Accentuate the Positive

From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:

Remember the Johnny Mercer tune ...
"You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative"

That might well have been one of the themes of the CommunityMatters07 Conference last week in Burlington, Vermont.

Ever hear about "appreciative inquiry"? Laverne Webb, one of its practitioners, described its value for planners as "an approach that helps people and communities change at the speed of imagination."

As Webb explained, appreciative inquiry asks communities to focus on what's working -- not what's wrong. "How can we do more of what's working?" is the key question.

Webb finds that focusing on factors of success instead of on problems is less threatening, and more productive. She put it to planners this way: "We're trained as problem solvers to fix things ... what we don't do as well in planning is understand what creates strengths and assets. But understanding this gives us greater resilience in dealing with problems." In other words, appreciative inquiry gets at problem solving "through the back door."

Webb outlined how this process was used a few years ago in Dubuque, Iowa, to deal with challenging customer service problems facing the city's Housing Services Department (coincidentally, I was soon to visit Dubuque).

Some 220 individuals were interviewed, including tenants, landlords, local officials, lenders, social service professionals, neighborhood leaders, and others.

[downtown Dubuque in photo to the left]

Instead of asking citizens to identify problems and focus on the negative, they were asked:
-- "what do you most value about living in Dubuque?"
-- "what was the best customer service experience you've had in dealing with housing services?"
-- "tell us what three wishes you have to best improve customer service in the housing department?"

These questions provided a wealth of information ("stories," as Webb puts it) on what's working and can be built on -- and (indirectly) on what's not working.

By accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative, Webb believes the resulting Dubuque Housing Summit was much more productive -- and greater consensus was reached on needed changes.

For more details on the Dubuque process (2 page pdf article).

Other sessions I attended also echoed the "accentuate the positive" theme. Two examples:

-- Randy Hester spoke of his experience in working with residents of a small North Carolina town on preserving the "sacred structure" of the community -- those places that residents "would most miss if they lost them." To Hester, identifying what is of most value yields energy and imagination in finding ways to preserve these places.

-- Planning consultant Jim Segedy, FAICP (photo on right) observed that one of the best ways of fighting sprawl is by strengthening our downtowns. "We can deal with sprawl if there's a better destination ... downtown."

"You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister In-Between"