Food for thought: Galvanise your clients with a new ethos for 2009!

The New Year is shaping up to be particularly tough for many markets and, for us management consultants, the pressure is on to find innovative ways to deliver more results, for less. For those of you who fancy taking a new and positive approach with clients this spring, "Appreciative Inquiry" might just be the perfect antidote to hard times....

What is appreciative inquiry?

Appreciative Inquiry offers a new way of examining business situations. Rather than taking the common consultancy approach to a customer's business which asks: "What are the problem areas and how can we fix them?" this says: "What does the company and its people excel at, and how can we encourage them to do this more widely in the business?"

Where does it come from?

The term "Appreciative Inquiry" stems from an approach that consultants Cooperrider, Barrett and Srivastva (Case Western Reserve University) used in the US in the 1980s.

The established consultants were astonished with the response they got from a client in the hospitality industry when they sent them to observe and enquire into what made their competitors so successful. The client team returned to work and applied the same techniques of positive enquiry to their own ailing organisation, and was energised by focusing on their own strengths, coming up with many new ideas of where they might replicate great performance. The experience taught the consultants that there was much to be gained from turning the usual "what is wrong with the business?" approach on its head, and asking instead: "what is right?"

Cooperrider, Barrett and Srivastva went on to develop the ethos, based on the premise that "organisations change in the direction in which they inquire" - meaning, an organisation that inquires into problems will keep finding problems, but an organisation that discusses what is best in itself will discover more and more that is good. Appreciative Inquiry was born!

Focus on the positive

Think about how you successfully re-energise yourself to make changes in your own life.

It is never a great motivator to review all your faults and mistakes, and even less motivating when someone else does this to you. It would be far more effective if you were able to collaborate with a trusted friend or advisor who understood your personality, situation and what you are trying to achieve, and, after focusing on your talents, helped you to deploy them more frequently and in new areas.

Focusing too hard on mistakes and weaknesses only serves to depress and demoralise. There always will be some things that you or your organisation don't shine at. Far better to accept this and focus on your areas of strength - and how you might use those skills elsewhere. It's amazing the difference that this approach makes: "Yes, actually, I performed well in that project, and I am good at X, and if we also did that in Y area we might achieve better results". Suddenly you're fired up, ready to tackle new opportunities and drive through changes. Not tried it for a while? Do it. You may have forgotten how good it feels!

No one is suggesting that problem areas be ignored, but let the client build on what they are good at, understand and empathise with their experience and then re-position any weaknesses as opportunities to replicate their successes elsewhere in the organisation. They are far more likely to embrace and fully own change when they view it as part of an overall positive journey (rather than a "pointing out what we do wrong" exercise).

"We think, therefore we are"

The business benefits to adopting Appreciative Inquiry are many and varied: a morale boost for the client team, quicker acceptance and ownership of new ways of working, and an increasing chance of change programmes succeeding long after implementation. Plus, management consultants will have a new and refreshed view of how they can help their clients. It's all too easy to be cynical in the current recession - this approach might be just what your client's need from you!

For more information on Appreciative Inquiry and our other training courses email diane.davies@elevationlearning.co.uk or call +44 (0) 20 8642 9568

Cynthia Pexton-Shaw, Consultant for Elevation Learning