Appreciative Inquiry

Appreciative Inquiry has many technical descriptions: it is a dialogic organizational development change process, or a collaborative transformation methodology, or a large group process, but however you describe it, it was one of the first of the co‐creative change methodologies to be fully articulated. This chapter explains the stories people were constructing to make sense of the situation in which they found themselves, and then presents other possible accounts of what was happening that could also explain the situation. Organizations get most benefit from Appreciative Inquiry when they understand it as an iterative process, as a cultural way of being. At the very least they need to understand that the summit or group event is not the total Appreciative Inquiry experience, it is only the most visible part. What happens before and what happens afterwards are equally important parts of the change process.