Return to the very first posting in the Rolling Rains Report and you will find that this site is about "seeing-that-transforms." Until now I have not made explicit, although some have guessed, that this quality of seeing encompasses the practice known as "Appreciate Inquiry:"
From Pilgrimage: Mindfulness on the Journey January 1, 2004
This site is about seeing. The topic may be travel but the "revolve" is the-seeing-that-transforms.Not literal sightedness, of course. In fact, I expect active interest by readers using Jaws for Windows or other tools that accommodate visual impairments and make their participation possible.
The seeing I mean here is the seeing of mindfulness.
The discussion will frequently be about business. Specifically, it will be about the business of travel and hospitality. It will look at the economic sustainability of doing busness with the ageing and/or disabled sector of the traveling public. It will look at profit, product development, marketing, competition.
But if this site ever loses grounding in persons - substituting statitistics or truisms for real travelers - then it will have betrayed the author's purpose.
That purpose is pilgrimage.
A pilgrim moves through time and space with an enlarged capacity for "seeing beyond." It may be seeing beyond the daily inconveniences or seeing into an actively imagined alternate present or promised future.
With this capacity comes the ability to hold a gaze of reverence; to appreciate.
Organizations can choose a path of self-definition that involves aligning themselves around the “unconditional positive question.” Design for People: Multi exemplifies this approach -- and the resulting creativity not only in design and implementation but in their innovative crafting of language and at the level of conceptualization of their mission and potential.
As post-tsunami work evolves in the Indian Ocean basin, can it adopt the "Opportunity Audit" approach to reconstruction that Appreciative Inquiry allows?
I am hopeful that the gathering of the International Institute of Peace Through Tourism (IIPT) ,/a> in Thailand this October will, through the efforts of people like Topong Kulkhanchit, Regional Development Officer for Disabled Peoples' International Asia Pacific Region, allow the tourism industry such an opportunity.
Some Resources on Appreciative Inquiry:
http://www.new-paradigm.co.uk/Appreciative.htm
The approach is based on the premise that ‘organisations change in the direction in which they inquire.’ So an organisation which inquires into problems will keep finding problems but an organisation which attempts to appreciate what is best in itself will discover more and more that is good. It can then to use these discoveries to build a new future where the best becomes more common.
http://appreciativeinquiry.cwru.edu/intro/whatisai.cfm
Appreciative Inquiry is about the coevolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them. In its broadest focus, it involves systematic discovery of what gives “life” to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most constructively capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI involves, in a central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential. It centrally involves the mobilization of inquiry through the crafting of the “unconditional positive question” often-involving hundreds or sometimes thousands of people. In AI the arduous task of intervention gives way to the speed of imagination and innovation; instead of negation, criticism, and spiraling diagnosis, there is discovery, dream, and design. AI seeks, fundamentally, to build a constructive union between a whole people and the massive entirety of what people talk about as past and present capacities.
http://www.appreciative-inquiry.org/
In the words of its primary originator, Dr. David L. Cooperrider of Case Western Reserve University, AI asks us to pay special attention to "the best of the past and present" -- in order to "ignite the collective imagination of what might be."
Key Articles:
Appreciative Inquiry in Organizational Life
http://www.appreciative-inquiry.org/AI-Life.htm
Abstract
This chapter presents a conceptual refiguration of action-research based on a "sociorationalist" view of science. The position that is developed can be summarized as follows: For action-research to reach its potential as a vehicle for social innovation it needs to begin advancing theoretical knowledge of consequence; that good theory may be one of the best means human beings have for affecting change in a postindustrial world; that the discipline's steadfast commitment to a problem-solving view of the world acts as a primary constraint on its imagination and contribution to knowledge; that appreciative inquiry represents a viable complement to conventional forms of action-research; and finally, that through our assumptions and choice of method we largely create the world we later discover.
Positive Image, Positive Action: The Affirmative Basis of Organizing
http://www.stipes.com/aichap2.htm
Appreciative Management and Leadership: The Power of Positive Thought and Action in Organization
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1893435059/newparadigmconsu/102-3474482-6904959