Paradoxically whilst we often improve by fixing what's wrong, we also continue to find problems and weaknesses to work on. We tend to get more of what we focus on. The questions that we ask and our mind set affects what we hear and see, and therefore we get conditioned into deficit thinking – ignoring the opportunities to build and develop strengths. In an experiment with a bowling team – half of the team were coached only on correcting their mistakes, half only on enhancing what they were doing right. At the end of the season, both halves of the team had improved, but the success coached half had improved 100 percent more than their colleagues.

So as to not accentuate the current economic difficulties and talk ourselves further down, we need to start using different conversations with people engaged in organisational change. Instead of asking “what’s wrong” we need to start asking “what’s working here” and then building futures based on the outcomes. This is the practice of Appreciative Inquiry – the process of looking for and enhancing the root causes of success rather than trying to fix the causes of failure.

This groundbreaking philosophy and tool is now central to the communications and organisation development of organisations as diverse as BP, ANZ Bank, Roadway Express; in community development and aid projects like Imagine Chicago; and with global initiatives such as United Religions and the Dalai Lama’s conferences. In one company, it was used to conduct a analysis of the total system which was completed in less than two weeks by the employees themselves. In another, a summit meeting brought together all 750 employees, the company’s leadership, and 100 customers to create the business model for their new century organisation – a year later, profits were up over 200 percent and absenteeism down 300 percent.

For different times, this is the different response. let's start identifying and building on what we are doing well in organisations and work our way forward by using our strengths.

Geof Cox

Adapted from an essay published in Integrated Business Communication in a Global Marketplace, Bonnye E. Stuart, Marilyn S. Sarow and Laurence Stuart, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester, 2007, pp 313-315