Jay Cross has posted an account (3/4 down the page) of meeting David Cooperider, the ‘father’ of AI. No, not that AI, but Appreciative Enquiry, a way of thinking that frames “…to ask what’s possible rather than what’s wrong…”
It seems rather obvious, I suppose, but I’m always finding myself trying to address problems – I sometimes often feel reactive, instead of pro-active. The core idea seems simple enough, and there’s some interesting looking articles on techniques to pull this together in an organisation.
Jay’s framed it quite nicely, both with the diagram I nicked off his page and this: “Before reading about Appeciative Inquiry, I billed myself as a problem-solver. Since then, I’ve converted into an opportunity maximizer…”. I like it.