Culture Change By Small Steps

This blog article has two accompanying articles:  one on positive culture, and another on positive deviance

The Challenge

‘How can we respond to the staff survey in away that helps to promote a culture change in this organization?’

The Need

This 800-1000 people strong engineering organization was previously part of a Government organization. Many attitudes and behaviours persisted from that time. The organization was a classic top-down command and control structure with a strong emphasis on structure and process. It was becoming apparent that to compete in the commercial world the organization needed to become much better at accessing the strengths of all its employees. It needed to become faster, more flexible and more responsive. As an organization, despite changes in ownership, little had really changed in many years. This was not a situation that could continue. While the employees were skilled workers, many of whom had been there all their working lives, the quality of leadership was variable. There was a much greater emphasis on efficient management than on effective leadership. The HR Director knew that the culture needed to change. She wanted to come at it from a complex adaptive system perspective: as she put it, lighting small fires where she could. During the couple of years she had already been with the organization she had built up good credibility with the senior leadership working on issues such as pensions and performance management and was trusted to act with some autonomy.

The parent organization was disappointed with the results of the first staff survey and wanted to see some improvements fast. The HRD spotted the opportunity to address this challenge differently. This was an opportunity to bring more participative, bottom-up development processes into the organization. It was an opportunity to help the organisation in its expressed, but not yet enacted, desire to become more flexible, responsive and innovative: in other words to move from one where change is a hierarchical, top-down, mechanistic process to one where change is more organic, bottom up and emergent. She engaged us to bring in our expertise in these modes of engagement and change and to work in partnership with her to create this shift in culture. 

In addition it was hoped that the activities and outcomes would have a positive effect on the scores on the employee survey when it was re-run in approximately 6 months. To ensure this connection, the process was to focus specifically on communication, coordination and productivity.

The Process

This idea evolved initially into 4 Appreciative Inquiry based days and 3 World Cafe based events. We would be working with groups of up to 30 people at any one time, both to avoid excessive disruption to production and also to keep the process within the permission and influence remit of the HRD. We aimed to touch 10% of the workforce in one location and 50% in the other.

From these events a number of ideas emerged that the front line staff involved were supported to develop into business case arguments. Once the business case was clear, the groups were supported to create short, impactful, presentations outlining their case to a decision-making panel. Three decision-making events were held,  they involved the project teams presenting their business cases for innovation and change to a senior management panel of three who had to hold their decision making discussions in public and give their answers there and then. These events were attended by all those involved in the project groups and were very successful, high-energy events.

We also ran one Simureal event and two celebration events over two locations over a period of a few months.

In designing this process and running these events we pulled on our understanding of: 

• Organizations as complex adaptive systems
• Organization as social systems
• Culture as patterns of interaction, relationship and communication
• Change through interactions
• Positivity, positive reinforcement, practical outcomes
• Appreciative Inquiry, Positive Psychology

The Outcome

 The employee survey was run six months later with good improvements in all the targeted areas. Other observable outcomes were:

1. 12 active improvement projects, all from the ground up and all focussed on improving work communication, coordination or productivity
2. A number of staff feeling empowered that they had been heard and had been able to put ideas into action. This experience was counter to the strong organizational story that they couldn’t influence things.
3. High quality communication between front line staff and the Managing Director and other members of the Senior Management Team, leading to positively changed perception both of managers of staff and vice versa.
4. An appreciation in the senior team of the value of working in these ways, and a commitment to doing more

By giving people in an organization a different experience of the organization one can begin to shift the perception of the organization. When perceptions shifts so behavior changes in line with the new understanding. Our interventions affected the established patterns of relationship, communication and behavior and so created change. In this way culture change can be encouraged as a system-wide experience of difference rather than as a top-down plan of change.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we can help with Engagement and Culture and how we use Appreciative Inquiry, World Cafe and Simureal.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Making Strategy Real

The Challenge

‘We want to hold a strategy conference and we want to do it in a strengths based way. Can you help us?’

