The future is here—in this book.
Beginning in the 1980’s one could sense it, that is, the urge to create a positive revolution in change. First there were theoretical and conceptual calls questioning the inherently awkward logic—or illogic—of wanting to rally and “inspire” people to change by focusing the field’s most powerful deficit-analytic tools on a person or system’s weaknesses, dysfunctions, and root causes of failure? Really?1
Remember, for example, the era in Organization Development (OD) of sophisticated and statistically refined low morale surveys: first would come the documentation on a scale of 1-7 of morale among employees, and then the cascading feedback, endless meetings, and subsequent interventions designed to remove the root causes of usually the lowest levels of morale. It was like attempting to remedy a dark room by focusing on darkness.2
Well it never, ever worked to inspire and motivate in the sense that people clearly learned tons about the causes of low morale—because that’s what the diagnostic process set out to document—but the analysis or search rarely if ever surfaced any kind of substantive (and inspiring) new knowledge, for example, about surprising “hot teams” or extraordinary times of “enterprise flourishing” or times when people were so turned on and called by a powerful purpose greater than themselves that they would contribute far beyond their job descriptions. Even if those exceptional moments were fleeting and rare, it still never occurred to the field of OD and change management that layered into the narratives of those positive deviations were the most natural and most consistently powerful cognitive, positive emotional, imaginative, and supercooperative seeds of human system change available. If there were debilitating patterns of problematic dysfunctions and breakdowns in an organization, of what possible use could it possibly be to go off on a tangential search of times of peak performance, positive deviance, or a deep dive analysis into the positive core of all past, present and future capacity in a system? It was as if this material—this universe of strengths and understanding of history as positive possibility—was irrelevant and of little use for human system development, change, and elevationary transformation.
Paradigms are like that. They are stubborn. They can blind us. Perhaps that's why we still thrill to it, that is, Einstein’s often-quoted words when he said:
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. We must learn to see the world anew.”
—Albert Einstein
Sarah Lewis, in this volume, not only helps leaders and managers, change agents, and even parents and coaches, to see the world anew but she helps us to see change anew—in and through a vibrant and vast integration of the new OD. The new OD, as it is illuminated here, is one that serves systemically to bring out the best version of a person or organization most naturally, easily, and consistently and yes, all of this, in the service of pressing, totally real, and complex change. Years ago Sarah sighted it all, a sea change—from the earliest writings in Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to the strengths revolution in management, and also from the new sciences of complexity and dialogic construction to the positive psychology of human flourishing—and then she began to mix and resonate all of it like a maestro. The result: Sarah Lewis brings together the strongest streams of an entire revolution into a one integral and remarkable portrait of the new OD—what it is, how to do it, and why its so powerful – better than any other evidence-based book I’ve seen.
The signature of this volume rests upon Sarah’s rich and real storytelling from the frontline of organizational and leadership life, and how she draws us into both the evidence based research findings—for example what good are positive emotions such as hope, inspiration, and the joy of design-thinking and co-creation—while brilliantly illustrating practices, principles, and tools you can use. And the insight that I will never forget from this book is that people actually love change. They don’t resist change. Think of the infant in the crib and, if you were lucky enough to be there and see it, think about what you saw the moment the infant took hold of the railing for the very first time, lifting his or her own little body to an upright position all at once. What you likely saw was a beaming smile, a sparkle in the eyes, and the squealing sound of delight. Human beings love change—for example in rites and rituals of moving from childhood to adulthood, when being elevated to a new job, or in pushing oneself into some never before used maneuver while kayaking in wild whitewater—in these situations resistance to change is not the hallmark.
People don't resist change. They resist being changed—always have and always will—until when? Its that special moment where being changed is transformed into being charged, being commissioned, being called authentically into co-creation. Sarah’s call, complete with how to do it, is unmistakable.
What this book is about is creating the leaderful company, in ways that serve to heal “the scar tissues” or eras past—where people were treated as machines; where what managers mostly attended to was breakdown and disrepair; and where change was a push-and-imposed type, not a co-created positive emotional attractor where people will unmistakably see and experience their signature in it.
