Working with Emergent Change: Applying Appreciative Inquiry to Adaptive Challenges

Abstract

More Articles at www.aipractitioner.com People who are successful at facilitating transformational change have merged interpretivist social science, and complexity natural science in their thinking and practice. In this article I discuss how complexity science can help AI practitioners deepen their thinking and improve their transformational change practice. Appreciative Inquiry practitioners face a dilemma when working with managers and clients who are not familiar with AI or other kinds of large group engagement processes: whatever change will occur has to be allowed to emerge from the process. In a world of goals, plans, strategies and quarterly reports, telling a prospective client that “we don’t know what the change will be but it will be good” does not instill a lot of confidence. Yet it is the very nature of emergence that makes AI so much more transformational than conventional diagnostic, change-management approaches. I believe that an understanding of how emergence works – being able to explain to leaders how it is their only viable response to the complex, adaptive challenges they face – not only aids an AI practitioner in securing more work, but in designing and facilitating transformational change processes.