Many businesses have failed where others succeed. Or, should we really be asking how successful businesses flourish where others fail?

• Appreciative inquiry is about acknowledging what is working rather than searching for what is broken and fixing it.
• Succession planning may require full-scale change.

AI is an approach or philosophy that forces us to consider what is working instead of spending time or energy on things that are not working. In a traditional performance review, we often point out the lack of someone’s skill or their failure to meet production or service standards. We focus on things that they do poorly, and justify reasons not to increase their salary or somehow acknowledge them at work. Appreciative Inquiry is very different. AI actually means to “ask questions about things that are worth appreciating.” AI focuses on what is going well, who people are, and what their strengths are. AI is a pretty natural fit for succession planning.

The formal process for AI uses the 4 D’s:

• Discover the processes that we are using that work well.
• Dream about what will work well in the future (like developing a formal succession plan!).
• Design a process that is going to get us through this.
• Deliver (execute) the design.