Appreciative Inquiry At Dinesol Plastics Inc.

As a team, we were given the opportunity to put the theory of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) into practice at Dinesol Plastics Inc. Dinesol was founded in 1976 and manufactures plastic injection moldings. The leadership team expressed they were seeking better ways to share knowledge among team members. They desired a culture where senior employees openly share experiences, knowledge, and history with junior team members. We discovered our goal was to help bridge the gap of knowledge transfer between all levels of employees. Within the contents of this paper, we will share details about our affirmative topic, the AI process, results, and what we learned from the experience.
Topic Discovery, the AI process, and the Action-Research Model
In the discovery
Throughout the interviews each team member found themselves inspired by the conversations they had with employees who began opening up and thinking, dreaming, and believing a positive future for not only the company but for themselves. Feedback from the Dinesol team was positive and impactful. We were told many employees came out of the interviews and went straight to their boss or the head of Human Resources to articulate how much they enjoyed the experience. In the reporting meeting on Friday morning (which will be discussed in depth later in this paper), the reactions as we shared our findings and possibility propositions were nothing short of amazing. Both Bob and Ken ended the meeting with smiles on their faces as they learned many of our possibility propositions included things they were doing or have done in the past that they could build on. When they realized many tools for acting on our propositions were already available, they rejoiced! The Dinesol leadership team was so inspired by our findings that they met right after our feedback meeting on Friday morning and called Professor Fry with positive and encouraging feedback. They also alluded to bringing our team back for more organizational change
We thought about who would be attending the meeting, what our surroundings would be when delivering our findings, and how we could engage the people involved. Through team discussion, we decided the best way to deliver our results was through a PowerPoint presentation and group discussion. Those who attended the feedback session on Friday included the Bob Hendricks (Executive VP), Ken Leonard (VP of Operations), Pat Nichols (VP of Workforce Development), Doug Williams (VP of Quality and Engineering), Bud Greathouse (Branch Manager), Geno Matteotti (Plant Manager), and Cooper Tyo (Sales and