Creating Positive Change Through Appreciative Inquiry
By Andrew Watterson, Senior Consultant at BrownFlynn
Having led the City of Cleveland’s sustainability efforts for more than 6 years, a few tools really stood out as compelling ways to help organizations become the most sustainable, best corporate citizens possible. Appreciative Inquiry is one of those tools.
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is the art of finding deep strengths in an organization, then leveraging those to create ways to solve challenges and achieve success. The flip-side of more traditional problem solving, AI starts with finding the positive core, creating a vision of a more “ideal” outcome, looking at “problems” as opportunities to create this vision, and working forward from there. Essentially, it focuses on increasing what organizations do well, instead of eliminating what they do badly.
