Pro Action Café - different wording for 2nd question? (and for Apprec.Inquiry)

[Ria Baeck]

An inspiring conversation, opened by Chris Corrigan:

Hi all.
A question for those of you who hold the deep design pattern of Pro Action Cafe...
For the second question - what is missing? - participants in several recent Art of Hostings have expressed the desire to word it more appreciatively, with more what Paul Z Jackson called "a solutions focus". The wording that seems to emerge over and over is "what would make this project more complete?" and variations on that theme. I have found that question to work very well and was wondering if there was something in the original wording that seems essential to the form? What is the thinking here?

Chris
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Immediate response Chris -- I like it! "what would make this project more complete?"

I should add that I'm one who sometimes gets annoyed with what I experience as the orthodox tyranny of the appreciative frame and and have joined with others in talking about authentic inquiry rather than appreciative inquiry.
Some things do suck, to use technical language. They do need to be named as problems. And there's what I experience as a well-intended but nevertheless disingenuousness in trying to make everything appreciative.
That little rant aside, thanks for this framing. I like it!
Best,
Bob
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Hi Bob,
I really like the idea of Authentic Inquiry. Can I use that?

I do however wonder about the "orthodox tyranny" of the appreciative frame. My experience has been that there can be some confusion about the strengths paradigm, that can lead to a frustrating Pollyanna perspective. An appreciative frame does not mean disregarding the negative, indeed my understanding is that David Cooperrider added the "Define" part of the AI process to reflect the importance of defining the problem. This part of the process can take up the majority of the time. As you say, naming the problem, is really important, and, for me at least, part of the AI process. Having defined the problem it seems to make sense to look for strengths that are in the system that will enable the problem to be dealt with. So yes, some things just suck, and a really good way of dealing with those things is to use the strengths of the system.

I also completely agree that the strengths paradigm has its limitations. Any strength taken to the extreme can become a weakness. (Indeed any virtue taken to the extreme can become a vice, e.g. responsibility to control, justice to vigilantism, courage to foolhardiness, but that's a slight distraction about Virtues Ethics.) It is also crucial to consider context. What is a strength in one context can be a disaster in another - the Cane Toads in Australia are a tragic example of that.

Anyway, yet another rant. In terms of the proaction cafe, I don't mind the sharp edge of "What is missing?", as a bit of a sword cut through the temptation to believe our own bullshit. Having said that I also like Chris' suggestion.

Kindest
Stephen
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Manish Jain from India and I came up with Authentic Inquiry at a Berkana Exchange gathering some years ago and it is one of the many things I would like to do some more work and writing on. I think it is the core of appreciative inquiry. In the US, where our greatest cultural competence is as problem solvers, there's something important about the discipline of looking for strengths and possibilities as a way of steering away from the problem orientation.

AND, as you say Stephen, just naming the problem -- putting it out in full view -- and then not getting distracted by it as something to directly fix or solve is important!

Cheers,
Bob
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A dear colleague of mine also suggested "What else?" as a substitute for "What is missing?"

I love its simplicity.

Stephen

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‘What else?’ is a question much used in Solutions Focus, especially when discussing what’s worked well when dealing with similar issues in the past.  It’s worth reminding people of previous successes, their relevant resources and so forth.

The more attention we give to something, the more prominent and significant it becomes.  Talking about problems, barriers, gaps and items that are missing tends to enlarge these.  To the extent that these things are constructs (not physical parts of the tangible world), this is time wasted if our aim is to make progress towards other (more desirable) constructs, such as desired outcomes, use of resources, what we’d like to see happen next. 

The questions we ask can have a big impact on what people talk about.  What they talk about goes a long way towards co-constructing the future.

Best regards

Paul

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Dear mates,

How great to see this conversation unfold. So what is missing in this thread? or: What else could we consider to bring us to some meaningful further developments in our pro action café practice? (tick the question you prefer here)

One element that comes to me here is that the roots of pro action café are not specifically in Appreciative Inquiry. So wanting to blend this specific tradition in (orthodox or not) brings up a part of this exchange, and may lack the knowledge or intimacy to that than "hidden" tradition that brought the wording up in the first place.

So I want to share what actually is the tradition that has nourished the pro action café prompts.

I can consciously point to three strands that had come to me at the time Ria and me were sitting in a little café and made our first designs. (yes, there can be more...)

1. The socratic tradition in a contemporary version, Action Learning. This is a issue-focused action generation process that works in little groups over a little hour, plus some time for the group to reflect on what they learned, to finally conclude into practical steps the issue-presenter (sometimes called problem presenter) speaks out.

