How to Run the Design Stage of Appreciative Inquiry with a Team or Small Group

The Design stage of Appreciative Inquiry, if you're facilitating the process with a team or a small group, is when they come up with options for turning all or part of their Dream vision into reality - or at least for moving closer to it.

In this article you'll also find an idea for making sure that introverts and shyer people get their ideas heard, and aren't drowned out by the extroverts in their team.

The best time to facilitate the Design stage of an Appreciative Inquiry is straight after the Dream stage, when the team is still buzzing from creating their vision of the desired future together.

Keep people on the same tables as when they constructed their Dream.

How to frame the idea-generating process:

"Thinking about the Dream, which aspects do you feel most moved to work on bringing into reality? Or maybe you have ideas for bringing the Dream as a whole into reality?

What ideas do you have at the level of structures, workflows, or information sharing?

What ideas do you have for small, marginal gains and ideas for improvement, or maybe doing the things you are already doing but doing them differently?

Remember, you're not committing to any of these ideas at the moment, and we're not evaluating them - you can do that to select the ones you take forward later.?

An idea that seems crazy, or one that seems very small, may lead to another idea that makes a massive difference. So all ideas are good ideas at this point - we want the crazy ideas and the small ideas too!"

Instructions:

Take 3 minutes by yourself, silently, to note down any ideas you have already.?

Then go round the table, and one by one share your ideas with the group, making sure everyone's ideas are heard.

Alternatively, you could say:?Get into pairs with someone you don't normally work with and talk them through your ideas, before sharing them with the table as a whole.

(Note: starting off the process in either of these two ways ensures that introverts in the group get their ideas heard. If there are higher-status members in the group - for example, the team leader or a member of senior management, make sure they don't give their ideas first, so as to minimise the possibility of 'groupthink'.)

Then you can throw in any additional ideas you've thought of during that process, and as a group start building on whichever ideas have inspired you the most.?

After 20 minutes?(you can shorten or lengthen this time, depending on how much time is available),?we'll ask each table to present their ideas to the rest of the room?(if it's just a small team of up to 8 people, you as the facilitator can be their audience).

The aim is to have a whole array of ideas, some viable, some just stepping stones in the process of association that creates other ideas.

No-one is being asked to commit to any of the ideas at this stage. We just want a rich field of ideas and options to select from in the next stage, Delivery (or 'Destiny').

The table of 4-8 people is the basic unit, making this a very scalable process. If you have more people, just add more tables.

If you're working with the whole organisation in one room, you could add another stage where people reform into their functional teams and generate ideas for what they can do to make their part in the Dream into reality.

Or, people may be inspired to volunteer for ad-hoc project teams around making a particular aspect of the Dream happen.

Next week we'll look at practical considerations for running the Design stage with a team.

If you'd like to get started using Appreciative Inquiry confidently with teams and small groups, join my upcoming Practical Appreciative Inquiry course. At the time of writing there are still some places available.

"I really enjoyed the course and feel confident enough to begin using what I have learned with groups in the coming months." - Aoife Collins, coaching and consulting, Ireland

Get the full course information and how to book here