Purpose
Springfield Partners for Community Action uses the Appreciative Inquiry Process for strategic planning that builds upon an organization’s underlying strengths and values to create a vision for the future building on what worked best in the past.
Description
Springfield Partners for Community Action applies the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) approach for strategic planning that focuses on positive connections to the organization and to the community. The AI-based approach includes identification of the agency’s best times during the best situations in the past and then visioning what the agency wants in the future and building from what worked best in order to achieve the vision.
The AI approach is frequently described as a 5-D Process as outlined by Appreciative Inquiry Unlimited:
-
DEFINE – Choose the positive as the focus of inquiry: Healthy organizations begin the process of change by inquiring about and building upon the positive aspects of its people and their experience. Building on the positive leads the organization to focus on what it does well and to create an image of a future based on its own best practices and highest values.
-
DISCOVER – Uncover meaning and purpose through storytelling: Appreciative Inquiry begins with a conversation (called an appreciative interview) in which people share stories about those things within an organization that they value – things they want to expand and extend in the future. Through the interviews, people identify the themes that connect with their most deeply held beliefs and values.
-
DREAM – Create shared images of a preferred future: Building on the themes that emerge through these conversations, people in the organization create both a visual image and a written statement (possibility statement) describing how the organization would look and feel at its best. These shared images act as a guide for creating the organization’s preferred future.
-
DESIGN – Innovate ways to create that preferred future: Organizations identify specific action steps to take individually or in groups. These action steps are specific, concrete, and do-able, designed to move the organization toward its preferred future. The steps may be small and incremental, building on each other, or link to larger, more encompassing actions.
-
DESTINY – Making it happen: Once the people of an organization create a shared image of their preferred future, dialogue about ways to align the functions and people of the organization with that image, and act in ways that are congruent with the image, the organization becomes that image.
Springfield Partners uses a simple survey and similar questions for focus group discussions to gain insights from various stakeholders. Responses are compiled in summary format for use in developing future priorities and strategies. The agency has experienced the AI-approach as a mechanism to really focus people on the organization’s strengths and positives. APCA has found it to be a very helpful approach and would certainly use it again.
Springfield Partners uses a simple survey and similar questions for focus group discussions to gain insights from various stakeholders. Responses are compiled in summary format for use in developing future priorities and strategies. The agency has experienced the AI-approach as a mechanism to really focus people on the organization’s strengths and positives. APCA has found it to be a very helpful approach and would certainly use it again.
Additional information and resources about AI can be accessed through the Internet including:
.jpg)
Outcomes
Strengthening an agency’s strategic planning capacity is a key element of ROMA National Goal #5: Agencies Increase Their Capacity to Achieve Results.