The Need

Richard and his commissioning team from the local authority already knew that they wanted to involve myriad local senior decision-makers in the development of their strategy for implementing the government driven initiative ‘Family First’. A day and a venue were earmarked. Up to 200 people were invited. Key-note speakers had been arranged. An exhibition of local services was arranged to run as a trade fair alongside. The planning team knew that within these parameters they wanted to do something different. They didn’t want a conventional conference, they wanted something that was strengths based, something that would make strategy real from the start. Could we help?

The Process 

Working closely with the multi-functional planning team, Appreciating Change designed a day that would be participatory and engaging and would meet the strategic commissioner’s need to develop strategy. Calling on Appreciative Inquiry as a framework, the day was designed to identify existing strengths across the network, to create a variety of shared ideas of what the future could be like if this strategic objective was achieved, and to begin to identify ways to achieve it. The day was delivered by Appreciating Change working in partnership with the planning team.

The Outcome 

The day (attended by 150 people) delivered a number of identifiable strategic results:

•   We improved the social capital of the delivery system of Think Family, that is the quality of trust, knowledge, and information-sharing processes across the system, so increasing the system self-organization abilities and reducing time drag, saving time and energy.

•   We enhanced the relational strength of the delivery system of Think Family, increasing connectivity and the ability for good practice, knowledge and skill to flow to where it is needed to deliver the strategy. We increased the system’s responsiveness.

•   We identified the positive core of good practice that enables Think Family, so identifying the heart of the strategy and saving time and energy collecting and disseminating this information through other means.

•   We co-created a shared understanding, or vision of, and desire for, an integrated, joined up, responsive, flexible, family needs-led, strengthening, honouring, interconnected service for families in the borough, saving time and energy on ‘getting buy-in’ amongst stakeholders to the vision.

•   We helped the system understand itself much better, so enhancing the abilities of the component parts to utilise the strengths of the whole system, increasing overall effectiveness.

•   We created positive energy in the system that enhances its ability to create change reducing the need for driving and motivating as separate parts of the implementation process, saving energy.

•   We created a propensity within the system to act in a greater Think Family way, creating a united strategic intent, saving energy.

•   We created a series of resolutions for individual and joint action that will serve to move things forward, creating positive impact.

All these positive outcomes were achieved at a very difficult time of cutbacks and redundancies (and government change!).

Measured evaluation on the day showed outcomes included increased clarity about how the strategy would look in practice, increased sense that the vision was shared across all stakeholders, greater clarity about the key elements and increased energy and enthusiasm for making it happen. The modal average for all of these indicators moved 3 points on a 10 point scale in a positive direction.

In addition the planning team have now become the sustainability team and are embarking on a process of closely questioning the system to discover detailed stories about the changes in people’s practice and the impact of this on families in the borough. Once discovered, these can be amplified and broadcast to help grow the emerging awareness of system change and improvement.

The Feedback 

Many comments were made at the event about the value of the conversations being held, the stories being shared and the connections being made. One participant was moved to record her appreciation more formally:

‘May I pass on the congratulations of our Line Manager, Mary Taylor, and all members of the Transfer Team for the terrific organisation on this excellent recent conference. The Transfer Team found it to be of enormous benefit and we made some excellent colleague contacts with other teams. We wanted to thank you for the opportunity to learn about the work of other teams and to be able to discuss the work of the Transfer Team with colleagues who have greater direct contact with families who may benefit from our assistance.’

The Council Member was formally congratulated, in Chamber, on the success of the ‘innovative and creative’ event.

In addition the term ‘think family’ became part of the system lexicon, used to call people to good practice and as shorthand for the objective of the changes in practice. This is strategy come alive in hearts and minds.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on the use of Appreciative Inquiry here and on Strategy here.

 

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we can help with Engagement and Culture and how we use Appreciative Inquiry.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Leading Through Uncertainty - Moving From Fatalism To Hope

The following took place over two years during which I worked with a business unit of an engineering organisation. The business unit faced enormous uncertainty and probable decline as current contracts ran down. There was a danger of the business unit succumbing to fatalism and inertia. This is how we worked with in partnership with the leader to try to change this mindset.

