Appreciative Inquiry

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a method for intervention with organizations, groups, families and individuals that aspires to create change and growth from the best in the past instead of through finding the problem and then solving it.
Some basic assumptions
?    AI assumes that even people and organizations that are in crisis or difficulty have some moments and aspects of competence.
?    AI is based on many research findings that show that it is much more efficient for creating change and growth to focus systematically on successes more than to focus on problems and solving them.
?    What we focus on is being charged with energy so we prefer to empower successes that we have experienced rather than charging the failures with energy. This is especially true when dealing with trauma where some traditional ways of working with trauma create secondary trauma through focusing too much on the pain and not on the coping and competency of the people and groups in question.
?    In spite of many plans for change being great, we find that in most cases the energy to implement them does not exist. Many a times there is 'resistance' to them. In comparison the fact that AI focuses on the best in the past charges the change with positive energy which makes it much more feasible to take place.