Social Constructionism + The Power of Image = AI in, Organization Change

As we know from research on the power of image (Srivastvra, Fry, & Cooperrider, 1990), human beings are strongly impacted by these anticipatory images of the future and in a myriad of ways ranging from physiological responses at the individual level to the creation of new strategies and organization architectures, we collectively create the very future that we anticipate.

This view of how we shape our future gives us a whole new way of understanding the process of change in an organization. Rather than being limited to the traditional view of change as an event that has a beginning, middle, and end (as in, for example, Kurt Lewin’s model of Unfreezing-Changing-Refreezing), we now see change as a continuous process, ongoing in every conversation we have, in every inquiry we make, in every action we take to “know” or understand something about our organization and/or about the world. Hence the notion of AI as a philosophy of knowledge.

Within this social constructionist perspective, aided and abetted by the research on the power of image and the role of language, discourse, and dialogue in creating those images, we realize that some very significant doors open up for us as we pursue transformative change in our organizations. Specifically, since all change processes begin with framing an issue and collecting some data to give us a better understanding of the issue, we become aware that in the very act of doing these preliminary activities, we, even at that moment, are engaging in the process of socially constructing our futures through the choices we make about how to “frame the issue” and the dialogues we have as we make inquiries into those issues. For example, we can choose to frame an issue as, “What’s keeping us from being able to get our innovations into production faster?” or we can choose to frame the issue as, “In those exceptional periods, when our new product development process is moving at the ‘speed of light,’ what conditions, factors, or contributing dynamics are present?” Our choice in this initial framing is fateful, as either frame will start a snowball of dialogues, inquiries, and the resultant anticipatory images of the future.

Social construction theory says, in essence, that we create reality through the conversations that we have. Therefore, an alternative theory of organizational intervention would suggest that a fundamental precondition for all organization change work—whether focused on process innovation, stakeholder relationships, business strategy, organizational culture, diversity, the capability to adapt and improve, team effectiveness, etc.—to shift the flow of “issue framing dialogues” in the direction of health rather than pathology. This, then, shifts the flow of dialogues that result from the inquiries from an analysis of moments of malfunction to a holistic understanding of moments of optimal performance. The choice to focus on moments of optimal performance is driven by the theory that our daily dialogues and our conscious use of inquiry are powerful interventions in and of themselves.