Background - ex-MoD facility in decline

The organisation is an ex-MOD facility, a big engineering employer in the local area, with an enviable steady state history and past protection from commercial pressures, which is now experiencing accelerating change. It has already passed into commercial ownership and is beginning to adapt to commercial pressures. At the point we are asked to help they have just been acquired by a new owner, and no one is quite sure what their plans might be. A new Managing Director has been appointed with a very different focus and orientation to the previous one. There is a new leader in this particular unit. And the end is in sight for the product on which this team works – no one is quite sure what this means for them.

Stage 1 - Getting over the shock of change

The new divisional leader invites me in and reports: a dysfunctional top team, no team spirit or cohesiveness, silo working, production going into rundown mode in the foreseeable future with no clear replacement product, quality issues, blame culture, no accountability, problems pushed upwards. He asks me to run a day for the top team.

Preliminary conversations with top team members produce comments like this

• Acting down
• Not seeing any work coming in, spectre of redundancy
• People starting to look elsewhere and leave
• Lots of firefighting - good at it
• Told we are failing
• No future planning
• Rush, rush, rush
• Banter - lively, fast, fun - can be a bit bruising
• Talk over each other

• Tend to think we know everything and have seen everything
• Don't understand other people's roles
• Busy solving other people's problems
• Difficulty in pointing out errors
• Everything takes so long
• Disunity between leader and deputy
• Frustrated about production
• Everyone gives 100%, tries hard. People helpful
• Good personal relationships
• People working at a level below them

We decide to deliver a day based on creating a clear, shared vision of the future of the division. Bearing in mind the uncertain and changing nature of the future we aim to: develop a compelling vision of future possibilities; understand the strengths of the division that can be built upon to help secure that future; identify active opportunities to pursue or focus upon; and, to identify changes needed to the way the division currently works to make it more attractive to other potential customers. I also aim to enhance top team working and engender some hope and purposeful future oriented activity.

Process - getting people to connect and focus on alternatives to slow decline

Given the comments, I include a round of Time to Think based on Nancy Klein’s book of the same name. This is exceptionally successful as for the first time in a long time this group of energetic, engaged and motivated managers really listen and hear each other’s aspirations and hopes. They also genuinely connect with each other’s concerns. The question/topic we used for the round was ‘What is the most compelling vision I have for the future of this division, and what do we need to focus on to make that happen?’ Comments after this exercise included ‘I’ve learnt more in the last hour than I have in the last year of management meetings’, ‘It’s really hard to keep quiet, but you learn so much more.’ and ‘I’ve heard G...say all that many times before, but I’ve never really understood how important it is to him.’ It was probably the most powerful part of the day.

The rest of the day we followed a SOAR design – strengths, opportunities, aspirations and results. By the end of the day the team was motivated to make some changes and had a shared sense of some other things that needed attention.

What they took from the first day

• They were resolved to carry some of the lessons from the Time to Think experience into their regular meetings.
• They realised that they had to be the ones leading the division to ensure that morale and motivation and performance stayed high so they continued to be an attractive proposition.
• They realised also that they had to be constantly ‘selling’ their division’s strengths and abilities within the organization, to make it clear they could be the division of choice for new contracts.
• They had to actively support the business development unit by being available for meetings at short notice, supplying information etc.
• That their leader had to be free to do endless networking with potential client contacts while they ran the division.

All this meant that they had to get the next layer of management to start acting as managers. They needed to delegate more effectively, push decision-making and problem solving back down the hierarchy. They had to build the confidence of their reports to act as managers, make decisions and so on. They needed to actively coach and develop these staff.

Further work and outcomes - resolving short-term issues, looking for long-term solutions

Over the next 9 months the leader and I jointly ran five further days for line managers and front line staff. The emphasis always being on creating a sense of hope, optimism and proactivity that the unit as a whole could positively influence the future by how everyone acted in the present. During this time the quality issue was resolved, the middle managers ‘stepped up to the plate’, and the senior managers started focusing more on their key challenge of attracting new work to the unit. The future continued to be uncertain.

Stage 2 - Removing guilt as an obstacle to adaptation

Ten months later I was invited in again. Now, the leader was in charge of two declining divisions. Everyone was being actively encouraged to apply for other jobs (either within the organization or externally), although the current product had not yet lessened in quantity or in its need for quality work. No new work had been yet secured. These two divisions were possibly going to merge as part of the planned rundown, meaning there would be a duplication of management bodies.

