Developing Customer Centricity through Appreciative Inquiry
The 4-D Cycle
The 4-D Cycle generates the power of Appreciative Inquiry:: Discovery, Dream, Design and Destiny. Human systems, individuals, teams, organisations and communities grow and change in the direction of what they study. Appreciative Inquiry works by:
- focusing the attention of an organisation on its most power potential - its positve core; and
- unleashing the energy of the positive core for transformation and sustainable success.
What is it?
At TMI we use an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) approach to support our clients to become truly customer centric. We focus on exploring how teams and organisations already place customers at the centre of what they do and highlight what is already working. We support our clients to bring people from across their organisation together to share positive stories and experiences and to use these as a basis for change. Put simply we facilitate large scale transformational conversations to discover the positive core of customer centricity in an organisation, encourage people to dream about what might be and then support a robust design process to turn these ideas into reality.
Why does it work?
Appreciative Inquiry works because it creates a positive energy and momentum within organisations. People are encouraged and inspired to be the best they can be. Conversations explore successes rather than failures, explore possibilities rather than problems and identify how to leverage strengths rather than how to fix weaknesses. This is in contrast to more traditional change processes that rely on identifying and resolving problems. Here, results are often slow and less than what was originally hoped for. At worst change is viewed as something that is imposed from the top, or that has to be endured, or as an exercise in staying out of sight and out of the blame game. It is almost always stressful.
The TMI Appreciative inquiry approach is different. Individuals, workgroups and organisations are engaged and inspired to own, drive and sustain customer centricity.
How we do it?
Appreciative Inquiry processes are highly flexible and are tailored to the individual needs of clients. Some take place over a few hours or days, others over an extended period of time. Some require significant input from us, others are self-managed by our clients.
An Appreciative Inquiry Summit is an example of a large scale meeting focussed around a specific change topic that would usually take place over a few days. It allows a large, diverse group of people to get together to bring about change quickly.
Another approach is to run a series of Appreciative Inquiry meetings. These cause less disruption to day to day work priorities than a summit but still allow a wide cross section of people to be included.
TMI work closely with our clients to co-create an effective approach.
Appreciative Inquiry Summits
TMI have over 20 years experience organising and facilitating large scale meetings. An Appreciative Inquiry Summit may involve between 50 and 1,000 participants drawn from inside and outside the organisation and may last for one or more days. Each summit must have a focus or topic that is of strategic importance to the team or organisation. Through the summit participants engage in interviews and group work to drive the change agenda. The summit creates energy, engagement and momentum for the change agenda.