News

• "A Short Primer on Appreciative Practices"
  A basic introduction to several practices, including Appreciative Inquiry.
• "Better Is Based in Who We've Been"
  A short essay about starting with strengths when aiming for improvement.
• "Leading from Abundance"
  A speech that spells out the differences between scarcity-driven leadership and a leadership that begins with the recognition of resources already present.
• "Appreciating What's Already Present"
  While starting from what's working makes sense, this short essay notes how this move requires a significant shift in vision, a more entrepreneurial way of leading.
• "Appreciative Inquiry and Evaluation"
  A short essay that shows how AI makes evaluation richer, more energizing, and more useful to continuous organizational learning.
• "Moving from Fixing to Blessing"
  A short essay on how an asset- based approach to leadership sets the tone for a very different kind of organization.
• "Toward Old Leadership"
  A short essay on how an appreciative approach to leading is not a new idea but rather an older way that has made sense to people for a long time.

For specific case studies on the use of Appreciative Inquiry, the best place to start is the Appreciative Inquiry Commons. Link will open a new browser window.

For a perspective that sets appreciative practices within a larger framework of leadership, Margaret Wheatley offers rich insights. She uses the learnings of New Science to demonstrate that the world, and human organizations included, self-organize, so we don't need leaders to "make it happen." There is another task for leadership: noticing and participating in what's already moving or working. Wheatley writes on these themes in:

Leadership and the New Science
A Simpler Way (with Myron Kellner-Rogers)

You can also find essays by Wheatley here. Link will open a new browser window.

Luther Snow draws upon the work of asset-based community developers John McKnight and Judy Kretzmann in The Power of Asset Mapping. The book is targeted at congregations but the theory and practice applies to any organization. You can read about the book here. Link will open a new browser window.