Initially I was asked to work with senior team of the new division. Again I interviewed people individually to enquire into the context and need. This is was the nature of the reports. Remember I am asking positive and appreciative questions!

• Brain drain
• Motivational issues are all
• Recruitment challenges
• Loss of direction, rearguard action/firefighting
• Abandonment
• Old strategies for managing division outdated
• Internal Conflict
• Fighting over particular skills
• Ethical dilemma – should I stay or should I go?
• No ‘give’ in performance expectations
• Uncertainty
• Failing
• Emotional Turmoil
• Recent morale destroying presentation by MD and HR

Process - removing guilt

The day for this team focuses on identifying the strengths of the unit, and giving people a chance to talk about the ethical dilemmas presented to them as managers of a division that is forecast to be closing down.

The question we gave everyone to consider was ‘How can I be a good person in this difficult situation? How can we support each other?’

We had one manager declaring that he couldn’t possibly look for another job. His loyalty to both the product and his staff were such that he felt he had no alternative. Effectively he was sacrificing his chance to secure alternative employment. Those left standing at the end faced redundancy. He looked dreadful. Clearly this statement was going to make it difficult for any other manager to choose a different path. One already had: another manager had already secured another job elsewhere on site. He clearly felt terrible saying this. We were in danger of metaphors such as rats leaving sinking ships or captain going down with the ship as being the dominant, and only, metaphors for these managers’ choices. They had not been able to have these conversations with anyone and were, meanwhile, both encouraging their staff to seize opportunities as they arose, while also desperately needing them to stay to do the work.

During the conversation the leader made it clear that, much though he cared about the unit, he also cared about his family. This meant that he would have to evaluate how to be a good person almost on a day-to-day basis as the context changed. With help, the group co-created more helpful stories of choice, recognised different ways of showing loyalty, developed a concept of provisional (rather than end point) positions and considerations, and a shared recognition that there was no right answer in this situation, each person could only do their best by their lights to ‘do good’ in a very challenging situation.

Outcomes - moving from fixed to adaptive and flexible leadership during uncertainty

It was an important conversation that made it possible for the group to move from a negative downwards spiral of accusation and betrayal in a world of clear-cut choices, to a more nuanced appreciation that opened up the possibility of people making different choices that could all be seen as honourable. Most importantly, from my perspective, it became possible for the person nailed to the martyr position to free himself from that uncomfortable position, and for the person who had secured another post to receive some recognition of the achievement involved in that.

The adaptive leadership was evident in how the divisional leader refused to adjudicate and assert what was the ‘right’ managerial response in this situation, instead he was authentic and honest about his own situation, offering a more complex picture of what leadership can look like.

Stage 3 - facing uncertainty head on

Six months later I’m back again. This time it’s a day with the support function managers from the two units. The day has some interesting features. There is something of a leadership vacuum, the usual leader and the person deputised to commission this day from me, are both absent (so apart from me who owns this day?). Of the two deputy leaders in the room, one leaves at half time (he has secured another job). I am delighted to hear that the other deputy, the one determined to go down with the ship, has also applied for another job. Things are shifting and loosening up.

Process

This time we look the future right in the face and construct three scenarios – best, worst and middling. We consider how to work in a way that means we are prepared for all three. We also do a mind-map to capture what everyone in the room knows about the rapidly changing current context, and to identify the best places to focus leadership energy. We identify the causes for celebration and optimism and we conduct an Open Space session which I label, in the absent leadership context I discovered when I arrived, ‘Doing it for ourselves'. 

Outcomes - hope, not just fear, in uncertainty. A credit to adaptive leadership

This is what I wrote to the absent leader:

'There was, for the first time, some concrete progress to hang hats on, even if it was first baby steps. For me it was quite noticeable the shift from possibilities to some actualities.

I sincerely think that the level of commitment and motivation in the room at what is probably the point at which the change is accelerating for people and the structure starting to dissolve (to hopefully reform in different patterns) is quite remarkable and a real tribute to you, and your deputies.'

