Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a fresh approach to personal and organisational development, equipping people and systems with a greater capacity for change, renewal and focused performance. The director Dr Tim Saunders was a co-founder with Kate McAllister of Positive Engagement in 2005, a consultancy team based in the north west of England using Appreciative inquiry to support the public sector.

How it works

• The key feature of AI is its positive focus. It discovers existing good practice, strengths and creativity, reaffirming people’s confidence and enthusiasm, and builds on this foundation to deliver long-term, sustainable improvements.
• AI doesn’t focus on changing people. Instead, it focuses on what’s good about their work, creating a positive, energised state which means they are far more likely to want change and pursue it.
• AI does not ignore past failures but encourages people to use their experiences to facilitate new ideas, change and progress.
• Using an AI approach means you won’t be throwing out the good stuff that’s already there when you start to build your new organisation.

Co-founder of Positive Engagement

Appreciative Inquiry Practice

​In practice, AI is based on a five-step approach:

Define – specifying an issue, problem or opportunity to work on

Discover – identifying what works well in an organisation

Dream – envisioning an ideal future

Design – planning and prioritising different ways of doing things

Deliver – implementing the proposed design and making it happen

How AI differs from traditional ‘problem-solving’ approaches

Problem-solving What to fix	Appreciative Inquiry What to grow
Thinks in terms of: problem, symptoms, causes, solutions, action plan, intervention and all too often blame	Thinks in terms of: good, better, possible
Breaks things into pieces, leading to fragmented responses	AI keeps the big picture in view, focusing on an ideal and how its roots lie in what is already working
Slow pace of change – requiring a lot of positive emotion to make real change	Quickly creates a new dynamic – with people united around a shared vision of the future
Assumes an organisation is made up of a series of problems to be overcome, creating a deficit culture	Assumes an organisation is a source of limitless capacity and imagination, creating an appreciative culture