BP Finance Appreciative Inquiry

Introduction

The organisation’s objective was to discover the identity of a fully merged Finance Department, in which the best of these two merging companies are not just integrated but express their full synergistic potential. An Appreciative Inquiry intervention progressed through several stages: targeting key areas for enhanced performance, designing critical inquiring questions; conducting dialogue with company members to identify powerful stories of success; coalescing success stories into a compelling future vision of the organisation; and then feeding back the detail-rich prescriptions for success to the full organisation. The process was run parallel in both the London and Chicago offices.

Details of the Intervention

We met 38 members of the Chicago-based Finance Department, plus one person who had left recently but was visiting from London. Two weeks later we met 42 people in the UK office, including one or two who were not or were no longer part of Finance. We met people individually (sometimes one of us and sometimes both) but occasionally we met two (and twice in Chicago four) people who worked together. People were invited to tell personal stories of things that have gone well, in great detail. Focusing on the positive in this way immediately expands awareness of the past but almost immediately of forgotten aspects

Next Steps

The information has been fed back to the entire finance community and the process laid the groundwork for using the best of the learning to then target problematic areas. A number of targeted work groups are now operating on the outcomes from the process of the present and the potential that there is for the future as well. These insights and ideas, evoked in the story teller, were explored and developed in the later part of the session. General principles then emerged that were applied to all aspects of the situation. This is another advantage of appreciative inquiry. Since it asks people to focus on their own stories, any tendency to lapse into less structured gossip and hearsay is diminished. Performance is affected by myths and stories that float around an organisation but personal experience has a much deeper effect.

Outcomes

The meetings, in both Chicago and London, produced a dazzling spectrum of observations and ideas, based on each person’s experience. Rarely had we experienced so many people willingly telling their stories not just for the full allotted time but often for longer. The following common themes emerged:

• The Similarities and Differences between the companies
• Contact and Relationships
• Feeling Valued
• Clarity and Trust
• Staff Retention and Recruitment
• Working Together
• Responsibility, Opportunity and Motivation
• Change and the New Company
• Departmental Leadership

Next Steps

The information has been fed back to the entire finance community and the process laid the groundwork for using the best of the learning to then target problematic areas. A number of targeted work groups are now operating on the outcomes from the process.

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