The division managed to maintain or exceed all its targets until the final aircraft went. They managed to relocate around 50% of the staff to other areas of the organisation with the other 50% taking voluntary redundancy. 

“Having assumed the appointment as Director of one of our Business Units I needed to swiftly create an ethos of teamwork and focus from the management team down to the shopfloor. This was achieved over a series of one day off-site sessions facilitated by Sarah. Not only did this allow me the opportunity to interact with managers to associates at all levels, but it allowed me to provide clarity and direction for the year ahead. The level of success was demonstrated by the Business unit exceeding all previous targets and setting new standards for others to follow.

Consequently I was then appointed as the Director of an additional business unit with the added aspect that there was potentially going to be the difficult task of a significant downturn in work due to the planned MoD platform out of service date. Again I used the services of Sarah to facilitate a series of one day off-site events. As a result this particular business has seen an increase in productivity as opposed to the expected drop off and improvements in quality across the piste.

Sarah provides targeted and focused facilitation to meet your business needs and I would recommend her support to any other business.
”

— The client

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Breaking Down Barriers - Cutting across silos with Simureal

The Invitation

‘We are bringing in a new ERP system across the whole manufacturing process, it will affect everyone. It will be much more sensitive to accurate data than the old system. People will need to be much more disciplined in the way they record and enter data. Can you help us make everyone enter data properly?’

Background

The organisation was a manufacturer of about 250 people, mostly on a large site. The people involved in each part of the process were separated from each other by distance and physical barriers: it was a typical silo organisation. Historically the site had managed the many inadequacies of its ‘built like topsy’ legacy IT systems by workarounds, off-system excel spreadsheet accounting and so on. Good, clean accurate data could be hard to come by.

The Process

Appreciating Change helped the organisation to reframe the challenge as ‘making work work better’ suggesting that the investment and involvement being asked of the workforce could help make their working life better, and wasn’t just for ‘the management’.

Working with a cross hierarchy, cross functional planning team we decided to use the simureal process, whereby the whole manufacturing process is re-created  in a large space. After introductions we asked the system to address three questions in turn. In between each round of system activity we held a round of reflective conversation. Round one was: What happens now? Round two: How could work work better? Round three: Testing out our decisions. Throughout the day there was an action table where decisions could be made regarding the process. As these decisions were made they held for the duration of the exercise and were then reviewed. At the end of the day there was a collective discussion about what needed to happen and who would do what.

The Outcome

The energy and engagement on the day was tremendous. Learning happened in the moment as people realised the difficulties caused to others by their actions, where time and effort was wasted or duplicated; and came together to design and decide ways to improve the situation. Specific decisions were taken, and work groups were set up.  Some of the ambitions and outcomes were

1  Implementing a system for accurate counting of scrap in a particular function (individual scrap counters provided at each station).

2  Weighting individual items rather as appropriate rather than taking gross ‘guesstimates’ from weighbridge data.

3  Bringing the intranet into the plant (which was done by installing a new PC in that area almost immediately).

4  Introducing an electronic maintainence system.

5  The accurate setting and use of scales (again quickly scales were all calibrated, repaired as necessary, instructions for use laminated and secured to surface, a procedure produced).

6  The design of a new ‘easy to read, and secure’ label for the booking out system. 

This self-organized, active, follow-up relied on minimum push or drive from management. Instead it was built on the energy and enthusiasm of those whose working lives would benefit by these changes being supported by management to make them.

This event proved to be the beginning of a series of events that resulted in clean data, good and widespread understanding of the dependencies of the physical and virtual system; and facilitated the on-time implementation of the new system.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we can help your organisation change it Culture.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Pulling It Out Of The Bag! The Minor Miracle Of Positive Co-creation

The Challenge

Five strangers have two hours to prepare for a three-hour consulting session with a client they have never met.

We are a British woman, a Greek woman, two Dutch men, and a Dutch woman.  All of us have volunteered to try to help this organisation as part of our two-day experience at the 11th meeting of the Begeistring Network, a European network of people interested in Appreciative and strengths-based ways of working, at Volendam in Holland April 27-29 2011.

