Several organizations have utilized Appreciative Inquiry to organize sustained change efforts including the United Nations with the UN Global Compact, Walmart and the U.S. Navy have both leveraged AI to enhance sustainability efforts. Fairmount Minerals (a BrownFlynn client) has been holding AI Summits every three years for nearly a decade, where hundreds of stakeholders gather for several days, including a day of volunteering, to find innovative ways to be as sustainable and community-focused as possible, helping them achieve a large number of their bold goals at each summit, thus advancing and embedding their sustainability agenda into the corporate culture.

The City of Cleveland utilized an appreciative inquiry summit to launch Sustainable Cleveland 2019 (SC2019), capitalizing on the ingenuity of almost 700 stakeholders representing a snap shot of the community. The city hosts a summit each year to reconvene the whole system, measure progress and adjust course. Since the first summit, an alignment of civic and business focus towards sustainability has produce new jobs, policies, green space, transportation access, increased local food production, more renewable energy sources, and even new entrepreneurial organizations – Bike Cleveland and Tunnel Vision Hoops – have come to fruition as a direct result of SC2019.

If your organization is looking for a positive, refreshing, innovative and creative new approach to solve challenges, Appreciative Inquiry may be it. After all, as Einstein famously said, "Problems cannot be solved with the same mindset that created them."

More information and hundreds of case studies on the effectiveness of Appreciative Inquiry can be found here. More information on the fourth annual SC2019 summit here.

Image of Concept of problem solving by alexmillos for Shutterstock.