[This is part 2 of a two part series. Check out part 1 here.]

You’re the manager of an assembly line in a modern factory. Your mean yield rate is running at 82% over the last quarter and today it is at 91% so you stop the machines to discover why.

Or you’re the project lead of an interdisciplinary team. You just signed off on the final product and delivered it to your client. The project was complex and required extraordinary cooperation amongst several professional disciplines and it came in under budget and with a week to spare. So you call a meeting to review how you did it.

Do these situations sound familiar? Probably not. For most of us, doing this is counter-intuitive. Why on earth would we stop the machines on a good day? After all, don’t we need to make up for all of those sub-par days we had last week? And isn’t on time and on budget the norm?

The answer is yes … and no. We do want to make up for those sub-par days and, if we want to experience exponential improvement, discovering why our machines are operating 10% over their mean yield rate or why our project came in on time and under budget is crucial to doing it again.  We will want to inquire into those successes, not the times we failed to do so.

Recent research tells us that organizations that understand what they do well and how to enhance that excellence are ones that are best able to make sustainable changes in their processes, policies and procedures. We also know that when the organization’s stakeholders are engaged in creating and implementing the changes, there is greater “buy-in.” The key to improved productivity, then, is understanding excellence and how to leverage it.

Appreciative approaches – such as Appreciative Inquiry, positive psychology, abundance theory, and positive deviance – provide a viable alternative to old style problem solving. An appreciative approach is more than a methodology or set of tactics. It is an attitude philosophically rooted in discovering what works well and how to leverage that for future success. An appreciative approach values the input of everyone with a stake in the organization’s success.

But appreciative processes aren’t simply about focusing on the positive; they are about generating transformational changes in individuals, groups, organizations and communities. They are about taking advantage of our collective aspirations so that we can take advantage of opportunities and decisions that wouldn’t be available to individuals.

Individuals and groups that experience positive results through positive means are more likely to function at higher levels because those positive results produce even more success.

Perhaps most importantly, the organization or community’s people become its biggest champion. They make things happen. And long-lasting change sticks because all of the people who must live with the change participated in its discovery and implementation.

So I encourage you to stop and reflect on success and what causes it rather than choosing to examine failure and what’s gone wrong. If you do, you’ll find that success will become infectious and your people and organization will reap the benefits