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By
Morgan Zantua
People who have discovered the Dependable
Strengths Articulation Process may also have discovered Appreciative
Inquiry (see, for example, Kathleen
Zarubin's article in this issue of DSNews). There is a
connection. Simply put, what DSAP is for individuals, AI is
for organizations. As with the Dependable Strengths Process,
Appreciative Inquiry works from a strength-based foundation
of guiding principles. According to AI originator, David Cooperrider,
“Appreciative Inquiry is an approach to organizational
change based on strengths rather than weaknesses, on a vision
of what is possible rather than an analysis of what is not.”
Change is a characteristic of life.
And so is connectedness. I believe the connections we make
in life are not accidental, but are evidences of the fabric
of life, in which we all have a share.
During the mid-70’s the country
was going through a recession. I marketed services for an
innovative New York City computer-based company, Information
Graphics and Information Processing, Inc. This novel, cutting-edge
company provided batch processing and computer graphics services
on the latest IBM 360 computer. The company was undercapitalized,
went under, and I was out of a job. I floundered, felt lost,
began a job search and came across Haldane and Associates.
The process sounded intriguing — and expensive. I went
on with my life, moving into sales and training, but I never
forgot the name, Bernard Haldane.
Fast forward twenty years. I now live
in the Northwest, and am a Special Projects Consultant at
the Center
for Learning Connections, Highline Community College.
Through my CLC connections (after a career in marketing, sales
and training, and a stint in workforce development serving
people “at risk”), I have become a Dependable
Strengths Facilitator. While I completed my Master’s
program in Organization Systems Renewal (Whole Systems Design),
I was earning my Consulting Certification through the Organization
Systems Institute. There I was introduced to David Cooperrider’s
Appreciative
Inquiry. Upon completing post-graduate AI certification
(“Business as an Agent of World Benefit”), I was
impressed by how DSAP and AI share a similar strength-based
approach. Even though I realized there were differences in
the two methodologies, I saw the similarities.
In my work for CLC, I use elements of
AI in combination with elements of DSAP. I use AI with clients
to set the tone, direction, and flow for organizational change,
and to set the stage for a long-term process of team development.
I implement the DSAP “Teams of Excellence” module
to elicit positive feedback from a team for each team member.
Building upon this process, teams develop highly collaborative
working relationships and complete complex assignments with
ease.
Recently, I heard that David Cooperrider
and others from the AI community met for the first time with
members of the CDS Board of Directors just last year in Taos,
New Mexico. The meeting had been arranged because AI people
and DS people were seeing the common ground shared by Appreciative
Inquiry and Dependable Strengths. Before that meeting, no
one seems to have realized there was a direct connection,
but when someone mentioned Bernard Haldane, David Cooperrrider
remembered that his father had met Bernard back when David
was a teenager. David’s father had benefited from the
career counseling offered through Haldane and Associates,
and David remembered his father’s high regard for Bernard
and his father’s references to good experiences and
patterns of strength.
1980 is an important date in the AI
story. David Cooperrider, in collaboration with Suresh Srivastva,
was conducting a study in organizational behavior at Case
Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. David, a
twenty-four-year-old doctoral student, was encouraged by his
advisor, Suresh Srivasta, to depart from the traditional approach
in organizational analysis, with its focus on problem solving,
and to develop a new approach with the focus on cooperative
innovation.
In 1986, David Cooperrider completed
his doctoral dissertation, Appreciative Inquiry: toward a
Methodology for Understanding and Enhancing Organizational
Innovation. David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva are co-authors
of The Emergence of the Egalitarian Organization (1986), Appreciative
Inquiry in Organizational Life (1987), and Appreciative Management
and Leadership: the Power of Positive Thought and Action in
Organizations (1990).
A major influence in the development
of Appreciative Inquiry was Albert Schweitzer through his
writings on “reverence for life.” A reverence
for life is certainly a shared aspect of the work of David
Cooperrider and the work of Bernard Haldane.
Morgan Zantua
is a Special Projects Consultant, Center for Learning Connections,line
Community College, Des Moines, Washington.
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