2. Another tradition is the structured process consulting process as Peter Block has framed it (read his "Flawless consulting" book). The consulting process here goes through contracting: What is the presenting problem and how do we deal with it? (beginning circle of pro action café) to Discovery: What is the real problem/issue here on which action can be taken? (rounds one and two) to Feedback and implementation (round three: "elegant next steps").

3. I've been much in touch with a dialectical school of conversation and development, the so-called critical school (a German tradition, strongly associated with names like Adorno or Habermas). I translated a book from the critical thinker Otto Laske ("Measuring hidden dimensions") from american scientific English into German about how adults develop over their lifetime. Otto is most keen on understanding and illuminating how we can help (or consult) each other towards our own development.

Pointing to what there is not: so "What is missing?" in this tradition is clearly the heart of dialectical thinking. It is the trigger of a generative conversation, where the conversation itself can create new elements, as our energy is directed to what is not, thus making the partially unseen "possible" a "reality".

This is where innovation can emerge. Creating space for innovation is the more important as the overall dominant conventional thinking sees the status quo as a norm rather than a transient state of a continuous flow of elements in movement, is probably poor in creating links and may at best structure reality a bit more so that we understand better how it will not change.

From developmental research we know that there is a threshold here that some adults have not passed in their development yet. It is thus expected that some groups with strong conventional thinking will feel a bit shocked by that dry "is missing" suggestion. 

I've encountered this unease especially with first time pro action café visitors or beginner hosts. However, after some practice, many feel attracted to the "sharp sword cut" as some of you said. For me, cutting the past and present off and strongly focusing on what there is not is a necessary ingredient of any innovation process. Of course, part of this inquiry into the hidden or potential needs to create some links back to our conventional constructions of reality so that change processes can root in the here and now to take off. Here we start already to bridge into question 3: Elegant next steps ...

I hope this makes sense for some of you.

Best regards from a sunny Brussels morning,

Rainer

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Dear Rainer,

 

What a beautiful explanation. So clear and clever.

 

Thank you so much.

 

Stephen

[Ria Baeck]

More comments in this conversation:

Brilliant Rainer!  I know all of these philosophical traditions a little and appreciate the deep well that was sourced for pro action. 

I personally don't mind the What's missing? framing. Stephen puts it well. It comes as a sword cut. 

I also have an uneasy reaction to the supremacy of appreciative world views.  However my experience of AI as a methodology has been influenced by using that frame explicitly to address very dark issues such as youth suicide. In that case we went beyond the "what works" frame and into the "what brings life in our darkest places?" framing. It acknowledges and works with darkness to transform it. I think facilitators who haven't hosted themselves can fall into the trap of their own fears and choose appreciative questions that ignore the realities of dark places.  I know I have fallen into that trap. 

If we host from the place of our own unresolved fears then positive questions have a dark and shadowy side. If however we can stand in our own clarity and curiosity and embrace the unknown, a question like "what is missing?" is a powerful gift. 

Thank you for the clarity. 

Chris

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Dear all,
 
what a great thread, it is so good to look behind our hosting practices, and turn them really around until we understand well, what we are doing, why, for whom and what for.
 
My hosting is often from a feminine place of holding, so I am quite sensitive when "cuts" or sword cuts are placed for not a good reason, and I love them when they come for all the right reasons.
 
My experience of hosting the Pro Action Cafes in the Bregenzer Salon for two years now, which indulges in "cosy" hosting, maybe in an Austrian variation of Salon-Café hosting if you like, which includes making people of all ages and levels feel comfortable and gain courage in bringing their projects or questions out to a most of the time, unknown audience, for the first time.
 
The question "what is missing" has always been seen as very welcoming by participants, and we say in German: It is the sound that makes the music!
Participants are very happy with the qustion, and take it as a positive trigger to create something full, round and healthy.
 
I introduce the Salon evenings with the Pro action cafe as a tool for us to become more round and more complete, and for our projects the same, and it is in that very concept I think, that participants also then understand the question.
We even use this in German as quality of projects, more "round", meanining full and holisitc, nothing more to add, perfect.
So it does make perfect sense the way it was conceived, and when embodying this, hosting from a place of wholeness, it is only logical, in our world, that we want to learn what can still be missing and collect as many possible views on this to become whole with our views and then in our ideas or projects that manifest through us.
 
Be well!
 
Ursula Hillbrand