I live in Gratitude...

For all that I have given

  and for all that I have received.

For the beauty in my life

  and for the sorrows I have known.

For the challenges I've faced

  and for just how far I've come.

For my courage and my gifts

  and for the wisdom I've acquired.

For the journey and experience

  and for the kindness on the way.

For my dreams and desires

  and for the trust that I have learned.

For the joy and inspiration

  and for my purpose, newly found.

For the miracles unfolding

  and for what tomorrow holds.

For all the love I've known

  and for that I've yet to give.

For my friends, my home, and family

  and for the time to find myself.

For abundance and simplicity

  and for the grace and opportunity.

For the chance to make a difference

  and for the faith to know I will.

                                              D.D. Watkins

Happy Thanksgiving!

Appreciative Inquiry Empowers Cleveland

I had the privilege of participating in the City of Cleveland's Appreciative Inquiry Summit held August 12-14. The Summit was titled Sustainable Cleveland 2019: Building an Economic Engine to Empower a Green City on a Blue Lake. This title might feel like a stretch, if you noticed that Cleveland was on Forbes Magazine's 2008 list of "The Top 10 Fastest Dying Cities." However, as a participant the dream became very real.

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a philosophy and a positive change methodology developed in the early 1980's by Case Western Reserve University PhD candidate David Cooperrider and his advisor Suresh Srivastva. Today Dr. Cooperrider uses the methodology to spread positive change all over the world, including the United Nations.

The Summit was sponsored by the City of Cleveland's Mayor Frank Jackson, who fully participated in the three day event. Summit planners had hoped to attract 500 diverse stakeholders to participate. The end state dream of "A Green City by a Blue Lake" was so compelling that 700 people filled the Cleveland Convention Center to work through the process of making this dream a reality.

A cadre of influential speakers, including Van Jones from the White House, inspired the group. Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, a petroleum based carpet manufacturer, spoke of his company's commitment to "zero carbon footprint by 2020." The promise that Anderson brought was that you can truly "do well by doing good." As of 2008, Interface has reduced its carbon footprint by 60% and has experienced a sales increase of 60%. Anderson suggests that "creativity comes when an organization sets its vision so high it takes people's breath away."

The Green City by Blue Lake dream obviously took Cleveland's breath away, because by the end of the Summit, the Mayor's Office of Sustainability left with 20 action plans to make the dream a reality and volunteers signed up to work on each plan.

It's clear to me that the AI process works for companies, organizations and cities alike - any group with invested stakeholders.

Good luck Cleveland. I'm rooting for you!

RIF Recovery: Healing, hope and health

A new study by Leadership IQ reveals the glaring truth about the reduction-in-force aftermath. If you have recently experienced a reduction-in-force in your organization, three-fourths of your employees are likely experiencing a decline in productivity. Fewer people are doing the work and less work is being done by those who "survived" the reduciton.

The study of 4,712 survivors in 318 firms revealed other disturbing facts:
- 64% said the productivity of their colleagues has also declined
- 81% said the quality of service the customers receive has declined
- 77% said they are less likely to recommend their organizations as good places to work
- 61% said they believe their companies' future prospects are worse

How does an organization recover from such a devastating blow? In difficult times, an organization cannot afford to have a demoralized, unproductive staff. What is the answer?

Healing
The answer begins with healing at the Senior team level. That's right - the Senior Team members must become vulnerable. Transformational leaders feel the impact of a reduction-in-force just like all other employees. Employees want to know that their leaders are real human beings. The healing process invites Senior Leaders to examine their own role in the reduction-in-force and discuss how it impacted them individually and collectively. These authentic discussions can then extend into the workforce so that healing can take place at every level of the organization.

Hope
Once healing has begun, it is time to plant the seeds of hope. To foster hope, leaders must offer a new vision of the organization that employees can help to build upon. They will help their leaders rebuild the organization and inspire them when they are down. People want their organizations to succeed. Loosening controls and opening to employee involvement is essential in this step. Appreciative inquiry is a perfect tool to use to engage the workforce and inspire hope for the future.

Health
As employees get into action to rebuild the organization, health is restored. If 75% of your employees currently feel unfocused and are struggling to put in a full day's work, imagine all of your employees feeling energized and united around a common vision. Research on successful organizations reveals this as a formula for success.

With recognition that your employees need to heal and find hope, your organization can move from devastation to health in the matter of a few short months.

Appreciative Inquiry Culture: We Have a Dream

One of Leadership Beyond Limits foundational beliefs is that organizations that are committed to an appreciative inquiry culture are dynamic and resilient.

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is currently revolutionizing the field of organizational development. First articulated by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva, two professors at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management, AI is now widely recognized as one of the most practical tools in the rapidly growing discipline of positive change. Why are forward thinking business leaders embracing AI? The results speak for themselves. Here is a sampling of results reported at the recent 2007 International AI conference. See if you agree that these are examples of dynamic and resilient businesses.

Two, four-billion dollar companies used Appreciative Inquiry to create 'a merger of strengths' realizing $75 million in synergies in the first 100 days, and an estimated $300 million in synergy savings in the first year.

A cover story in Forbes told the story of the application of Appreciative Inquiry at one of America's fastest growing Fair Trade premium coffee roasters and their subsequent revenue growth. When the company began using AI as its organizational development approach, stock prices hovered around $18 per share- today, five years later, the stock continues to skyrocket at over $61 per share. (NASDAQ).

A Fortune 500 telephone company used AI to improve union-management relations and to re-write the contract. Estimates place the value of the initiative in the millions of dollars, saving the company thousands of jobs, and securing a stronger competitive positioning in the field.

A large retail grocery chain involved more than 500 front-line employees and managers in the development of customer service innovation projects. Results include 35% higher sales per man-hour ratio and powerful stories of how employees have transferred this experience to their families.

A crippled defense program was over budget, behind schedule, and facing cancellation. Relationships between employees, unions, and customers were at an all-time low. AI approaches were implemented for strategic planning and transformation to a team-based culture. Within five years the program became the 'cash cow' of the largest aerospace company in the world. It won the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award.

AI works so well because it is based on some very powerful principles. The Positive Principle states: The more positive the question, the greater and longer-lasting the change. This is very different from the traditional "problem-solving" approach that is deeply embedded in the American business tradition, where the focus is on fixing what is wrong. The underlying belief is that we already know what is wrong and if we can just "fix" the perceived problem and return to the status quo we will achieve an ideal state.

The idea that we already know what "should be" is itself very limiting. Although he was talking about education when he said it, Enstein's observation rings true for the business "problem solving" approach: "It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry."

Peter Senge put it another way: "We often spend so much time coping with problems along our path that we only have a dim or even inaccurate view of what's really important to us." This leads us to another AI principle, The Anticipatory Principle which states: "Images of the future inspire present day changes." The success stories described above came about because people were invited to pose positive questions about their future. In doing so, they came up with innovative new solutions that would have been impossible to imagine had they taken a problem solving approach.

We intuitively know that dreaming future is more inspirational than planning one. After all, Martin Luther King did not say, "I have a strategic plan." Instead, he shouted, "I have a DREAM! and he inspired a movement. When business leaders encourage employees to ask positive questions about a shared vision of the future, amazing things will happen.