This article was prompted by a question from a student on my most recent Practical Appreciative Inquiry facilitator training course:
“A question that I am getting (from her colleagues, that she was telling about Appreciative Inquiry) is:
‘While appreciative inquiry focuses on strengths, by doing so does it indirectly address weaknesses and threats?‘
I can find no literature to support this conclusion.”
This question made me think a bit. Sometimes, when you’ve been working with an approach for such a long time, it can be worth taking a step back and looking at it with the eyes of someone hearing about it for the first time. What follows is an expanded version of my eventual answer.
Reframing Problems Into Affirmative Topics
We can say that affirmative topics indirectly address weaknesses and threats by thinking about ‘What’s the positive opposite of the weakness or threat? What do we want instead of the problem?’
But in order to do that, you have to know what the weakness or threat is in the first place. I think there’s an assumption in Appreciative Inquiry as normally presented that people have already identified weaknesses or threats, so that we can then reframe them into affirmative topics.
I’ve sometimes thought that the SOAR model (‘Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results’ – a model for using Appreciative Inquiry for strategy) kind of glosses over threats and weaknesses a bit – they do get a mention in the literature, but possibly don’t get enough of a treatment to convince skeptics.
Jackie Stavros and Gina Hinrichs, in The Thin Book of SOAR (2009) say “Weaknesses and threats are not ignored. They are reframed and given the appropriate focus within the opportunities and results conversations. Ultimately it becomes a question of balance. Why not spend as much time or more on what you do well and how you can strengthen a strategic advantage? What gives you more energy to take action? What gives you confidence to set a stretch goal and achieve results?”
In a table in the book, comparing traditional SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats’) analysis to SOAR, they transition the ‘Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats’ part of SWOT to ‘Opportunities’ in the SOAR model by asking:
- How do we collectively understand outside threats?
- How can we reframe to see the opportunity?
(It’s possible that Learning to SOAR, effectively a retitled later edition, might have more to say about how to do this, but I don’t have it to hand)
I found an academic paper that cites some authors as criticising SOAR for ignoring threats – and it suggests that SWOT and SOAR might be integrated. This seems sensible to me – first do a SWOT analysis to see where you are, then a SOAR to correct the natural tendency to focus too much on threats and weaknesses, and to focus on where you want to get to.
The problem with SWOT is that people get bogged down in negatives and lose hope or motivation. So (like with the ‘problem to possibility tree‘ exercise) you could map out the problem fully first, then move on to solutions and how to get there – including the big picture of everything that isn’t the problem, to keep it in perspective and prevent strengths and opportunities from being neglected as they would if all your attention was focused on fixing the problem.
Reframing Complaints in the Appreciative Interview
One of the virtues of Appreciative Inquiry is that it gives people a route out of the ‘doom loop’ of endlessly complaining about problems, while feeling powerless to do anything to improve them. Some versions of the appreciative interview format that is central to the Discovery stage of Appreciative Inquiry’s 5-D format, notably the ‘business-friendly’ version of the interview questions that I favour, ask about the interviewee’s wishes:
“If you had one wish for yourself, your team, or your organisation <in relation to the topic of the inquiry>, what would it be?”
This provides an opportunity for people to talk about weaknesses or threats that they perceive in the current situation, but in terms of what they want to see happen instead, rather than as complaints. Valuable ideas for improvement can emerge from the answers to this question.
Doing a ‘Minesweep’ in the Delivery (or ‘Destiny’) Stage
In Conversations Worth Having by Jackie Stavros and Cheri Torres, the authors identify two features that distinguish Appreciative Inquiry from most other change methods:
The first is ‘flipping’ the problem to help people address it in a way that focuses on desired outcomes rather than complaining about the problem, like this:
- Name it
- Flip it – name the positive opposite
- Frame it – clarify the outcomes when you make the positive opposite happen.
(Note that this actually directly addresses the problem before reframing it). This is essentially what we are doing in the Definition stage of the 5-D model, where we define our affirmative topic.
The second feature is asking ‘generative’ questions – questions that start conversations that lead to new and creative ideas for improvement. This is what we are doing in the Discovery and Design stages of the 5-D cycle.
As we get further round that cycle, we get closer to conventional action planning – but that’s fine, because the necessary creative thinking about what is the right way to reach the desired outcome has already been done earlier in the cycle. In the Delivery or Destiny stage, we can usefully include some ‘minesweep’ questions, such as:
- What could go wrong?
- What if <unlikely but possible derailing event> happens?
- Where do we need to build in contingency?
So that is another way in which Appreciative Inquiry can address problems or negatives.
To sum up – the impetus for change often comes from the need to deal with a threat or weakness. Just blindly focusing on positives isn’t going to work, and may breed resentment. Appreciative Inquiry is essentially about ‘generativity’, not ‘positivity’, as Gervase Bushe says here:
http://www.gervasebushe.ca/AI_pos.pdf
Appreciative Inquiry is not about pretending everything is wonderful; rather, it’s a proven method for helping people to get into the most effective frame of mind to come up with new and creative responses to the very real challenges that they face.
What are your thoughts (or questions) about facing up to problems when using Appreciative Inquiry?