I’ve used every method in this book in my own work with organizations, communities, cities, whole industries, and UN level world summits.3 And what’s been my experience? In a word: it’s all about the power of hope.4 My hope about what we are capable as human beings has gone up and up, every time for example that we’ve used the World Café method of dialogue, or the life-centric and strengths-inspired philosophy of Appreciative Inquiry, or have tapped into the magic of macro—where we do planning, strength-finding, and designing in whole system configurations of strengths in groups of 300 or more internal and external stakeholders. Sound impossible? Read this wonderful book carefully.
What serves to make it all possible are the conditions that bring out the best in human systems. It’s when we bring together expertise and emergence; it’s when we bring together positive discovery mindsets and design-prototyping; it’s when curiosity velocity and the search for the true, the good, the better and the possible is at least a 5:1 ratio over dogmatic answers; and it’s when we actually love bringing people out of silos, separations, and stereotypes into moments of supercooperation.
Two comments from CEO’s stand out in my memory bank as I’ve approached change just as Sarah illuminates here. The first, from a company in the Netherlands, is “What was all the fuss about” said the CEO, “we’ve got such good people here why were we so afraid?” and then the second was a President of a major telecommunications company who used the appreciative methodologies and said, “This has implications for every aspect of our business, everything we do as a company (long pause)… but I only wish now I’d heard of these ideas when I was raising my children.”
This book is a doorway into generative, strengths-inspired and solutions-focused change. It gives leaders the gift of new eyes and teaches how humility might just be a leaders greatest strength. It brings front and center the joy of high quality connections—and the sustainable effectiveness of it all—back into the field organization development. And it reminds us all that we can create conditions—the evidence base is there—to confirm our deepest conviction: that human beings are good.
And this book shares the wisdom into why and when this is nearly always true: it’s when we bring the best versions of ourselves, our communities, and our organizations to the task of co-creating our better future. As for the how? That too is simple: just start turning the pages of this book!
David is the Fairmount | David L. Cooperrider Professor of Appreciative Inquiry at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University where he is faculty chair of the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit and Co-director of the Strategy Innovation Lab. David is best known for his original theory on Appreciative Inquiry (“Ai”) with his mentor Suresh Srivastva, and has served as advisor to senior executives in business and societal leadership roles, including projects with five Presidents and Nobel Laureates such as William Jefferson Clinton, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Kofi Annan and others. David has served as strategic advisor to a wide variety of organizations including Apple, Verizon, Johnson & Johnson, the Boeing Corporation, National Grid, Smuckers, Sloan-Kettering, Fairmount Minerals, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, McKinsey, Parker Hannifin, Sherwin Williams, Dealer Tire, Wal-Mart as well as American Red Cross, American Hospital Association, Cleveland Clinic, and United Way. The United Nations called on the Appreciative Inquiry large group method of planning to grow the UN Global Compact to over 8,000 of the world’s largest corporations advancing the global goals: eradicating extreme poverty through business and creating a bright green energy future.
David has published over 20 books and authored over 100 articles and book chapters and served as editor of both the Journal of Corporate Citizenship with Ron Fry and the current research series for Advances for Appreciative Inquiry, with Michel Avital. In 2010 David was awarded the Peter F. Drucker Distinguished Fellow by the Drucker School of Management—a designation recognizing his contribution to management thought. His books include Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change (with Diana Whitney); The Organization Dimensions of Global Change (with Jane Dutton); Organizational Courage and Executive Wisdom (with Suresh Srivastva) and the 4-volume research series Advances in Appreciative Inquiry. In 2010 David was awarded the Peter F. Drucker Distinguished Fellow by the Drucker School of Management—a designation recognizing his contribution to management thought.
Most recently, Champlain College, with the support Bob Stiller, the Founder and former Ceo of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, honored David with an academic center in his name. It is called the David L. Cooperrider for Appreciative Inquiry. For the center’s dedication Marty Seligman wrote: “David Cooperrider is a giant: a giant of discovery, a giant of dissemination, and a giant of generosity” while Harvard’s Jane Nelson at the Kennedy School of Leadership said: “David Cooperrider is one of the outstanding scholar-practitioners of our generation.”