First International Appreciative Inquiry Conference

Another last minute addition was the possible connection of the AI conference with a conference scheduled for New York City for April 21 - 23 that would focus on Spirit in Business. This conference would feature His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the opening evening would be co-hosted by Dave Cooperrider and Peter Senge. It was determined that we would include the possibility of linking to this spring conference in the work we did at the AI conference and more important that we would recast the conference to address what felt like a pressing question, " what would it be like if business were an agent of world benefit?"

For reasons we can only imagine, the total number of registrants for this conference not only didn't drop, it increased between September 11 and the conference, which opened on September 30th. Over 500 people attended the conference. In spite of nervousness around the world about travel, people arrived from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and South America. At 5 PM on Sunday Jane Watkins opened the conference welcoming everyone on behalf of the conference hosts: Appreciative Inquiry Consulting, Benedictine University, National Training Labs, and the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. She suggested that we were about to engage in a conversation and that would co-create it together. She then introduced Dave Cooperrider and Diana Whitney who began the first plenary session, which was about the Discovery Phase of Appreciative Inquiry.

Dave spoke about the time we are in as a "magnified moment of meaning." He quoted a Martin Luther King speech in which King imagined that God had offered him the opportunity to live in any time and he had elected to live in his own time because of the unprecedented impact that each thought, word, and action could have on the world. Diana Whitney spoke about the Positive Revolution in Change that was underway and about the research going on by Marty Seligman and his colleagues in the arena of Positive Psychology.

After this introduction everyone in the room was invited to pair up and to interview one another using an Appreciative Interview protocol.

After 90 minutes we assembled again in plenary session. Jane Watkins offered a few thoughts about how the understanding of the world has shifted as a result of much of the research in the scientific community. She showed a slide of the Lorenz Curve and suggested that those who have applied this mathematical equation to the natural world have found that this butterfly-looking pattern demonstrates a fundamental aspect of the way that nature works and the way that organizations work: "keep returning to the positive core and the organization will recreate itself."

The evening closed with Dave explaining that because of the events of September 11th, Warren Bennis had been unable to join us as a speaker and that he had sent a videotaped message. In the videotape, Bennis expressed his regret about missing the conference and spoke about the importance of appreciation as a dynamic among people in organizations. "Appreciative Inquiry," he said is "an aspect of love." He closed with a poem by Wendell Barry:

" Now You Know the Worst." By Wendell Barry

Now you know the worst
We humans have to know
About ourselves, and I am sorry

For I know that you will be afraid.
To those of our bodies given
Without pity to be burned, I know

There is no answer
But loving one another,
Even our enemies, and this is hard.

But remember:
When a man of war becomes a man of peace,
He gives a light, divine
Though it is also human.
When a man of peace is killed
By a man of war, he gives a light.

You do not have to walk in darkness,
If you will have the courage for love,
You may walk in light.

It will be the light of those who have suffered
For peace. It will be your light.

(From A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997)

Monday

On Monday morning each pair from Sunday's interviews joined three other pairs to create a group of 8. These groups introduced one another, shared insights from the interviews, focusing especially on questions 3 and 4 (Your Vision of a Better World, Your Vision of Business as an Agent of World Benefit, Leading Exemplars that are Offering Images of Possibility and Strengths you Want to Magnify). Groups drew images to illustrate their findings from questions three and four. These images were posted in the room.

On Monday afternoon attendees scattered to attend application round tables.

In the late afternoon there was a space of time for groups to hold sessions on "late breaking innovations," a chance for people at the conference to offer possibilities to others at the conference. These sessions included the Spirit in Business conference planned for the spring, a session on a new book series being offered by Lakeshore Publications and many other new project initiatives.

