Organisations jump into change without building cultural capacity first, and that’s why change fails.
Appreciative Collaboration is the way of working that that sits between authoritarian leadership and self-managing teams. It must happen before starting any change journey.
It is the capacity for your team members to be be responsive and resilient during change.
Appreciative because team members have a genuine respect and admiration of one another. They take an approach of building to better and not just articulating what isn’t working.
Collaboration because team members are effective in working together towards a shared goal, especially in circumstances where there is disagreement. It is also where a team feels a collective desire and responsibility for achieving that goal.
If you imagine your organisation as a tall ship, it becomes clearer that you’re all in it together. However, you also need to perform different functions collaboratively with a certain level of autonomy and trust but with shared direction.
Each ship has a captain but their role is highly adaptive and determined by the current conditions.
There six ‘sails’ to hoist on three ‘masts’ to cultivate a culture of Appreciative Collaboration:
We have collected a series of activities, tools, frameworks, and processes to facilitate development in each of these areas. We dip into these to develop workshops and 1-2-1s during the Engage step in the programme.
The culture is also appreciative in the sense that it is always in development to increase in value. It is not a culture that gets ‘done’ but instead is always being worked on and built upon to create ever better futures. This is where the ongoing work of the Embed part helps ensure the endurance of an Appreciative Collaborative culture.
