Personal Leadership

I think the appreciative inquiry framework is a way to get group buy-in and the feeling they contributed to the end goal. I could see this being a good way to break the cycle of "because we've always done it this way".  While I think our teams may be too large for me to implement this fully within my project, I do see being able to take some of the elements of appreciative inquiry, especially the discovery and dream areas. 

I agree with Lisa that this could be a great way to get people out of the "we've always done it this way" mindset, while at the same time acknowledging the strengths of the existing approach.  It helps people identify pieces of the process that are already successful and to think creatively about how to build upon that success to improve the final outcome.  We are in the midst of applying for an additional five years of funding for one of the grants I am on, and this seems like a great framework to try out as we are brainstorming where we'd like out program to go in the next five years.

I'm excited to apply the AI framework to my project of developing and evaluating a county-wide overdose fatality review. It seems that the method helps to facilitate relationship building through visioning, affirmations, and developing a collective sense of what needs to be achieved. Though this group is new, the relationships are not necessarily new (many folks and/or organizations have worked together through our county opioid task force or through other initiatives), and this seems like it will help to build rapport and like Lisa mentioned, a sense of buy-in. We are hoping to have an orientation meeting for fatality review stakeholders next month, and I think I will take some time to ponder on this framework in that meeting.

This is a framework that works well for evaluation (as Rachel noted) & I'm looking forward to working with it in a leadership context, since I am (as of 3/4/22) acting section head as well as leading the evaluation & dissemination team for OD Prevention. I like the combo of practical & visionary, and starting with 'thick' description of what's going on (& what's going well) is great for grounding the whole process.

Sometimes people bemoan that the problem w/ vaccinations is that they're too effective. And that that imperils the public health programming that normalizes routine childhood immunizations. Similarly, we could look at the work we do day in/day out and fail to realize that "getting the trains to run on time" is a feat in and of itself rather than attending to all of the myriad things that aren't measuring up.  I piloted having my team start off a meeting reflecting on what was going well for them work-wise, and it was probably the best "icebreaker" we've ever used. I heard them share thoughtful observations; it got people talking!

I agree that I see this framework being very useful for evaluation. I was hoping to implement it in thinking about how we can improve our processes to be more effective in the event of another COVID surge (fingers crossed this doesn't happen!)

This article was timely, as I am facilitating a large meeting next Monday with stakeholders across Utah. I am already planning on conducting breakout sessions to complete a PEST & SWOT analysis, but am going to be sure to ask "what is working well?" 

I have been toggling with all of these facilitation types trying to decide which is best to use, but this article put into perspective the breakdown of the Discovery & Dream vs. Design & Destiny. While I am using a slightly different concept, we will still be focusing on the Discovery & Dream part of our project during our next meeting (or two) and then move to the Design & Destiny approaches of our planning in future meetings.

I'm working on a series of workshops with local partners to gather ideas about how we can incorporate what we've learned from the pandemic response into our work going forward. I really like the idea of sharing successes instead of failures and using those successes to inspire us going forward!

Natalie, would you be willing to share what you gather? I think it has been hard for leaders/managers in my department to figure out how to have that conversation even if they want to. I've tried using the example of when I went into the notorious DMV in fall of 2020 - the shutdown had forced them to completely redesign how they'd done customer service for decades, service was incredibly improved, and the employees were so much happier as a result. Maybe a lot of our programs weren't forced into that kind of imaginative reinvention the same way as other state agencies (much less non-state entities).