Monday evening was the first of two fireside chats with Ken and Mary Gergen. Ken, professor of psychology at Swarthmore is one of the founders of the Taos Institute and a key intellectual force in the field of social construction. Mary, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, is also a founder of the Taos Institute and has published extensively at the crossroads of social constructionist and feminist theory. Ken spoke about how we bring life to each other, we "inter-animate" each other, and how our relational spaces open up ethical possibilities. They told stories and answered questions for almost two hours and then, as it was time to close, Ken went to the back of the stage and pulled out a banjo. He and Mary sang three verses of an "AI song."

Tuesday

Tuesday morning, Ada Jo Mann took the stage with a parable of "how Appreciative Inquiry got its D's." She then invited the pairs from yesterday's interviews to find three other pairs and to share the stories from Monday's interviews. At the end of that process, she introduced Jim Ludema who talked to the group about the Dream Phase of Appreciative Inquiry.

Groups reconvened to talk through and illustrate their dreams. They then returned to the plenary room where Bernard Mohr talked to the room about the Design Phase of AI and the creation of provocative propositions.

Groups reconvened one last time to write provocative propositions. They then returned to the plenary room and shared some of their best ideas with the room.

At the end of the morning session, Ada Jo invited the room to stand in sections so that we could get a sense of who wass in the room: by geography, by gender, by area of interest…and finally by those who were hungry, which of course generated a mass exodus to the dining room.

During lunch people convened Topic Tables around areas of shared interest. After lunch, there was another round of Application Round Tables.

After dinner, Marge Schiller convened a Fireside Chat with Suresh Srivastva, professor at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, and co-creator of Appreciative Inquiry. Suresh was Dave Cooperrider's dissertation chair, so Dave opened the session with a story about an early "failed client intervention" that Suresh had begrudgingly told him they would salvage as a learning experience. Suresh spent the next hour and a half walking among the audience, reflecting on the foundations of appreciative inquiry in the human spirit and taking questions from the audience.

Wednesday

On the final morning of the conference Barbara Sloan greeted the group remarking on the high energy in the room and quipped, "first enlightenment, then the laundry." She explained that Destiny is the phase of AI in which the dreams and designs of earlier phases are linked to the ongoing work of the organization. The Destiny phase happens over time and so is particularly difficult to explain in such a limited period of time. She introduced Frank Barrett, who, in addition to being a scholar and practitioner of AI was a jazz keyboardist with the Tommy Dorsey Band. Frank talked about the improvisational nature of the destiny phase and of the importance of creating appreciative cultures in which improvisation can happen.

Much of Frank's session took place at the grand piano on the stage: He opened with a story from U of Michigan professor Karl Weik about explorers who had become lost in the Andes Mountains. They were desperate until one of them discovered he had a map. Using this map they were able to get out of the mountains. It was only afterwards that they discovered that the map they had was of the Pyranees Mountains, proving that "when you're lost, any map will do."

He told the room
· That when you "double click" on Destiny what you see is Discovery, Dream, and Design.
· That human systems don't need AI interventions - that human systems are already appreciative systems.
· That in jazz bands, strategy and implementation are simultaneous
· That in jazz small actions have big consequences.
· That what makes improvisation work is affirmation - that jazz musicians presume that whatever they are "stuck" with is good."
· That minimal structure allows for maximum improvisation.

He explained the relationship between the soloist and the other musicians who are "comping" (accompanying). "The job of the person comping is to make the soloist brilliant."

He said that "part of your job is to pay attention to the unfolding of the ideas of the other players." He wondered aloud whether we have a good model for what it means to support others as an act of leadership.

Adrian McLean was on next, explaining some of the principles of the Destiny Phase

Marge Schiller then introduced the final task, ten minutes of quiet in which participants reflected on their "web of connections" and then a period in which participants worked in triads connecting their areas of passion with the web of connections from their individual lives.

Finally the group came back together for some final thoughts and music from Frank, and a round of acknowledgments. He invited "appreciations" from the floor, and there were many - thank you's from the Egyptian participants for feeling so welcomed, invitations to host future conferences in Iran, Nepal and Israel, thank you's to AIC for pulling that organization together, and some quieter reflections on the implication of AI for our times.

The conference closed on a high note of looking ahead to the future.