When meeting an organization interested in commissioning some work, an interesting question to pose is, “Why this now? Why is the now the moment at which you have decided to invest time and money in this?” I thought I might ask the same question to shape this preface. Why this book now?
I have been a psychologist for 30 years, for 10 years as a social worker and for 20 years as an organizational consultant, and it’s all about change. Life is about change. We are expert at change, we are the most adaptable species on the planet and yet it causes endless problems and challenges in organizational life. Many books have been written about how to successfully change things in organizations. Many of them are very good. Fewer have really called on the psychology of people and groups to explain why the plans don’t always work out quite as, well, planned, or to explain how our very humanness is our greatest asset when it comes to working together to influence our own futures.
I am moved to put the time and effort into writing this book now because I believe that positive psychology, combined with co-creative participatory approaches to change such as Appreciative Inquiry, offers very effective ways of helping organizations and people to change. Having said that, all change initiatives take place in a context, and that context is all-important in influencing how any change activity is interpreted by those involved. So this book doesn’t present a “recipe” for achieving more successful change as many change books do. It is more about the processes that can help with change. It is about how the context and history of an organization affect how the announcement of change initiatives is experienced. It is about working with big action events and tiny micro-moments to help achieve change. It is about applying some of the latest thinking and practice from positive psychology and dialogue-based organizational development to the age-old organizational challenges of performance, culture, and working practices to make change as positive an experience as possible for all involved.
I am not an academic. I am not affiliated to a university. I don’t do original research. Instead, I try to put the work of others to the test, in practice, in the field. A book like this is an attempt to create a mosaic drawn from the best of the brilliant work of others. It is a labour of love, intended as homage to those who painstakingly do the research or generously spell out their practice in detail. The researching and writing of this book was challenging, rewarding, engrossing, thought-provoking, and fun. I hope you find reading it to be a similar experience.
I have written two previous books about positive psychology and Appreciative Inquiry. I have tried on the whole not to repeat myself here. I have tried to balance the possible frustration of those for whom some concepts are new and are not fully explored here against the possible sense of déjà vu for those who came across these ideas in depth in previous books. I wanted to take the opportunity to more fully explain concepts that didn’t make it into the last book. My intention is that the books stand alone, yet are complementary.
This is a book of two halves. The first five chapters are focused on ideas, concepts, and theory in positive psychology and organizational development. The second half of the book gives much practical guidance, although you will notice a high degree of overlap. This means that sometimes practices get mentioned before they are explained in full; for example, Appreciative Inquiry is explained fully in Chapter 6, and yet mentioned in probably every chapter.
Along with the core content are some added extras. A highlight of the book is my husband’s kindly donated cartoons to “lighten things up a bit.” They make me laugh, which is always good for the soul, and I hope they do you too. I have included stories from my personal experience to try to illuminate the practices I am talking about. I hope they also break up the density of the text from time to time. Your privilege as a reader is to skip those bits that don’t “do it for you.” I encourage you to do so.
As ever, choices have to be made when putting a book together. The most challenging, I find, is that of referencing. I know that references in a text can trip up those not used to them, although I assure you that with a little practice your eye will learn to gloss over them and you will hardly notice them. On the other hand, I get frustrated if a reference isn’t readily available when I want it. I like to know on what basis an assertion is being made. I want a reference to hand, not buried in a footnote linked by a miniscule number somewhere in the text, nor at the end of the chapter that I have to flick back and forth to locate, but in the text right next to the relevant information and easily accessible in a combined reference section at the back of the book. So that’s what I have provided for you.
I wrote in the preface to the last book, “I can only hope that you buy this pristine volume and rapidly deface it with underlining, exclamation marks, question marks, comments, dog ears and coffee stains. Such, to me, are the signs of a useful book.” Some people were kind enough to contact me to tell me just how coffee bespattered their book had become. I was thrilled, and I can’t better this as my wish to you.