We will be working in English throughout. On our first evening we had about an hour to start planning how we might usefully use this opportunity.

Background

Foundation180, we are told, is an organisation that supports youth work by providing proven programmes to help young people in trouble to turn their lives around. The organisation is about 3 months old, being the product of two previous organisations, now joined together. We will meet the project leader and 8-9 of her staff. They have expressed an interest in how to do an appreciative audit of the organisations that use their programmes.

Working Together

As we discussed how to engage with this idea of appreciative auditing, we began to explore why this was an important topic for the organisation. We hypothesised that as an activity it was probably related to a core value of helping young people. This seemed a good topic to explore as part of ‘discovering what gives the system life’. It seemed likely to help create common ground in the group.

It was noticed that one of the challenges to our conversation was the lack of the voice of ‘those being audited’ in our conversation. It was also clear they wouldn’t be present at the meeting tomorrow. We had a challenge of how to bring their voices into the room in a positive way.

We learnt that the project leader was going to do an introductory talk, introducing the organisation to us. We considered how we could relate to this in a valuable and appreciative way and decided to listen for the strengths, abilities, passions, dreams, and resources present in her talk. 

Appreciative Inquiry is oriented to positive change; we knew we wanted to give our participants a chance to share some of their best dreams for the new organisation. Someone remembered some picture postcards available as a resource. We thought we might use them by asking people to select one that somehow expressed their dreams for the future of Foundation180.

In the car the next day these thoughts resolved themselves into a programme, complete with timelines and leads for each section (see below).

How was this possible?

Five people, working with minimum previous connection between themselves or the organisation they would be visiting, were able in a very short space of time, to co-create something they were highly committed to and that had real, real time impact. How was this possible?

I have been reflecting on this minor miracle, and this is my hypothesis.

1.  We had a shared understanding of organisations as social systems and a shared belief in the power of appreciation, inquiry and strengths to achieve positive change.

2.  We were all volunteers, thrown together by chance. There was no ‘leader’. There was no one of whom responsibility for success rested on more than anyone else.

3.  We all had a stake in the success of our afternoon, for our own reputations, for the reputation of the Network, and the reputation of our Dutch hosts who had negotiated these opportunities with organisations they knew personally. They were displaying extraordinary trust in people they had never met. We didn’t want to let them down.

4.  We all understood how to build on either other’s suggestions in a creative and generative way. This is a not a skill that can be taken for granted in groups. Was it because we were all consultants/facilitators? Or because of our general appreciative bent?

5.  We were able to combine our different strengths very well; for example allowing those who were interested in ideas and methods to explore those while those with a stronger inclination to plan and organise detail to do that. Expertise was respected as a resource not privileged as power.

So what happened at the client?

Fortunately the first round of expectation sharing suggested that our plan for the afternoon was a suitable way to proceed and we ran through our plans as outlined. During that, some remarkable things happened:

•   The pride conversations, conducted first as a fishbowl conversation by them and then reflected on by us produced very strong emotions and was experienced as highly affirming.

•   Optimism about the future of the organisation noticeably increased. This was clear by the comments that accompanied the postcards picked to represent the future. While one contribution was still tentatively hopeful, it was identified by the speaker as a shift from a previous position. In other words some hope was generated by our afternoon.

•   An understanding developed about possible good reasons why people might deviate from the established, tried and tested, programmes. Allowing these deviations to become connected to the central value of helping young people started to pave the way for more appreciative audits.

•   The shared values of the two organisations came more to the fore and started to create common ground. This will be a valuable resource and touch-point as the many points of difference between the two organisations will undoubtedly continue to be debated.

•   We hadn’t realised before we arrived the level of tension within the organisation, stemming from the experience of the recent merger. It became clear that our afternoon had created a shared, positive experience. It was the first time they had been able to have such conversations about success, value and pride. We know that shared positive emotions help to create social bonds. This was apparent here.

So five strangers came together with another 8 strangers and together we co-created a positive, valuable, organisation-building afternoon. I continue to find the power of Appreciative Inquiry a minor miracle.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we work with Appreciative Inquiry.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715