[MUSIC] Before we go on to some more examples of this appreciative inquiry process in some case studies. I want to step back for a moment and underscore a couple of key ideas that we've referred to along the way. So the first idea or core principal that underlies this approach to change is essentially the idea that words create worlds. That our organizations, our teams, our families, our communities, we move in the direction of what we most frequently talk about. Related to this is the idea then that the questions we ask are fateful. We've mentioned this a few times already. Change begins with the questions we ask. When we begin to learn, when we begin to inquire into something, we're already beginning to change. So if we look at these two ideas taken together, the language, the way we talk as leaders, the questions we ask, these are very fateful. They direct the way things are going. And then the third idea related to this is that if our questions are fateful, we can ask any question in any situation, that organizations are like open books. It's not the case that well, if we're in the middle of a recession we cannot asked about growth. In fact, that's a big lesson that we learn time and time again, every time we go through an economic downturn and we come out of it. The organizations that dared to ask their people about growth, when everybody was stressed and everybody was trying to contain costs. And everybody was trying to just hunker down and survive through the tough time. Those organizations that dared to ask the question about growth end up coming out of the cycle further ahead of their competition. So there's three ideas here, they all have to do with the power of language. And the notion that our organizations are moving not in reaction to something, but as a consequence of how we talk to each other. What are the questions that we put in front of each other over and over again. If I have a staff meeting and I start that meeting with a spreadsheet, and I've underscored the cells that show that we're behind schedule or that we're over budget. We will get better at coming in on time and at or under budget. It's the consequence of asking certain questions. So we have to treat our questions as more important, more fateful. There's two more ideas, they're different in terms of not so much related to language, but they're related to future image. So most of us would probably I think I agree if we just reflect quickly in our lives around times that we have been a part of successful change. That one of the necessary ingredients is a shared future goal or future purpose. That whoever's involved in the change, at some point actually aligned. They came together, they agreed, they bought into a common target. We call that the future anticipatory image, and we agree that no change is going to be successful without as one of the ingredients a shared anticipatory image. So the concept here is simply, if we want to change, we have to change the future. We have to change our ideas or our sense of what's possible in the future. Related to this, is a very important concept that positive images will draw or pull positive action. The more positive the anticipatory images are, the more we see positive possibilities in the future, the more likely our behavior is to go toward those images. So positive image pulls or drives positive action. The last key idea that we've touched on is this notion of, we call it the narrative principle. It's simply the notion that stories are a powerful way to connect people. You can bring people that you know are going to have different images about the future. They're not easily going to agree on a shared anticipatory image. But if you bring those people together and you begin the interaction by having them share stories of best past experiences, it's a powerful way to connect. We've seen it time and time again, with cross functional people in organizations, internal and external stakeholders in organizations. In open communities, with all the different constituencies that might disagree about a certain scenario into the future. If we can get those people first sharing stories with each other, not sharing their opinions about option A versus option B or pending legislation or something like that. Not asking them what they think about it first, but asking them to share positive stories about the past. Find common ground in those stories and then we find that they're much more ready to listen, to search for commonalities when they talk about issues where they have vested interests. So these key ideas underlie the change theory and method that we've been talking about, appreciative inquiry. There are many, many areas of research and science that support these ideas, and I want to speak to a few of them. Particularly the idea that words create worlds, and this idea that positive image pulls positive action. So let's just start with a example that I think everybody would be familiar with. The placebo effect, we get this pill. We think that it's going to make us feel better, we expect it's going to make us feel better. We have a positive anticipatory image that if I take this my fever will go down, my aches will go away. I have a positive anticipatory image, and the pill itself of course is fake. There's no chemistry in it that should interact with our symptoms, and yet we do feel better. Medical science has use the placebo effect now for probably over a century in the commercialization of drugs. The drug has to do better than the placebo effect. Now, a cynic would say well, a placebo affect is just an example of how gullible we are. As adults that, if 38% of the adult population responds to the placebo effect, it just shows how easily influenced we are, kind of a negative conclusion. We find in the studies that if that pill is given to you by somebody in a white labcoat with a stitched name and a stethoscope around their neck. It goes up from about 38% into the 60%. We think that that's a sign of this relationship between positive image and positive action. If I am attached to that anticipatory image so strongly, then something begins to happen. We don't actually know yet in medical research