UPeace and Appreciative Inquiry

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to share this resource with everyone as I thought it might be of interest. The University for Peace is a UN-mandated graduate level centre for executive education based outside of San Jose, Costa Rica. I attended a course on Peace and Conflict there in 2009 and found the quality of education provided to be high.

This February, UPeace is offering a two-day intensive called "Beyond traditional leadership" which promises to help students become the "integral" leader of the 21st century, one who can "approach his or her field understanding that there are different perspective involved". The course lists six modules on topics such as self-reflection, innovative thinking, and effective negotiation, but the one that caught my eye was "Appreciative Inquiry". A quick search on the internet revealed that AI is an approach to organizational change that focusses on what works in organizations as opposed to seeking out what is 'wrong' with an organization. The Appreciative Inquiry Commons gives this expanded defintion:

Appreciative Inquiry [is] a theory and practice for approaching change from a holistic framework. Based on the belief that human systems are made and imagined by those who live and work within them, AI leads systems to move toward the generative and creative images that reside in their most positive core – their values, visions, achievements, and best practices...AI recognizes that human systems are constructions of the imagination and are, therefore, capable of change at the speed of imagination. Once organization members shift their perspective, they can begin to invent their most desired future.

I am interested in AI as a conteplative approach to managing change in organizations. After reading about change management systems like Six Sigma that bring organizational efficiency under a microscope with complex metrics systems, this is a curious alternative. My own experience observing a large bureacracy try to reform itself and my reading of both Bolman and Deal and Denhardt, Denhardt and Aristegueta makes me skeptical of AI's claim that organizations can change instantaneously if the perspective of its members changes. Although the power of positive thinking has been documented to have a tangible impact on people's health and goal achievement, I have doubts that established structures and political dynamics can transform overnight. Yet, if organizations do function like organisms, then perhaps AI does have something to teach?