The Second International Conference on Appreciative Inquiry: Creating Extraordinary Organizations for Business and Society

Opening Session: Sunday, September 19, 2004
Creating Extraordinary Organizations by Inquiring Into the Extraordinary, Featuring David Cooperrider

Watch a video clip from the Opening Session (Real)

David Cooperrider brings together the most recent research and thinking to explain how inquiry into what makes organizations extraordinary can help us create and build on those characteristics in our own settings.

On this DVD, Jane Magruder Watkins introduces David Cooperrider, calling David both "brilliant and humble." David gets a standing ovation before he begins.

David tells stories:

• about the latest research in the "scholarship of human strengths" and the need for more of it: why does strength connected to strength, or hope connected to hope--as happens during an Appreciative Inquiry--create positive--even transformational--change?
• about a conversation among five Middle Eastern CEOs (Israelis, Palestinians, Saudi Arabians, and Egyptians) during which the group begins to envision a post-conflict scenario of hope
• about new orders of magnitudes of change on the planet that call for new processes for human system change
• about a conversation with management guru Peter Drucker who, when asked to distill the essence of what he knows about leadership says, "The task of leadership it to create an alignment of strengths, making our weaknesses irrelevant." (Later, in the DVD David says that, in order to create the alignment, people in the system must be able to SEE those strengths, which AI calls forth)
• about Nutrimental Foods in Brazil and its leader, Rodrigo Loures, that brought 1,000 people together for an four-day Inquiry in 1997 (the first of its kind) and what David learns about the "power of wholeness"--when everyone is in the room at the same time. Several years later, Nutrimental experiences a 600% increase in profitability and a 75% decrease in absenteeism. Nutrimental holds a whole-system AI summit every year
• about the metaphor, or Provocative Proposition, that emerges from David's experience at Roadway Express: Appreciative ways of knowing may be to self-organizing, web-like systems what deficit-base change as been to command-and-control machine bureaucracy
• about how Roadway Express, that has held 50 AI summits, increases its after-tax profit by $429,000 in one facility that, when transferred to the rest of the company, results in a $13 million profit
• about an AI summit of business, civil society, government, and labor leaders--given what Kofi Annan calls a "fragile global order"--on the topic of globalization at the United Nations that results in a "Global Compact," a pledge to work toward the promise of a more stable world, to make a difference within their spheres of influence. Annan asks, "What is our ultimate destination? A world held together by strong bonds of community…where globalization provides opportunities for all people."
• about the results of the "Global Compact": 20 major financial companies pledges to begin integrating social, environmental and governance issues into investment analysis and decision-making; 10 stock exchanges pledge to embark on an awareness-raising campaign with their listed companies; and 43 local networks emerge, growing deeply woven local roots
• and about the fact that, during the UN Summit, David's son was participating in a protest summit, a "counter summit".

David challenges us to "dare beyond our competence" as we explore the research, theory and application of positive change.

David Cooperrider is chairman of the SIGMA Program for Global Change and associate professor of organizational behavior at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management. He is past president of the National Academy of Management's Division of Organization Development and cofounder of the Taos Institute. David has served as a researcher and consultant to a wide variety of organizations. He is the co-originator of the Appreciative Inquiry methodology and coauthor of numerous writings on AI. David received his doctorate from Case Western Reserve University.

To view or order the DVD of this session click here.