their vision for the future. These are almost always highly entertaining sessions, with much laughter as hidden talents are revealed to unsuspecting colleagues. The visions were further refined through a series of small group innovation workshops and plenary sessions on the second day, resulting in the members of each team generating a specific Provocative Proposition for their project, approved by their peers in the other teams. A Provocative Proposition is intended to communicate the team's vision, at a later date, to colleagues not present at the summit. It is usually written in the present tense and in vivid, descriptive language that should provoke desire and action to move toward it. Here is an example of a Provocative Proposition from a team that worked on the topic of pre-deal brainstorming: "Pre-deal preparation work is the most important discipline of our account teams. Our account teams are fully integrated with customers and partners, and the sales process is well understood and transparent. By using tools and processes, such as account planning, reviews, rehearsals, role plays, we always deliver beyond expectations. Thus we are a part of our customers' strategy." Phase 4: Innovate. The third day was focused on action planning. Each team went through several steps of action planning to take their plans from the broad concept stage down to more detailed action steps that were coordinatedwith the other teams and approved in a plenary session. A volunteer for post-summit project management was sought and found, and the program office structure and follow-up process agreed. The innovate phase continued post-summit as the different projects were implemented, communicated, and reviewed. A second summit was planned one year after the first to sustain the momentum and move to the next level. How to Make an Al Summit Successful Begin with a Compelling Objective. It seems obvious that if the organization is going to take several dozen or even hundreds of people off site for several days, the reason(s) must be compelling. However, it is surprising how many management teams either fail to think through clearly what their own expectations are or fail to communicate these expectations. There is a wide difference between, for example, a vague expectation of improved motivation and teamwork and the specific expectation that management will not only encourage the emergence of grassroots initiatives and support and sustain their progress post-summit but also accept its own share of personal changes. From a practitioner's standpoint then, we must be ready to play the role of devil's advocate and ensure that senior management thinks through these issues in a rigorous fashion. A question that always arises early in this process is, How broad should the summit focus or topic be? My inclination now is to advise in most cases that you choose as narrow a focus as possible. This is for two reasons. The first is that no matter how narrow the topic, the participants always broaden it out to include many other aspects of organizational life that impinge on it (for example, a focus on customer service can easily expand to include such things as teamwork, new-hire integration, knowledge management, and so on). The second reason is that the broader the topic, the harder it is to be specific about the desired outcomes. As the Cheshire Cat replied to Alice in the celebrated passage in Alice in Wonderland, the way you should go "depends a good deal on where you want to get to." One Al summit I conducted was based on this very broad topic: "We are [company name]; let's value the present and build the future together." The summit participants were completely unconstrained in their focus, resulting in a burst of enthusiasm and the launch of a wide variety of initiatives. Although this made for a very dynamic summit, the difficulties began post-summit when the weaker projects ran into the day-to-day business realities and began slipping down the agenda. Although justifiable (and in no sense implying failure), this outcome requires sensitive communication from management so as not to disappoint the very real expectations of the people who put their heart and soul into projects important to them. Another summit adopted the more focused topic: "One Team, One [company name], leading from the front." This was clearly understood to link the business objective of being the market leader with the internal objective of close, cross-border teamwork. The result was a smaller number of more focused projects and initiatives that were well supported by management and have since been executed according to plan. Train a Core Team. Running an Al summit with anything more than 40 to 50 participants not only takes a great deal of planning, preparation, and structure but also requires the presence of a number of people with at least a working knowledge of the process to answer questions and guide their colleagues. I have found it helpful to form a Core Team of around 10% of the organization. The members of the Core Team should be credible to their peers and represent all levels and all departments. Adequate training should be planned for them. The responsibilities of the Core Team include the following:
I have often been asked how to form this Core Team and what are the preferred characteristics of the people who serve on it. My answer to this is invariably to recommend co-opting the natural leaders and opinion formers, especially those known to be critical of the status quo, on the basis that dissatisfaction with the current situation is a strong motivator. In my experience the Al process has always proved sufficiently engaging and motivating that as long as management maintains its support and focus, even the most negative personalities soon become converted and become the strongest advocates for the process. Design the Appreciative Interview and Inquiry Methodology with Care. Without the energy and optimism created through inquiry into each individual's most successful experiences, you do not have an Al process. It is therefore important to design the interviews with care. I will illustrate the process by referring again to the AI summit in the Nordic region. The first step was to agree on the summit topic, which became the focus of the inquiry. With this done, we were then able to develop a draft of the interview guide, including the detailed questions that would be asked. These were developed in three parts following the guidelines in the Encyclopedia of Positive Questions (Whitney, Cooperrider, Trosten-Bloom, & Kaplin, 2002), as follows:
