The Other AI - Appreciative Inquiry

Ever wondered why I insist on native plants and not food growing on the verge? And why the emphasis on working within the council rules? It's not what many assume.

Have you ever been to one of those meetings that are supposed to be collaborative and come away thinking that you’ll never get those hours of your life back? For all the talk and effort and good intentions, nothing really changes. Or worse, it turns into a bunfight about whose solution is best.

What’s missing is an explicit and agreed shared purpose.

Shared purpose is easy enough with linear problems, in stable environments, with predictable and measurable outcomes. Hierarchical organisations plan and manage these projects well. The group’s purpose is set within the organisation’s overall purpose, and everyone knows their role and does their job. It’s the way our society and organisations are managed, the way we analyse problems, the way we propose solutions and implement plans.

However, when we are trying to tackle complex problems in a changing world, that doesn’t work. To create a sustainable future, we need innovative collaborations to tackle complex, interlinked problems. Somehow people from many different sectors and disciplines have to find a way to work together to find a range of solutions that take us in the agreed direction.

For these collaborations to work we need diverse networks (or networks of networks) working with a shared purpose. In the Sustainable Development Goals, that is SDG17 Partnerships. In Doughnut Economics, it’s networks. In real life, it’s like herding cats with everyone pulling in different directions.

The key to finding that shared purpose for your group or collaboration is Appreciative Inquiry. I first came across it as a means to provide common purpose for a diverse network in Ed Morrison’s PHD Thesis: Strategic Doing: A Strategy Model for Open Networks. See also Appreciative Inquiry: How Framing Questions Generate Momentum on the Strategic Doing website.

Here is a video that provides an illustration of how this way of constructing questions can be used to find a common purpose in a diverse group.

The framing question prompts your group to imagine and develop their shared purpose. This is collective and explicit and keeps developing as you move along your journey.

Verge Gardens provide a Practice Space

With verge garden projects, we need to include the many diverse users and uses of that space. There are many reasons for transforming the grass verges in our streets into biodiverse native gardens, and many stakeholders.

When I started my verge garden in 2017, my main motivation was that I didn’t want to mow it. That’s as good a reason as any. Within your group, each participant can do it for their own reasons as long as they are working in the same direction, towards that shared purpose and imagined future. Your group’s shared purpose provides direction and sets boundaries.

Your common purpose holds everything together for this relatively simple collaboration. It’s most effective if constructed as a question (Appreciative inquiry). You will see in the diagram above how all of these fit within the one unifying common purpose.

What if we changed our nature strips into valued places with street trees for shade, and low-growing native plants for habitat and biodiversity, connecting throughout our cool, walkable suburbs?

This is a highly inclusive purpose and ensures that the goals of all participants (council, residents, nature) align, but it does require the discipline to ensure all group members follow council policies and use predominantly native plants.

Consider how some other uses of the verge narrow down the possible motivations: parking cars, guerrilla gardening, and growing food. Which participants and supporters could you lose? How could that affect the outcomes of your project? How would it affect the ability to scale so verge gardening and greening our streets becomes mainstream enough to create those cool, walkable suburbs?

You can fine-tune that common purpose to your group’s aims. It could emphasise biodiversity or sustainability, walking to school, active transport, reducing loneliness in suburbs, reducing urban heat, and so on - as long as it doesn’t start excluding the people you want on your side. Keep your group’s shared purpose clear. Restate and refine it regularly so everyone understands and agrees.

For the Banyo Verge Garden Pilot Project, we used:

What would it be like if we transformed the streets of Banyo with council-planted street trees supported by resident-planted native verge gardens, making them cooler, walkable, biodiverse habitat corridors connecting larger green spaces and other local destinations? What would that look like? Whose lives would it change?

Using Appreciative Inquiry Elsewhere

We use the same technique for

Regen Brisbane

. Regen Brisbane was set up in 2024 by a loose group of people committed to sustainability and frustrated that other initiatives weren’t making progress.

The framing question that defines the shared purpose for Regen Brisbane is on their About page.

What would it be like if the Greater Brisbane area transitioned to a Doughnut economy - staying within the planetary boundaries while meeting the needs of all the people within? What would that future look like? How might we contribute towards making that happen?

In their Urban Heat workshop, which is open to anyone, they started with a framing question:

What if the people of Brisbane worked together to create a cooler, greener, shadier, and thriving city where everyone is safe from the effects of heatwaves and urban heat islands. What would success look like?

And their Waste workshop, also open to anyone:

What if Brisbane could become a thriving city where homes and businesses produced little or no waste that needed to go into landfill, waterways, or the air, and could cope with extreme weather events without there being any extra spoilage and waste?
What would success look like?

That framing question pulls people away from arguing for their favourite topic and solution to imagining a bigger, broader picture. For both workshops, the participants came from multiple disciplines including at least one with industry knowledge. There was considerable diversity of experience and viewpoints.

Used this way, the framing questions can pull people from leaping to singular solutions based on their own viewpoints into systems thinking, and then design thinking, that incorporate multiple viewpoints.

Verge Gardens as a Learning Place

For verge garden projects, using Appreciative Inquiry shifts the conversation from mistrust and hostility between councils and residents to conversations that nurture the relationships and trust needed to find collaborative solutions that meet everyone’s needs in this highly-contested space.

Learning to reframe problems into questions takes practice but the more you do it, the more productive your group discussions and activities become.

Verge gardening is an ideal way to practice this approach as individuals, and then as a group. You start with Understanding the Space, imagining why someone might object to your verge garden, asking how you might make it more acceptable and even attractive to them, and understanding the reasons for restrictions rather than fighting them. The articles make good topics for group discussions and workshops to set your group project’s direction.

Through participation in verge garden group projects, you’ll develop the skills and networks to tackle broader collaborations, like Regen Brisbane. You’ll use your practice in Appreciative Inquiry and prospection to come up with your own framing questions to maintain the shared purpose and momentum for each new group and new project.

Read more from

Regen Brisbane

• Recording of our session for Global Donut Days 2024

• Slides and transcripts from the presentation

Read more: