appreciative-inquiry

Read [runtime](../../content/RUNTIME.md) and [advisory rules](../../content/policies/advisory.md) before applying this skill. Other Foreman layers and the catalog are in `../../content/`, relative to this SKILL.md. # Appreciative Inquiry Stop fixing problems. The orthodox approach to organisational change -- diagnose what is broken, analyse root causes, prescribe solutions -- carries an unexamined assumption: that progress comes from eliminating deficits. David Cooperrider, working at Case Western Reserve University in the 1980s, proposed something radical. What if the fastest path to transformation is not fixing weaknesses but systematically amplifying strengths? What if the questions you ask determine the reality you find -- and organisations that ask "what is wrong?" get very good at cataloguing dysfunction, while organisations that ask "what works brilliantly, and how do we get more of it?" generate energy, alignment, and change that deficit-based approaches rarely achieve? This is not positive thinking. Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a structured methodology backed by four decades of organisational research. It does not deny problems; it reframes the unit of analysis. Rather than treating the organisation as a machine with broken parts, AI treats it as a living system whose best moments contain the DNA of its future. The shift is neither naive nor cosmetic -- it is epistemological. --- ## The Framework ### The Core Principle: The Constructionist Premise Appreciativ...