LAMSIG: 'An introduction to Appreciative Inquiry as an approach to managing organizational change'

A LAMSIG webinar presented by Ralph Rogers

Appreciative inquiry is a strengths-based approach to managing organizational change. Traditional approaches to organizational change are deficit based. They identify problems, come up with solutions to those problems and then implement the best solution.  This traditional deficit-based approach is great for increasing efficiency in organizations; however, it has the unintended consequence of creating a sense of fatigue and a lack of engagement amongst staff. Appreciative Inquiry identifies an organization’s strengths and those things that have made it successful in the past and uses that as a platform to imagine, design, and deliver an even better future.

There are five phases to an appreciative Inquiry. The process starts by defining the topic of inquiry, the questions we ask ourselves are fateful. We will move in the direction of that which we inquire about. The second phase is discovery, a search to identify what has made us successful in the past. The third phase, dream, is where we imagine what our future might look like and agree on future images and possibilities that we want to pursue. The fourth phase, design, is where we start to come up with actionable ideas about the steps that we might take to realise the ideal future that we have described. The final phase, deliver, is where, because we co-created them, we are motivated to begin the implementation of our designs.

In this hour-long webinar, we will look at these phases in more detail, as well as some of the theories and principles underlying Appreciative Inquiry.

Ralph Rogers joined the British Council in 2015, first as Director of Business Development in Beijing, moving to Guangzhou in 2016 to take up the position of South China Area Director. Ralph took up the position of Director Taiwan in October 2019.

Before joining the British Council, Ralph spent fifteen years supporting a wide variety of UK companies and institutions enter and grow in the China market, most recently as Managing Director of the British Chamber of Commerce in China.

Ralph graduated in Modern Chinese Studies from the University of Leeds in 1999 and received his Master’s in Applied Translation in 2000.

When he isn’t developing cultural relations, Ralph loves getting outside and going for a run, but most of all he enjoys family life with his wife and two children.

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