Improving Project Selection using Appreciative Inquiry (AI)

Changing the looking glass affects how we experience reality and the same holds true while managing projects–project reality continues to be stubbornly affected by blurry assumptions and misaligned goals. Even in the age of program management, selecting the right portfolio of projects continues to be an individual driven process—a process which is largely based on “gut feeling”.

Many organizations today are implementing a strategy formation process with a clear focus on defining metrics for success.  But the challenge lies in translating this into selection of investments and choice of projects to achieve the goals.  Project and especially Program managers make an important contribution to this process.  Given their delivery and execution background, these professionals rely on their problem solving capabilities to meet these challenges. They use the problem solving approach in the context of defining objectives for building effective metrics to demonstrate success.

Here’s how this approach works: problem solving focuses on eliminating undesirable results.  Its starts with identification of gaps—this means that we tend to concentrate on what is not happening. For example if the project has achieved 85% of the objective, the focus of the manager would be on the 15% missed.  So focusing on closing gaps becomes a full time business and if one cannot identify a gap and demonstrate the negative consequence of not filling it, then the manager is unlikely to succeed.

The measure of all things

There is a time honored expression that in management what gets measured gets done.  But the challenge is in ensuring what you measure is aligned to objective that endeavor is trying to achieve.  What is the use if you are measuring efficiency of execution when the goal is to achieve a strategic benefit?  Maybe we measure the things we can and not the things we should. Obviously we do this to achieve results that are perceived to be linked to success.  When was the last time your performance reports actually encouraged you and your team to improve performance except working more hours at work?

But this is more evidence of uncreative thinking which blurs the complexity behind the decision making process. Moreover, it leads to an avoidance mechanism (commonly known as risk aversion) that has a major influence on the type and quality of questions asked in the goal-question-metric process.

The Goal-Question-Metric Process

Basili et.al. offers a creative thought process for designing metrics by asking fundamental questions about the goals. The first step is to split the goal into its discernable component parts. These are purpose, issue, object and viewpoint.
Here’s an example:

Next is to identify underlying questions relative to the goal.  In this instance the question might be;
How many agents (variable cost) can each manager (fixed cost) manage and how can we increase the number of agents a manager can manage?  Answering the question points to the appropriate metric, such as span of control of manager (no. of agents per manager)

Based on the above goal-question-metric process the strategy becomes clearly defined in order to meet the metric, answer the question and achieve the goal.  In the process it becomes obvious which project investment will be necessary to execute the strategy. To illustrate:

If the goal remains the same and the question changes, the metric changes and project investment will change too:

Example:

So we see how the question that underlies the goal significantly affects the way metrics are constructed, how strategy is formulated and investments that are the results.  These investments are projects to be implemented.  So it should come as no surprise that after a successful project execution, benefits are still to be seen.

One way of looking at this problem is through AI—not artificial intelligence—but Appreciative Inquiry. It’s an organizational development process, a discipline, and a philosophy that helps reframe our old dilemmas anew.

What is Appreciative Inquiry (AI)

Understanding the basis of Appreciative Inquiry allows us to better contrast the goal-question-metric process against the conventional problem solving approach. Applied coherently, AI offers a greater insight into organizational goals and improves chances of success by taking the corporate spirit as a whole. In practice, it involves AI involves “asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential”.

When we start thinking about organizations in terms of living systems, then our paths of inquiry can involve

“the systematic discovery of what gives “life” to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most constructively capable in economic, ecological, and human terms.”

So the focus should not be on asking about what is not working but rather what is working as well and if we do more of what is working well then we will see more benefits.  This is the Appreciative Inquiry process and is a critical skill that capitalizes on what works to create a better set of results.

How AI Works

There is a cycle of 4 processes that Appreciative Inquiry utilizes:

1. DISCOVER: The identification of organizational processes that work well.
2. DREAM: The envisioning of processes that would work well in the future.
3. DESIGN: Planning and prioritizing processes that would work well.
4. DESTINY (or DELIVER): The implementation (execution) of the proposed design

When compared to conventional problem solving approaches, AI offers the kind of positive orientation and leverage that creates a whole new set of possibilities in terms of goal clarity and better choice of questions, leading to better metric design, clearer strategies and more appropriate project investments. AI enables organizations to focus on creating exceptional performance which occurs because its core strengths (people and organizational assets) are aligned.

Reference and adapted from:

Executing your strategy: How to break it down and Get it Done.
Mark Morgan, Raymond Levitt, and William Malek, Harvard Business School Press.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appreciative_inquiry
You can find out more about Appreciative inquiry at http://centerforappreciativeinquiry.net/