APPRECIATION/APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY
1. And yet if we flip the coin, we have so much to be excited about...We can if we just turn ourselves around and start looking at our jobs -- and ourselves -- differently; if we kill negative talk and celebrate our successes...In the long run, what is more likely to be more useful: Demoralizing a successful workforce by concentrating on their failures, or helping them over their lasts few hurdles by building a bridge with their successes? ~Thomas White, President, GTE Telephone Operations
2. Appreciation of life itself, becoming suddenly aware of the miracle of being alive, on this planet, can turn what we call ordinary life into a miracle. We come awake to such a realization when we recognize our connection to a spiritual dimension. ~Dan Wakefield
3. Appreciative inquiry can get you such better results than seeking out and solving problems. That's an interesting concept for me -- and I imagine for most of you -- because telephone companies are among the best problem solvers in the world. We trouble shoot everything. We concentrate enormous resources on correcting problems that have relatively minor impact on our overall service performance...when used continually and over a long period of time, this approach can lead to a negative culture. If you combine a negative culture with all the challenges we face today, it would be easy to convince ourselves that we have too many problems to overcome -- to slip into a paralyzing sense of hopelessness.
4. By definition, a problem implies that one already has knowledge of what should be; thus one's research is guided by an instrumental purpose tied to what is already known. In this sense, problem solving tends to be inherently conservative; as a form of research it tends to produce and reproduce a universe of knowledge that remains sealed. ~David Cooperrider
5. Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built. ~James Allen
6. Count your blessings. Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play, and you will finally be able to move torward the life that God intended for you with grace, strength, courage, and confidence. ~Og Mandino
7. Doubt comes in at the window when inquiry is denied at the door. ~Benjamin Jowett
8. Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible. ~Charles Caleb Colton
9. I have found that it does not help, in the long run, to begin my inquiries from the standpoint of the world as a problem to be solved. I am more effective, quite simply, as long as I can retain the spirit of inquiry of the everlasting beginner. ~David Cooperrider
10. If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. ~Kierkegaard
11. If you can't appreciate what you have got then get what you appreciate. ~Unknown
12. Imagination is more important than knowledge. ~Albert Einstein
13. In problem solving it is assumed that something is broken, fragmented, not whole, and that it needs to be fixed. Thus the function of problem solving is to integrate, stabilize, and help raise to its full potential the workings of the status quo. ~David Cooperrider
14. Judging by what I have learned about men and women, I am convinced that far more idealistic aspiration exists than is ever evident. Just as the rivers we see are much less numerous than the underground streams, so the idealism that is visible is minor compared to what men and women carry in their hearts, unreleased or scarcely released. Mankind is waiting and longing for those who can accomplish the task of untying what is knotted and bringing the underground waters to the surface. ~Albert Schweitzer
15. Like when I'm in the bathroom looking at my toilet paper, I'm like 'Wow! That's toilet paper?' I don't know if we appreciate how much we have. ~Alicia Silverstone
16. No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude. ~Unknown
17. On social constructionism: The primary emphasis is on multiplicity. If you reduce the languages of the culture to a single mode, if all perspectives are reduced to one, then you truncate the options for action. Constructionism is concerned with the minority view because it is a minority view — the deviant, the unusual — one which offers something new as a cultural resource. ~Kenneth J. Gergen
18. One is reminded of Margaret Mead's hypothesis that the best societal learning has always occurred when three generations come together in contexts of discovery and valuing -- the child, the elder, and the middle adult. ~David Cooperrider
19. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be: brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. ~Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others.~ Nelson Mandela, Inaugural Speech, 1994. Quoting Marianne Williamson. This quote has been circulating around the country as the words of Nelson Mandela. It was actually written by Ms. Williamson and can be found in her book A Return to Love ~Harper-Collins, 1993
20. Prosperity depends more on wanting what you have than having what you want. ~Geoffrey F. Abert
21. Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts. ~Henri Frederic Amiel
22. The appreciative paradigm, for many, is culturally at odds with the popular negativism and professional vocabularies of deficit that permeate society. ~David Cooperrider
23. The arduous task of intervention will give way to the speed of imagination and innovation; and instead of negation, criticism, and spiralling diagnosis, there will be discovery, dream and design....And the metaphor speaking best to our primary task and role -- the child as the agent of inquiry -- is one where wonder, learning, and the dialogical imagination will be modus operandi. ~David Cooperrider
24. The greatest need of every human being is the need for appreciation. ~Unknown
25. The most important resource we have for generating constructive change in Africa is our cooperative imagination and mind, and our capacity to unleash the imagination and mind of communities, churches, governments and individuals. ~Sarone Ole Sena
26. The most inspiring stories, the most passion-filled data, the most textured and well-illustrated example, the most daring images of possibility -- were/are conducted by the children...The inter-generational dynamic of the dialogue made the data collection stage soar. ~David Cooperrider
27. The problem-solving approach directs attention to the worst of what is, constantly examining what is wrong with the organization. The assumption is that if the problems are fixed, then the desired future will automatically unfold. ~David Cooperrider
28. The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but seeing with new eyes. ~Marcel Proust
29. The sense of wonder, that is our sixth sense. ~D.H. Lawrence
30. There is a serious defect in the thinking of someone who wants -- more than anything else -- to become rich. As long as they don't have the money, it'll seem like a worthwhile goal. Once they do, they'll understand how important other things are -- and have always been. ~Joseph Brooks
31. There's a basic human weakness inherent in all people which tempts them to want what they can't have and not want what is readily available to them. ~Robert J. Ringer
32. We are members of a great body...We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole. ~Seneca ~4 B.C. - 65 A.D.
33. We are so often caught up in our destination that we forget to appreciate the journey, especially the goodness of the people we meet on the way. Appreciation is a wonderful feeling, don't overlook it. ~Unknown
34. We have inherited the past; we can create the future. ~Unknown
35. We have reached the end of problem solving as a mode of inquiry capable of inspiring, mobilizing and sustaining human system change, and the future of OD belongs to methods that affirm, compel and accelerate anticipatory learning involving larger and larger levels of collectivity. ~David Cooperrider
36. We have to encourage the future we want rather than trying to avoid the future we fear. ~Bill Joy, founder and former chief scientist, Sun Microsystems
37. We often spend so much time coping with problems along our path that we only have a dim or even inaccurate view of what's really important to us. ~Peter Senge
38. Where appreciation is alive and generations are re-connected through inquiry, hope grows. ~David Cooperrider
39. Why is uninhibited wonder something we generally restrict to children? If doing good inquiry is at the heart of OD, why then so little talk of things like awe, curiosity, veneration, surprise, delight, amazement, and wonder -- in short, everything that serves to infuse what OD has traditionally referred to as the spirit of inquiry. ~David Cooperrider