Building on Strength:
A Strengths-Based Approach to Organizational and Personal Transformation

Too often, we see leaders and organizations expending enormous efforts to “fix” what’s broken – whether with specific individuals, or with the organization as a whole. At the same time, the real strengths of the organization are simply taken for granted, with little or no investment to improve them. We believe that these organizations may be missing enormous opportunities to build on strength, and thereby boost employee and organizational success.

Students of economics have long known that countries profit by leveraging their strengths – a strategy that famed 18th-century political economist David Ricardo called their “comparative advantage.” That is, countries maximize profits by focusing their energy on products they can create most efficiently, rather than any other product they could create.

Companies have used comparative advantage in the same way. For example, Jack Welch decided in the early 80s to sell off or close all General Electric (GE) businesses that were not #1 or #2 in their market. By relentlessly focusing on activities in which GE was strongest, Welch was able to generate a 23% return for shareholders for over two decades (GE’s Digital Revolution: Redefining the E in GE, 2005).

A Shift in Focus
Too often, organizations drive change with an endless supply of models, flowcharts, and diagnostic instruments designed to “fix problems.” These interventions frequently not only fail to produce the promised results, they often harm an organization by leading to blame and finger-pointing. The reason these well-intentioned business initiatives, using sophisticated problem-analysis models, often fail is because organizations move in the direction of what they study. That is to say, organizations that focus only on finding and fixing problems will spend their time doing just that — finding and fixing problems. On the other hand, organizations that study that which gives their organization life, strength, and success find will find just that — life, strength, and success.

The focus on organizational strengths, termed “appreciative inquiry,” became known primarily through the pioneering work of David Cooperidder, a professor of management at Case Western Reserve School of Business. Appreciative inquiry is, at its core, the “study of what gives life to human systems when they function at their best” (The Power of Appreciative Inquiry, 2003). By shifting the organizational emphasis to appreciating what currently exists and designing a deeply compelling future, organizational change agents can begin to pull the organization in a positive direction. Asking the questions that tap into energy, excitement, and success moves the organization toward excitement, energy, and success.

Critics of appreciative inquiry often call it a Pollyanna approach that looks at the world through rose-colored glasses. Such criticisms, however, miss the fact that even organizational problems can be addressed in this fashion: if problems are discussed in the context of moving the organization toward its strengths, then the organization will avoid the blame and defensiveness associated with focusing on problems themselves.

The Individual’s Strengths
Similarly, the field of individual development is moving toward embracing human strengths instead of remedying weaknesses. For example, much of this research has been pioneered through the Gallup Organization, and through the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment (http://sf2.strengthsfinder.com/).

Although as a culture we traditionally value overcoming weaknesses and champion the underdog, Gallup research suggests that discovering your natural aptitudes and polishing them results in high performance, increased engagement, and overall satisfaction with work and life. In fact, Gallup’s 40-year study of human strengths has revealed that “people who do have the opportunity to focus on their strengths every day are six times as likely to be engaged in their jobs and more than three times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life in general.” It doesn’t take a genius to realize that soft metrics such as “engagement” translate powerfully into increased employee performance.

This research into studying what makes humans and organizations perform excellently — and then capitalizing on it — echoes in psychology as well. While traditional psychology has focused on mental illness, a new realm of psychology called positive psychology has emerged, studying the root causes of human thriving, joy, and happiness. Harnessing these scientific breakthroughs in the workplace leads to higher performance and happier employees.

Leading Strength-Based Change
Organizational leaders are the key to shifting a company’s focus toward its strengths. They can play to their own strengths, help their team members leverage theirs, and drive business initiatives by harnessing and growing the best of what the company has to offer. In our consulting experience, we have seen leaders boldly transform their organizations by calling forth the strengths of their employees. These leaders and their organizations not only survive change, they also emerge stronger, more energized, and with a highly engaged workforce.

For those leaders of a strengths-based intervention, we offer the following tips:

• Ask questions. More particularly, ask questions that tap into the strengths, passions, and energy of your employees and organization. Ask about what’s working well, what can be built upon, and what they dream for the future of the organization. Even if you think you already know the answers, tapping into their energy can create forward momentum in the entire organization.

• When asking questions, use the basic appreciative inquiry “4-D” process:

  • Discover: Learn about the best of the past, and what’s currently working well.

  • Dream: Design the future. What would you do if you knew you could not fail? This helps you “think big.”

  • Design: Translate the dreams into goals you strive for, and include ideas for overcoming challenges standing in the way of a dream.

  • Destiny: Plan and implement the tactics that allow you to meet your goals.

• Use group meetings. People's positive energy and enthusiasm builds and generates momentum critical for successful change initiatives.

• Celebrate successes. Whatever you're looking for exists somewhere in the organization. It's frequently much easier to grow a success into a bigger success than to turn a failure into a success.

Summary
Instead of using the deficit and problem-focused approach traditionally used to drive organizational improvement initiatives, try focusing on strengths. Harnessing strengths — on both individual and organizational levels — yields more successful initiatives, because organizations move in the direction of what they study. Focus on problems and you’ll find problems. Focus instead on building upon what makes you successful, and you’ll find success.

For Further Reading
For more information on leveraging strengths, try the following resources:

• StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath, 2007. This book includes the StrengthsFinder assessment, which identifies individual strengths that should be engaged to maximize success.

• The Extraordinary Leader: Turning Good Managers into Great Leaders by John Zenger and Joseph Folkman, 2002.  A truly breakthrough, research-based book that analyzes 200,000 assessments from 20,000 managers, and identifies 16 key leadership competencies, as well as the importance of leveraging strengths.

• Go Put Your Strengths to Work by Marcus Buckingham, 2007. This book helps to identify specific activities that are strengths for you at work. Once you find the activities in which you are most strong, you can begin building your weeks, and even your career, around them.

• What Great Managers Do by Marcus Buckingham, 2005. In this HBR article, Buckingham argues that great managers “play chess” — they know the strengths of each employee and deploy them effectively. This quick read presents case studies and strategies for leveraging employee strengths (for more, read Buckingham’s First, Break All the Rules).

• The Power of Appreciative Inquiry: A Practical Guide to Positive Change by Diana Whitney and Amanda Trosten-Bloom, 2003. This work, with a foreword by David Cooperrider, presents appreciative inquiry, the principles for conducting and appreciative change initiative, and several case studies where it has been successfully applied at Fortune 500 companies.

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