and explanation for the placebo effect. But there's something that happens, I'm so tied to that image that I find ways to move in that direction. Some of you may have heard of the Pygmalion effect in the classroom. The Pygmalion effect is the idea it's not my anticipatory image, that's the placebo effect. I expect something to happen. Therefore, I tend to act or be in a way that makes that happen. The Pygmalion effect is your expectation of me and what's going to happen. If you have a positive anticipatory image that this session or that this course is going to be just fantastic. It's much more likely that you're going to perceive me as being helpful, and you're going to perceive the course as being useful and valuable to you. So Pygmalion is the other's anticipatory image affecting me, in both a positive or a negative direction. The actual research into education points out or pointed out that teachers. Their expectations of pupil if they held a negative expectations. Sure enough over a period of time the student performed worse and worse in that particular subject area. It also worked in the positive direction. If they were told or if evidence was given that Johnny last semester did very well with abstract symbols, which is a professional way of saying that he was doing well in math. Then a new teacher coming in for the next year seeing that note in the file gets an expectation such that Johnny does even better in math over the following semesters with a new teacher. And again, it worked both ways. If they put a negative note in the file indicating that the student was having some difficulty or struggling. Then sure enough over the next year with a brand new teacher, who just had a few moments maybe to scan that students file. Nevertheless the expectation gets rooted and once that expectation is there behavior follows it. So today in teachers colleges, teacher training, they're all taught about the Pygmalion effect. It's difficult to accept at first. When we're in these kinds of relationships, this persons expectations of this one actually influences this persons behavior. So teacher student, parent child, boss subordinate. If we hold anticipatory images, they're much more likely to follow or go in the direction of those images. And so if they're positive, they go positively, if they're negative, they go negatively. For managers and for leaders this is a very important and profound idea I think. We tend to say, people are responsible they've made their bed they need to lie in it so to speak, but we have a part in that. Our expectations however valid or invalid, however long we've had to form them, or short we've had to form them. Nevertheless, our expectations for those people influence the way we interact with them. It influences the opportunities we give, how quickly we respond to their emails. We don't treat everybody the same, because we have different anticipatory images. But the key idea here again is probably the connection between the image of the future possibility and current behavior. Let's go to health care for a moment. We found studies where they would take patients going into open heart surgery. And after the family or support system had left, and just before the anesthesiologist would come in to begin the pre-op, there's a kind of an interval there. They got permission from the patients to be alone in a room with a digital recorder and the simply ask the patient speak into the recorder what ever is doing on in your head right now. You are about to go into some life threatening surgery what is the inner conversation. We all have inner conversations happening all the time. And then so they transcribed what the patient said, and they made a transcript and they coded the transcript. So for every utterance the coders would say, does this indicate a positive future image, a negative future image or no image at all, then they had outcome measures. Complications in surgery reported by the chief surgeon, length of time in ICU, and length of time, if any, to readmission for a related issue. So you had two short term and one long term outcomes that were out together And then the coders just simply created a ratio of all the utterances in the transcript, how many were reflective of a positive anticipatory image versus a negative anticipatory image. So for example, if the patient said into the microphone I can't wait to be able to play with my grandchildren again. So that would be coded as a positive anticipatory image. If they said something like, I really hope the anesthesiologist knows what they're doing, then that would go into the negative coding. So you get a ratio and the astounding outcome was that if the ratio in the transcript of the recordings was two to one or greater in favor of positive images over negative. Then you have statistically significant fewer complications reported in surgery, quicker recovery time in the ICU, longer time, if any, to readmission for a related issue. Now, this is not cause effect research, it simply showing a strong association. If there's an imbalance of positive over negative imagery in my talk and in this case, my inner talk it's associated with positive health outcomes. You'll see in just a minute, we've done this in organizations at the team level and in the organization level and we get the same kind of finding. It's an imbalance in favor of positivity that relates to health, well-being, resilience, productivity. It's never one to one. Logically we might assume well, the cup is always half full, the cup is always half empty. For every good day, don't get too high because tomorrow will be not so good, that's just the way life is. Kind of a one to one feeling or approach. The interesting part of this research is that no where has that finding showed up. That one to one leads to healthy outcomes, productive outcomes. It's always an imbalance of more positive imagery over negative imagery. In family counseling for example, they find a five to one threshold. That is to say, healthy families have a five to one imbalance in their talk, their out loud talk to each other of positive imagery over negative imagery. That's the threshold for healthy families. [SOUND]