In the final version of the interview guide, each part contained three to five open questions, and the interviews were expected to take about one hour each, although in practice some enjoyed the experience so much that their interviews lasted considerably longer. Learn How to Manage Large Groups. Most large group meetings (from 30 or so up to several thousand people) are a highly choreographed series of speeches or presentations in which the role of the audience is to listen and the main concern of the organizers is to create the right conditions for this. The effort to manage an AI summit is an order of complexity greater, because the participants are not only expected to listen to each other but also to participate fully in co-creating the meeting outcomes. There are multiple opportunities for any participant to take the microphone and address the whole group, and rather than sitting quietly listening while senior people or experts make presentations, participants engage in a constant hubbub of purposeful conversations as different groups are formed, work together, and dissolve again as they move through the different activities. Managing interactive meetings with large groups requires an understanding of large group dynamics (Bunker & Alban, 1997) over and above the standard set of skills needed for small group facilitation. Specific challenges with large groups include the possibility for a few loud voices either to drown out the rest (the tyranny of the few) or to swing the collective mood (contagious affect). In addition, there is the anxiety or even fear that some people may feel in the midst of a large group. All of these factors must be considered and managed in the design of an Al summit. The structure needed to reduce if not altogether eliminate the dangers just outlined is provided by the careful balancing of activities such as one-on-one interviews, small group discussions, and plenary sessions as well as by good stage management of transitions between activities and between meeting time and free time. The risk of the tyranny of the few is managed through regular transitions into small groups, where powerful voices are limited in impact and more easily controlled using standard facilitation techniques. There may be times, however, when a quiet word during a coffee break may be needed. The potential of a powerful voice to swing the collective mood works both ways of course, and a savvy facilitator will know whom to direct the microphone to at critical junctures. Running an Al summit is not for the inexperienced or fainthearted, and the lead facilitator, at least, should have plenty of experience in facilitating large groups. No matter how good the pre-summit planning, things rarely, if ever, run exactly according to plan, and the facilitators must remain flexible and attentive to the real needs of the group. Timings or even activities themselves may need to be changed as events unfold, and a skilled facilitator is able to do this in real time and often without the group even being aware of the shifts. Make Sure of Management Commitment. Above all, the senior management must be comfortable with both the basic philosophy of AI and with following a participative, democratic process with uncertain outcomes. It is important to recognize that AI is not an easily applied variant on standard change management techniques: it is a fundamentally different approach. Al is a 21st-century philosophy, built on the same principles of visioning, networking, truth telling, learning, and loving that Meadows, Randers, and Meadows proposed as early as 1972 as the essential characteristics for any society that hopes to survive over the long term. These characteristics stand in stark opposition to the short-term, individualistic, sometimes manipulative, and certainly competitive nature of most for-profit organizations during the last century. Command-and-control organizations where thought patterns remain dominated by short-term concerns and where individual performance is valued more than teamwork will find that Al challenges many of their funda- mental beliefs. In Cooperrider's words, "[Al] makes command-and-control structures squirm" (2001). The most favorable conditions for Al are present when the members of the executive team believe in their people, genuinely want to engage them in finding the best way forward, and are willing to accept and support the outcomes, including making their own personal changes. Employees are very close observers of their managers and quickly deduce what is important and what is not. Managers that try it out are likely to be disappointed and will experience Al as a fad that does not work. There can be few things that undermine the value of an Al intervention more quickly than management's rapid regression to a sharp focus on problems and weaknesses. This is not to suggest that the problems and weaknesses no longer exist or no longer deserve attention, rather that managers should be careful to reframe them as opportunities and view them through an appreciative eye: again, asking not, What's broken? What do we need to fix? but, What does work? and What can we build on? The managers involved in the Nordic region Al summit referred to earlier have paid particular attention to this. The effort has paid off in terms of much more constructive and cooperative attitudes across the region and has resulted in the booking of significant cross-border business. Where pre-summit there was a strong reluctance, for example, on the part of a Finnish sales representative to engage a Danish technician on a Finnish sales opportunity, post-summit the Finn now dialogues freely with his Danish "friend" (the word is theirs), and indeed most of the business