Vinder af Konsulentprisen 2009 - DI

Konsulent
Kunde
3A Management
Ferring Pharmaceuticals A/S
How to implement appreciative inquiry in a
top management group
What was unique about the feedback sessions
Try to imagine a group of leaders who have worked together
for many years. As individuals they are regarded as
being highly skilful and professional. As a group however,
they are regarded as being somewhat disharmonised.
Suddenly the group starts to open up on a much more personal
level. They start building trust and relations on a
much more personal basis merely by being genuinely interested
in showing their real faces as human beings. They
share how they perceive each other and how they would
like to be perceived. They share their emotions, inner
thoughts and their hopes for the future. And suddenly this
newly spring of positivity spreads among them.
They go from the role as critics to the role of supporters.
They go from pinpointing when people make mistakes to
pinpointing where people have unique unlocked potentials.
They go from keeping vital knowledge to themselves
to sharing everything. They go from being a disharmonised
group to being a personal network.
Now, try to imagine all of that happening within a couple
of weeks…
Who wouldn’t want that…
How did the sessions contribute to change and
benefit
Everything we do is ultimately driven by the quality and
speed of the decisions we make.
In an internal study, it was recently concluded that personal
networking in our R&D organisation, is the main
contributor to speeding up decision-time and to increase
quality in decision making. Furthermore, it is in general
perceived as being the main contributor to attracting and
retaining skilled staff…
Now, try to put together, the group of leaders from before
and the conclusions from the above study… And combine
it with the session’s ability to showcase how personal networking
skills can positively impact decision-making. Now
you are getting somewhere…
This group of leaders will be more committed as individuals.
They will significantly strengthen their personal networks.
They will fully cooperate, within and outside the
group, to make better and faster decisions. Finally, they
are more likely to stay loyal to Ferring as a company.
Who wouldn’t want that…
What did you think about the method and
theory
We learned that we must build our future together based
on basic goodness in persons, situations and organizations.
That we must focus on building an even stronger group based
on current strengths rather than on potential weaknesses…
Especially the appreciative inquiry method was helpful.
The most important catalyst for building personal networks
is trust and the most important catalyst for building
trust is the ability to create a positive atmosphere. Appreciative
inquiry provides techniques to stay on the positive
side of things at all times. It is based on the theory, that
even the most extreme challenge must be solved from a positive
stand point and that all individuals have something
unique to offer to that process…
We learned how to discover, dream, design and deliver our
destiny in theory… And subsequently we sat together as
a group and shared our concrete success stories from the
real world… We were really telling each other that there
is no challenge we cannot solve together… That there is no
limit to the potential of our group… That there is no sudden
change that we cannot prepare for… We were creating
meaning… On how to create maps of future realities… On
how to succeed as a group…
Who wouldn’t want that…
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