This AI brings positive results

We have been asked to repeat what we said last week and give concrete examples of where Appreciative Inquiry (AI) has worked. If you, our bosses, want something repeated, explained, elucidated, and exemplified, we are nothing to resist, refuse or reject your orders and directives.There is AI in town which seems to scare many people.  Teachers are scared that students will just be commanding AI applications on their phones or computers and voila, essays will come out replete with references.  Current and future employees are worried because they fear all jobs, especially in industries, such as motorcar assemblies, and service centres, such as banks, restaurants and hotels will be automated or taken over by robots with human-like intelligence. Whether the fears are justified or not, we cannot say.  What we are sure of is AI is here to stay.  That AI may have negative social effects. But this AI we are talking about is Appreciative Inquiry. This AI has been there far longer and it has been proved helpful and effective in organisation turn-around.We repeat what we said last week. We said, in 1987, David Cooperrider and his colleague, Suresh Srivastva, proposed a whole organisational and economic planning theory based upon the idea of appreciating what works in an organisation, in us, and in the world.  They called it AI. Made up of two concepts, appreciative inquiry is the search for (inquiry, kufufuza)  and valuation (appreciation; kuyamikira) of what works in our organisations and in  us.  In their 4-D (later 5-D) model they identified the positive core as the ‘sun’ around which discovery, dream, design, destiny, and delivery rotated.Today, AI is a dominant theory in education assessment and measurement where it has influenced appreciative marking; in project monitoring and evaluation where it has focused on action research; in communication for development; solutions journalism, and even in marriage where positivity has overridden negativity. Appreciating the positive; seeing what works; searching for those strengths and assets that give meaning to life; searching for positive experiences from history are characteristics of AI. This positive asset-based approach to life leads to social and self-valuation. Each one of us has something in us that works. If we pool our positive talents, we can make our countries, communities and structure strong and great (again). Let’s identify our collective national and individual positives, our assets to develop ourselves.To illustrate that the AI of Appreciative Inquiry works, we will give you two examples.From 1999 to 2007 the Usaid-funded Community Partnerships for Sustainable Resource Management (Compass) project  centred its approach on AI. It trained project primary participants and stakeholders to treat the natural resources in their areas, such as forests and fish, and others that regenerate on their own as sources of longtime benefits. For example, a mango tree is more productive in 50 years than cut down to turn into charcoal, which will bring money once. Several people were trained in honey-production and aquaculture.  The people that learnt those valuation skills are still in the business today in Nkhata Bay, Mulanje, Rumphi, Chikwawa and elsewhere. In Many areas, the forests are alive because people surrounding those value them as sources of honey and, therefore, money. During the same period, the Story Workshop Education Trust (Swet) implemented a radio magazine programme, Mwanaalirenji,  which encouraged people to use reflect on what works and to use local resources, such as compost and animal manure, to supplement chemical fertilisers in their maize production.   Experimental gardens were established.Called Radio Research Gardens, these were plots where farmers applied what they learned from radio. In one area in Ntcheu, the farmers collected human urine as a replacement for the artificial or chemical fertilisersFirst, they had to change their attitude and beliefs in the definition of plants fertilisers. They had noted that where diluted human urine had been deposited, crops grew well. What they got was impressed and farming with human urine has not stopped. That is why Ntcheu is always mwana waliliyikane (mwana alirenji).Believe us, this AI brings positive results.