in the region is now generated by such mixed account teams. Allow Enough Time. When the goal is transformational change, the time allocated cannot be measured in hours. In this respect Al is like any other organizational development intervention: to achieve durable, transformational change, it must be conceived as a process spanning months or even years. Managers with a short attention span and tick-the-box mentality are likely to be disappointed. These pressures are to be expected given the intense pressure for continual productivity gains. However, if ever there was a case for investing time today to save time tomorrow, it is here. What is the cost of one extra day compared to the value of transforming the organization? Channel Al Positive Energy into Achieving Bottom-Line Objectives. There are two categories of potential outcomes from an AI intervention: the concrete, measurable changes that are tangible and task related, such as a new tool or a new way of using an old tool, and the cultural or attitudinal changes that are less tangible and more related to how people think and behave. The value of the former can be obtained only within the context of the latter: A new tool or process adopted in the old mind-set and cultural context is unlikely to reach its full potential. Transformational change, if it occurs, is therefore dependent on changes in attitude: "Never deny the power of a small group of committed individuals to change the world. Indeed that is the only thing that ever has" (attributed to Margaret Mead and quoted in Meadows, Randers, & Meadows, 2004). It is these embryonic changes in attitude that must be nursed and nurtured postsummit by sensitive leadership if the full benefits of transformational change are to flourish. Let me offer an example: In the intervention targeting transformational leadership referred to earlier, the concrete outcomes included setting up a peer-peer mentoring process, whereas the less tangible changes were made in attitude and in the accumulation of personal changes by each participant. As a result of the intervention, participants accepted their role as change agents and resolved to take action, over and above their normal roles. We could easily have set up the peer-peer mentoring process without the time and trouble of an At summit; however, it is doubtful whether it would have had much effect without the shared vision, commitment, and energy created within this critical group by the summit. Conclusion After discussing what is innovative about Al, with an emphasis on appreciative interviews and the positive energy thus generated, I described the actual process of an Al summit with its four phases and explained how to use it to effect transformational change. I showed, thus, that the power of the Al summit process lies in combining the positive focus of Al with a number of key features found in traditional organizational development practice, change management, or other large group interventions in a unique combination that creates the potential for truly transformational change. Through involving the whole system (to the extent practical) and focusing on the positive in a structured manner, it is possible to create a collective sense of both what needs to be done and how to achieve it and, at the same time, to unleash people's intrinsic motivation and desire to be part of a successful organization. It should also be underlined here that AI transcends national cultural boundaries and appears to be universal in its applicability, albeit with minor local modifications (Yaeger & Sorensen, 2005). My experience certainly supports this. I have carried out Al interventions in countries ranging from France to Finland and from the Netherlands to Israel. Participants have come from practically every country in between. There have been no fundamental differences in the effectiveness of Al across these different cultures. The culture-and particularly the management culture-of the organization is far more determinant than the national culture in the success of the AI intervention. Al processes, when properly and rigorously executed, are extremely effective in achieving transformational change. AI has been widely used in the corporate world in the United States but rather less so in Europe. In tune with the evolving attitudes and aspirations of the modern European workforce, I predict that the use of Al will grow significantly in Europe over the next few years. Let me conclude with the words of the technical director of the French company for whom I organized an AI summit: "Thanks to [the Al summit], the team has reached a new level of maturity allowing us to move more quickly during changes in the organization and the business model, with a direct and positive impact on the results." References Barrett, F. J., & Cooperrider, D. L. (1990). 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(2003). Some reasons why consulting interventions fail, Organization Development journal, 21(1), 72-74. Marvin Faure brings 25 years of experience in motivation and leadership to the service of MindStore clients. His particular expertise is in working with large groups to create sustained commitment to change. Coach and consultant to executive management, he leads frequent strategy workshops and leadership retreats. He is passionate about using collaboration and the power of the team to take better business decisions and improve performance. An outstanding motivational speaker, he has held successive positions as an officer in the British Navy, field engineer in the oil industry, sales executive in manufacturing, HR executive in services and organizational development, and consultant in the software industry. British by birth, married to a French woman, and father of two children, he is bilingual (French and English). After spending the 1 980s in Southeast Asia and the 1 990s in Paris, France, he is now based near Geneva, in Switzerland. He holds a first degree in Engineering Science from Cambridge University, England, and an MBA degree from Insead, France. He may be reached at marvin.faure©mindstore.ch.
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