'Look for what's right'

It would take another 11 years before that inspiration turned into a doctoral dissertation. By 1992, Cooperrider was eager to find success stories for his theories. Imagine Chicago - especially its use of poor youth to interview top community and corporate leaders about what was good in their community - piqued his interest and he began to publicize it.

Appreciative inquiry began to draw more attention in the mid-1990s because of some high-profile turnarounds. When Avon Corporation of Mexico heard about a particular appreciative-inquiry program, it started its own massive effort. The company let 100 of its employees get training in appreciative-inquiry interviewing. They interviewed some 300 coworkers and trained others to interview. The effort mushroomed. Workers began sharing their success stories of cross-gender collaboration. As a result, Avon began asking men and women to co-chair teams and task forces, the executive committee admitted its first woman, and in 1997, a working-women's issues group called Catalyst named Avon Mexico the nation's best place for women to work.

About the same time, GTE Telops (the bulk of all GTE's employees) began an appreciative inquiry process that bolstered morale, improved union-management relations, and improved quality. In 1997, GTE won an organization-change award from the American Society for Training and Development.

Proponents began to carry the idea into settings beyond corporations. Malcolm Odell, for example, was shocked to return to Nepal in 1994. Compared to his days there in the 1970s, the rural villagers had gained schools, roads, electricity, and were part of ongoing participatory development. But they seemed far less self-confident and more dependent than Mr. Odell remembered.

His employer, the Mountain Institute, had used appreciative inquiry to help the staff. Mr. Odell decided to quit his job and spend a year visiting villages and adapting appreciative inquiry to help villagers. The idea caught on like wildfire.

One village decided to build a new high school on its own, and raised 10,000 rupees from its own people on the spot. In another, women formed a weaving club that, indirectly, led to more than a 500 percent boost in sales over four years. The business annually grosses more than 1 million rupees ($15,000) in a country where rural per capita incomes are less than $100.

"If you look for problems, you find more problems," Odell says. "If you look for success, you create more success - and that's the breakthrough."

Back in Chicago, Browne has now moved to bigger offices and used Imagine Chicago to spawn several innovative programs among the city's poor. For example, to rejuvenate inner-city teachers, she holds quarterly retreats at the Chicago Botanical Garden, using appreciative inquiry. It trains emerging grassroots leaders by offering them a $500 grant to implement a community improvement project, but only if they can offer a concrete plan and recruit at least six other volunteers to help.

Imagine Chicago is also working with parents at eight Chicago public schools, trying to foster a culture of learning at home. So parents visit the Field Museum of Natural History and learn about food by first sharing their stories about the dishes they grew up with and who in the family ate together.

"Rather than saying: 'You should have an open mind, you should read to your children, you should know about this, you should eat right,' what we were doing was bringing to consciousness the many things that they know and connecting them to things they could learn," Browne says. "It is indescribably satisfying to watch these parents come alive." Last year, the program challenged them to start a savings account and put away $50 a month. If they did that and attended a certain number of workshops, at the end of the year the program would match the parents' contribution and use the money to buy their children a computer. More than 70 parents followed through.

"I was looking for any way to help me help my children learn," says Trenette Smith, who completed the program and got a new computer. Since then, her 12-year-old daughter is asking more questions and is more serious about her education, Ms. Smith reports.

"If we can help people recognize that who they are and the gifts they're given and what they're prepared to take ownership for matters ... then maybe it becomes important for people to be citizens, it becomes important for parents to be parents," Browne says. "You can reinstill in life an exalted sense of the individual and their vocation, whatever that is."

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