4-D The Cincinnati way

Shannon Polly writes in a new piece of the Positive Psychology News Daily about a large-scale Appreciative Inquiry 4-D process in Cincinnati - the Core Change project. Aside from being the usual interesting piece one finds in the PPND,  the article offers some insights into how 4-Ds is developing in one project.


The first noticeable aspect is the use of 4-Ds in a different layout to ones we might be familiar with, i.e.:

1. Discovering the best of what is and has been
2. Dreaming about the future
3. Designing the Future
4. Deploying that design

In the recent history of AI, the 4-D model (which is not the only framework, there are the 5-Ds and 4 and 5-I's - no one said it wasn't a flexible way to view the world!) has mostly ended with Destiny as the final 'D'. In even earlier versions of the approach, the final 'D' was Deliver, 'though this gradually fell into disuse due its implication of finality and an end to something, when in reality the destiny of an organisation or a community is always developing, re-learning and in some form of transition, whatever the changes that come about as a result of an AI activity. 

I found it interesting that a new term has entered the AI lexicon. Deploy can seem almost military, in its sense of deploying 'forces' (not that that's necessarily a bad thing), or in deploying resources - much closer to the organisational/community context perhaps.A little later in the piece the fourth 'D' is broadened into 'Deployment - Design into Action', which is really starting to draw me in as a new term with potential for use with several of our client organisations.

Another phrase that struck me was "Problems don’t get solved by talking about them as problems.” Peter Block, a consultant and author who spoke at the Summit, used this phrase, which reminds us that AI never denies problems exist or that they need to be solved. What it offers us though, even demands of us, is the need to balance those problems with the counter-weight of finding the good in systems, of stories about things working well, in seeing energy and inspiration in our worlds and the strengths in individuals. These attributes set problems in their true perspective - what we inquire into is fateful. What do we want to talk about more of and do more of?

A really helpful notion was that "Design needs an opposable mindset, the ability to hold different kinds of ideas simultaneously." When we work with AI we need to guard against the rush to "edit prematurely". If we do we miss the richness of everyone's contributions from the Dream phase of an Inquiry.Retaining the whole of our work carries more energy, ideas, passion and commitment longer into an AI process. Sure, at some point we need to do practical things like action plan, prioritise, find resources and so on - only do so with more of people's contributions in play and therefore, their engagement. And, as we learn from research that engagement, in work and community activities, provides satisfaction, happiness and greater productivity. 

Finally, this phrase caught my eye, "As the idea took shape (of having a website to express the diversity and connect the 52 neighbourhoods of Cincinnati), an even bigger one took its place: to have a subsequent appreciative inquiry summit to design the world’s first strengths-based city." Wow, now that's what I call a provocative proposition! 

Shannon Polly finishes her article saying, "It’s impossible to know what will come out of the Core Change Summit. When you magnify strengths there are endless possibilities." This is a project we should keep abreast of and make a contribution to within the world of appreciative and strengths-focused change.

  

http://positivepsychologynews.com/news/shannon-polly/2012031221407