I always learn something when I read your blog. In a world where lots of people run around calling each other smart...you are truly an extraordinarily insightful person. Thanks for sharing.

I'd love to hear more critique or thoughts on AI. I am constantly playing with whether to introduce it as a change catalyst approach in my work. I do a lot of that sort of thing.

Best,

Ryan

Kia ora!

I so agree with what you are saying about NLP and AI too. I think AI was designed by a Pollyanna.

You may've come across Carl Sagan's Baloney Detector Kit. It originated from The Demon haunted World, by Sagan. If you haven't come across it before I recommend you lay your hands on a copy and give it a read - it is a well-written gem.

Ka kite

Dave...bit of a rough ride you give AI there. I have worked with an appreciative worldview for most of my 15 year consulting career, and I foind that it has the most power in dark settings, such as working with 15 ingigenous communities on youth suicide issues. Far from the Eric Idle characterization, designing and hosting appreciative conversations is a very effective way to discover the assets of a community or group especially when the have faced the biggest traumas of their lives.

The fact is that you can only interview the survivors of any trauma. Asking them how they made it through and developing a positive core for change from those stories has been a very powerful effect of the process in my work.

Like any collection of methodologies, used without care (and in the controlling manner you speak of) it can be reduced to feel good stories that aren't really inventories of assets, but I have been constantly inspired by the results of appreciative foci in very difficult change conversations.

Not really Chris (the rough ride). I was careful to say that in constrained circumstances AI has utility. There are cases where a short term intervention to focus people on future positive possibilities can have high utility and I would not want to deny that.

In effect AI is a therapeutic technique which tends (I grant exceptions) to privilege the role of the therapist. Nothing wrong with that where therapy is needed. However in most organisational contexts and many government ones it is the therapists who are need of therapy not their subjects.

Overall I am very worried about the trend to behaviour modification (of which AI is a sub-variant). We see CBT focusing on creating positive narratives at the cost of dealing with basic traumas. In organisations we get people trying to force conformity and reduce the negative and cynical story telling which is an essential part of organisational learning.

AI works, as I said in constrained circumstances.

A PS to my comments to Chris, and also a part response to Ryan.
I think there are emerging better techniques that capture a broader range of narrative material without facilitator intervention (this is the core of our work) That shows the patterns through which change is possible and does need the same degree of direction.

Thanks for the response Dave, it heps clarify where I think you're coming from with respect to AI. It's also not my experience of the process, but perhaps that is just me - I'm not an active member of the AI community of practice although I am connected to many who are.

Just to clarify with my own practice of AI, I think it's not facilitator driven and controlled - the participants engage with one another and are always engaged in every level of the design. I use it more as a frame and a world view and not so much as a methodology.

In essence, the worldview is one based in the social construction of reality. (Is that behaviour modification, strictly speaking? I'm not sure). The idea is that what we give our attention to grows. Now this can get saccharine very quickly - only focus on the good and not the bad - but as I say, I'm more fond of using the appreciative approach to uncover the collective assets and resources a groups has to design, live with and practice new structures, forms and ways of being with one another. These are story based, with a harvesting process that draws forth a collective understanding of "what we've got, and what else we need to get."

So I think my practice of AI would tend towards more of what you are saying it should be. I'm wondering though, why do you think AI gets conflated with Cognitive Edge? What are the areas of similarity and similar appearance?

Well one clear difference is that I fundamentally disagree with the idea that reality is social constructed. Another is that AI is group based and limited in the volume of narrative material it can capture it is thus, whatever the intention of the facilitator necessarily subject to all sorts of bias (although to a social constructivist this might not be an issue). If a facilitator is present, regardless of their intent, then they are the strongest influencer on what people say or do - if nothing else they set and enforce the frame.

I will blog again on this, rather than just respond as the AI issue needs a separate entry. Thanks for the questions and comments.

Thanks Dave...very clear, and a clear difference! I'll look forward to reading more of your thoughts on this in particular. Cheers.