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Appreciative Inquiry offers organisations a more positive approach to problem-solving. In the first of a three-part series, we put the method into context for the people development professional
Workplaces in the US, Northern Europe and the UK tend to exist within a culture where 'problem-based' development approaches to learning tend to outnumber 'affirming' ones. Think back to your earliest experiences of learning and education, from the teachings of your parents to school teachers and colleagues, and consider how often you were told you were doing something the wrong way, closely followed by somebody then showing you the right way to go about it.
There is a widely-held assumption in Western culture that improvement comes primarily from the eradication of defect or error. This has become so deeply ingrained that we no longer notice that it is just a theory, and it is taken for granted that this is the only way to achieve improvement.
This applies in many areas of our lives - from educational approaches (the focus on the correction of mistakes), medicine (the focus on eliminating the symptoms of illness), the workplace (the eradication of error and problems), to the everyday dealings in politics and the media (the tearing apart of ideas to illuminate and overcome their deficits).
RIGHTS AND WRONGS
This approach of informed criticism and constructive (sometimes combative) problem solving has indeed exposed important flaws, and led to huge progress in countless domains.
But it also comes at a price. We have become so focused on solving problems that the negative things are often the ones we notice first.
When things go well, we might celebrate, acknowledge and congratulate ourselves on our success. But we rarely look into the reasons for this 'rightness' in the same way that we enquire rigorously when things go wrong.
The result is a society caught somewhere between negative storytelling, depreciation and distrust, with widening splits between generations, genders, religions and races. Of course, problem-solving approaches can and do work, especially in the short-term, as they help us to feel in control. But often, the experience and long-term impact of problem solving are disappointing.
The management and academic communities have recently become more aware of the limitations of the problem-solving approach. But their response...