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Using Appreciative Inquiry to drive change at the BBC

HEADNOTE

Ever heard the phrase: it's not what you say, it's the way that you say it? This observation gets to the heart of Appreciative Inquiry, an engagement technique with the potential to change the way people within an organization

talk to each other. Here, Sam Berrisford describes how this simple technique not only involved employees in change at the BBC, but placed them in the driving seat of a major cultural transformation.

HEADNOTE

An engagement technique to change organizational dialogue

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) uses structured dialogue to generate a collective image of a new and better future for an organization. It explores the best of what is within the organization and what has been before. It attaches an element of formality to the process of learning from organizational experience and is, critically, forward-looking and positive. In practice, AI can take many forms, although its most vigorous exponents Cooperrider & Srivastva, strive to maintain the integrity of the formal process. In their 1987 article "Appreciative Inquiry in Organizational Life" they describe the process in detail.

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