“Organizational Forgetting” and Appreciative Inquiry

One of the things that I struggle with is getting some things from the past out of head.? I find myself replaying old memories, and most are not positive. It is like they are some old VHS tape.? I am quite adept at giving myself a stern lecture over old poor decisions and past failures.? You would think that the patterns would grow old and eventually go away.? Unfortunately, unlike the VHS tape that will eventually wear out, just the opposite happens with the “old tapes” in our head. The old tapes in our head actually become stronger and less like to break or wear out.? Odd isn’t it? This is due to the concept of Neuroplasticity.? This is the notion that what we practice grows stronger.? Therefore, the more we replay thoughts in our head, the stronger those neural pathways become.? The number and strength of the neurons increases.? It is as if we are paving a super highway to facilitate the constant traveling pattern of these thoughts.? But since we know that what we practice grows stronger, we can choose what neural pathways we want to strengthen. This can be just as impacted by positive thoughts and such things as practicing gratitude by writing down each day what you are grateful for.? Conversely, what we let go of or “forget” will gradually decrease the neural pathways over time.

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You only lose what you cling to – Buddha

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A common characteristic of the patterns of negative thinking has to do with the nature of clinging.? The more that we cling to what needs to be let go of, the more we create suffering.? I have found there is enough externally to manage, I don’t need to add to it.? We also cling to people we love, to possessions, and even organizational strategies and practices.? The irony is that the more we cling to these things, the more likely we are to lose them and hence experience suffering.? This is a reality because everything we experience day to day, is impermanent.? Clinging to something or someone who will one day not be there leads to mental suffering and distress.? It requires being present, living in the moment, and not dwelling in the past or worrying about the future.

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We see these same patterns in our organizations.? Organizations need to be aware of their collective thoughts and actions.? What the organization focuses on grows stronger.? Organizations that are constantly looking for people to blame, leading through fear and intimidation, will find themselves with a strong culture, unfortunately though embedded in these continual practices.? They will find that they have an incredibly strong culture, rooted in fear, blame, and negativity. What we practice grows stronger.? Continually looking for things that are wrong and pointing out flaws and focusing on fault finding, results in finding lots wrong, and finding lots of people to blame.

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Some organizations have figured out the power of behaving differently.? They are creating cultures that are grounded in recognizing the dignity and autonomy of everyone.? They are focusing on possibilities not problems.? They recognize the bigger picture and take into consideration how actions affect the larger community and the world in which we live.? This to me is the profound power of Appreciative Inquiry, from the work of David Cooperrider.? Appreciative inquiry is about focusing on what is working, or what might be possible, or what is best about our organizations.? I have heard individuals criticize Appreciative Inquiry (which is grounded in solid research from the field of positive psychology) as being overly optimistic, of ignoring problems, and not being realistic.? Do not confuse having a mindset of appreciation, of looking at what is working, at what might be possible, with what I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, the concept of toxic positivity.? They are two distinctly different concepts.? I have even heard someone say that managers are basically paid to fix problems.? While it is true that there are things in our organizations and in our lives, that need to change or be improved, this is different than spending all of one’s time and energy trying to fix things.? I love what David Cooperrider said, “We need to discover the root causes of success rather than the root causes of failure.”?

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Appreciative Inquiry is grounded in the theory of social constructionism, the idea that we construct meaning from our interactions.? Reality is constructed through our interactions with one another, and particularly by the questions we ask.? This is the notion of inquiry.? Human development, and organization development, are both collaborative processes at their core.? Our conversations deeply matter, the questions we ask deeply matter.? Our questions guide our thoughts in certain directions, and what we focus on grows stronger.? It is through inquiry, appreciation, and imaging possibilities, that we are able to grow and improve, both as individuals but as organizations as well.? Appreciative inquiry takes an asset-based approach to organization development, in contrast to a deficit-based approach.? Diane Whitney and David Cooperrider described fundamentally as changing from thinking that an organization is a problem to be solved but rather an organization is a mystery to be embraced.? The concept of clinging is very much about fear and apprehension rather than possibilities and appreciation.

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To make positive changes in your organization, we need to reflect on what we might be clinging to.? What is your organization clinging to?? What does your organization need to let go of?? I refer to this as Organizational Forgetting.?

Just like in our own lives where we can increase our happiness and decrease our stress by forgetting certain stories we have told ourselves for years, so too for our organizations.? We can all think of times that someone has said, “never forget…..” you can fill in the rest of the statement.? While there are many things in life we should never forget, I believe paradoxically that there are things that we need to forget.? This type of forgetting is characterized by emotionally (and sometimes physically) letting go of old thoughts, dysfunctional habits, and unhealthy relationships.?

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We Live in a World our Questions Create – David Cooperrider

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What do you need to stop clinging to?? What does your organization need to stop clinging to?? What do you need to forget?? What does your organization need to forget? What questions of possibility should you be asking?? What conversations does your organization need to engage in?? What does your organization need to appreciate?

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Have a nice and safe weekend!