Combat Apathy with Appreciative Inquiry

Melissa Pelto, MA

Is your organization spending 80% of your resources trying to fix the 20% that is causing problems? Why not switch embrace a new paradigm that will transform your approach organizational change and increase engagement by looking at what is going right in the organization — building on “what’s going well”.

Since organizations are products of human interaction, this talk offers an opportunity to transform your life or your organization, and learn about a new model developed by the GEM Initiative in Harare, Zimbabwe. The Four-D Model features the Discovery, Dream, Design and Delivery stages.

Discovery focuses on appreciating what fuels our existence and what people are most proud of. The Dream stage looks at what an ideal future could be and what the impact would be. Design focuses on co-constructing the future with engaged stakeholders and Delivery strategizes how to sustain the change.

Rooted in social constructionism, Appreciative Inquiry highlights the power of images as a way of creating our own realities. This discipline is built from five core processes: Choosing the positive as the focus of inquiry, Inquiry into stories of life force, locates themes that appear in the stories, generates shares images of the future and finds new and innovative ways to create that future.