Rethinking What Gives Life to Organizational Transformation

1
Rethinking What Gives Life to Organizational
Transformation

• Ronald E. Fry, Ph.D.
• Department of Organizational Behavior
• Case Western Reserve University

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Appreciative Inquiry

• A collaborative search to identify and
  understand the organizations strengths, its
  potentials, the greatest opportunities, and
  peoples hopes for the future.

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What is AI?

• Learn from the best of the our past
• to envision our future
• Celebrate and exploit our Positive Core
• Create bold, positive images of our future to
  drive organizational change
• Work together on ideas that most attract us

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Whos Using It?

• US Navy
• British Airways
• Roadway Express
• MacDonalds
• Dalai Lama
• Nutrimental (Brazil)
• Palestine/Jewish Entrepreneurs
• Avon Mexico
• American Red Cross
• Cleveland Public Schools

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Los 5 Principios de AI

• El Principio Construccionista - Organizations
  move in the direction of what they most talk
  about.
• El Principio de Simultaneidad - Change begins
  with the first question you ask.
• El Principio Poético - Anything can be studied in
  every social system.
• El Principio de Anticipación - Deep change
  change in our active images of the future.
• El Principio Positivo - The more positive the
  anticipatory image, the more positive the change.

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2 Key Questions

• 1. What, in this particular context, has made
  (organizing) possible?
• 2. What possibilities exist, latent or explicit,
  to have even more effective forms of
  (organizing) in the future?

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Background

• US Navy 6 AI Summits since 12/01
• 250-300 persons each
• 3.5 to 4 days each
• Seaman to Admiral External Stakeholders
• System-wide and community- centered
• Chief Naval Operations
• Family Services
• Third Fleet Command Ship
• Informational Professional Community - 2
• Naval Reserves

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Classic Leading of Change

• Unfreezing Establish Urgency Form Coalition
  to Guide
• Changing Create Vision Communicate
  Vision Empower Others to Act Plan/Create
  Short-term Success
• Refreezing Consolidate Successes Eliminate
  Barriers
• Intro. New Opportunities Institutionalize
  New Approaches
• DecideAdvocateDefend

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AI Summit 4-D Cycle

• Discovery
• Opportunity Call
• Positive Core
• History

• Destiny
• People Actions
• Learning
• Improvisation

• Dream
• New Story
• Provocative Aspirations

Affirmative Topic

• Design
• 1 yr. Targets
• Actionable steps

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An Emerging View
Tapping into Passages
(Powley, 2002) Separation Initiation
(Liminality) Aggregation (Reincorporation)

• Unleashing Positive Change
• Affirmative Dislodgement of Certainty
• Elaborating the Positive Core
• Synchronous Experience of Positive Affect
• Centrifugal Processes of Attunement

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Propositions from our Experiences with AI
Summits

• Positive change begins with an Appreciative
  Dislodgement of Certainty
• Holistic (Re)Discovery through voice and
  storytelling
• Separation (Turner, 1969) detachment of the
  person either from a fixed point in social
  structure or a set of cultural conditions (a
  state)

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Propositions

• Elaboration of the Cooperative Core Creates a
  Holding Environment that Encourages
  Experimentation and Enables Further Exploration
  of the Unknown
• Positive Core is always rooted in cooperative
  acts
• Psychological Safety
• Experience of Liminality (Turner) Transition
  between stable states subjects are passengers
  through unknown territory where significant
  knowledge is revealed through sacred stories.
• Connection to Communitas (Turner)

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What would you call it?(all these things taken
together)

• Achievements
• Strategic opportunities
• Cooperative Moments
• Technical assets
• Innovations
• Elevated thoughts
• Community assets
• Positive emotions

• Community wisdom
• Core competencies
• Visions of possibility
• Vital traditions, values
• Social capital
• Embedded knowledge
• Financial assets

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The Positive Core

• Complete Organizational Wealth Well-being
• An Incredible Energy
• Source of Continuity

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Propositions

• Synchronous Experiences of Positive Affect
  Generate Interest in Shared Possibilities
• Positive sentiment from AI conversations
  stimulates non-required activity and more
  interaction (self-organizing). (Homans, 1950)
• Cathartic Commitment derives from frame of mind
  and emotionality in which it is received the
  Affirmative Topic offers a business case and
  the Appreciative Inquiry interactions create
  positive affect (Sekerka, 2002)

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Whole Organizational Connection to the Positive
Core

• Elevates elicits positive emotions of hope,
  inspiration, confidence, joy raises
  intelligence expands the language of life
  (internal dialogue) increases in appreciative
  interchange and mutually elevating relationships
  heightens creativity, ignites decision making,
  increases collective capacity.
• Undoes Negative Impacts releases, makes
  irrelevant, finishes the residual of negative
  past.
• Protects Increases health, resilience,
  accumulation of power - like an increase in
  immune system functioning.

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The Idea of Positive Change

• Any form of organization change, re-design, or
  planning that begins with comprehensive analysis
  of an organizations positive core and then
  links this knowledge to the heart of any
  strategic change agenda.
• Because human systems move toward what they
  persistently ask questions about, positive change
  involves the deliberate discovery of everything
  that gives a system life when it is most
  effective in economic and human terms.
• Link the positive core directly to any strategic
  agenda, and changes never thought possible are
  more rapidly mobilized while simultaneously
  building enthusiasm, corporate confidence, and
  human energy.

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Propositions

• Acts of Positive Change are Spread and Sustained
  through Centrifugal Processes of Attunement
• Process of Inclusion widening circles of
  dialogue about possibilities (Fry Srikantia,
  2000)
• Center-out (vs. top-down)
• Improvisational dynamics (Barrett, 2000) in
  egalitarian context

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Call for an Appreciative Declaration of Faith

• Positive Change is fostered through an
  appreciative declaration of faith in the
  universal goodness of human groups and
  organizations.
• Recurring voice of possibility
• James, Barnard, McGregor, Frankl

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Pioneering Research Across Many Fields

• An Emerging Vocabulary of Positive Change

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Positive Images of Future Drives Positive Change
Many Disciplines
Placebo Effect Pygmalion Effect The Role of
Positive Emotions? Imbalanced Inner
Dialogue Cultural Consequences Learned
Affirmative Capacity
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What Good are Positive Emotions?
JOY Play INTEREST Exploration CONTENTME
NT Savor Integrate LOVE All of the
above Positive Emotions broaden our
thought and action repertories B.
Frederickson
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Empirical Support

• In the moment, Positive Emotions
• Broaden Attention and Thinking
  (Fredrickson Branigan, 2002 Waugh
  Fredrickson, in prep)
• Undo Lingering Negative Emotional Arousal
  (Fredrickson Levenson, 1998 Fredrickson,
  Mancuso, Branigan Tugade, 2000)
• Fuel Resilient Coping
• (Fredrickson, Tugade, Waugh Larkin, 2002
  Tugade Fredrickson, 2002)

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Empirical Support

• Over time, Positive Emotions
• Prevent depression
  
• (Fredrickson, Tugade, Waugh, Larkin,
  2002)
• Trigger Upward Spirals to Increase Well-being
  (Fredrickson Joiner, 2002 Tugade
  Fredrickson, 2002)
• Build optimism, tranquility, and resilience
  (Fredrickson, Tugade, Waugh, Larkin, 2002)

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A Theory of Positive Organizational Change
Activation of Energy
Expansion of RelatednessLow Universal
Capacity High
Fusion of Strength
Elevation of Inquiry
w
Inquiry into The Appreciable World
Initiating
Advancing