Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management

Why Change?

The Industrial Revolution brought profound change to society and to work. The mass migration from farm to factory introduced the need to manage large groups of employees doing routine, repetitive tasks. In the early 20th century, engineer Frederick Taylor popularized “scientific management” – the study of efficiency and productivity in the workforce. Companies adopted his approach, which posited the organization as a machine managing its staff through logic, directives and fear. Such top-down decision making worked in factories and assembly lines for many decades until the workplace shifted again, this time from the factory floor to the office tower.

Modern organizations still retain inappropriate vestiges of “Taylorism.” Some, for example, hang on tenaciously to the “command and control” style of leadership, coercing worker participation with rewards and penalties rather than inspiring employees through passion and purpose. Organizations plan and problem solve, measure endlessly and emphasize productivity while suppressing emotions, all in an effort to rationalize, optimize and analyze each element of a business. These methods, often unsuited to the 21st...