Search results

THE SIXTH and last instalment of a most brilliant and inventive piece of television drama was shown last week. This was Dennis Potter's Pennies from heaven. Thanks to my collection of the old 78 rpm records of popular music of the nineteen twenties and thirties (sneered at in this column and elsewhere by John Fines and others) I had the additional pleasure, not only of recognising songs, singers, bands and particular recordings, but also of being confirmed in my opinion that a wind‐up gramophone and steel needles are essential equipment for authentic reproduction.

Appreciative Inquiry is about the search for the best in people, their organizations, and the strengths-enriched world around them. In its broadest focus, “AI” involves systematic discovery of everything that gives “life” to a living system when it is most alive, effective and flourishing, and most capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI involves, in a very central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system's capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential. It centrally involves the mobilization of whole system appreciation through the crafting of the “unconditional positive question” often-involving hundreds or sometimes thousands of people.

In two previous articles on “The New World of Work” (ICT, November 1982) and “The Creative Re‐integration of Business” (ICT, May 1983) I sketched out an agenda for business, tomorrow. Armed with what seemed to me home truths, I ventured across the Atlantic, to attend a conference on Organisational Transformation in New Hampshire. As I began to listen to those agents of transformation in the “land of plenty”, I became progressively more concerned. For the cupboard was bare. It was plain for me to see that the Americans had no fundamental answers. They were being stymied not by the great Russian Bear, but by their own projections on to the Japanese. So, I would have to gain confidence in my own answers.