This document outlines the agenda and activities for a summit focused on forging a magnetic organization. The summit will use Appreciative Inquiry techniques like discovery interviews and breakout groups to understand what currently works best at the organization and envision future possibilities. Participants will identify strengths, share inspiring stories, and develop aspiration statements. The goal is to leverage existing assets and co-create an empowering vision for the future through collaboration and creative design.

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“Forging a Magnetic Organization”
Summit
March 5t h 2015
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new
landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
-Marcel Proust

2. 1
Agenda
March 5, 2015
8:30 AM Registration and Continental Breakfast
9:00 AM Welcome, Introduction to AI, Define Purpose and Objectives
9:30 AM Discovery Interviews in Pairs
10:30 AM Break
10:45 AM Discovery Break-Out Groups 1
11:10 AM Presentations
11:30 PM Discovery Break Out Groups 2
12:00 PM Presentations
12:10 PM Walking Vote
12:15 PM Lunch
1:15 PM Discovery “Do It” Groups
1:45 PM Presentations
2:00 PM Dream: Aspiration Statements
2:45 PM Break
3:00 PM Presentations
3:30 PM Evaluation Sheets
4:00 PM Closing Remarks and Adjourn

3. 2
Why Join the Revolution?
Why are we all here today?
 To ________________ what is best about Firm Solutions- what do we have
that will form magnetic bonds with all constituents, internal and
external- employees, vendors, clients and customers.
 To ________________ about the possibilities of the best potential futurefor
Firm Solutions and all of it’s stakeholders and to leveragestrengthsto
foresee futuresuccess.
 To ________________ theflourishing futureof Firm Solutions using great
ideas and understanding how we can leveragestrengthsto make
weaknesses irrelevant.
 To empower the ________________ of Firm Solutions through thecreation
of action plans and teams to carry our shared vision into reality.

4. 3
What Is A Magnetic Organization?
• A magnetic organization attracts and retains excellence
through it’s practices, projects, and people.
• A magnetic organization provides experiences so satisfying to
it’s constituents (employees, clients, customers, partners,
vendors etc.) that they would never want to leave.
• A magnetic organization also repels all that is not contributing
to the success of the organization.
• Help us make Firm Solutions a magnetic organization through
your strengths, successes and skills.

5. 4
Introduction to Appreciative Inquiry
The 4-D Cycle
Discovery
"What gives life?"
The best of what is.
Appreciating
Dream
"What might be?"
Envisioning Results
Design
"What should be?"
Co-constructing
Destiny
"What will be."
How to
empower/sustain
destiny
Affirmative
Topic

6. 5
Discovery Interviews
On the next page you will find interview questions for you and your partner. The
interviewer will begin and will ask all of the questions and take notes. Please ask
the questions listed and use the follow up questions as necessary to draw out the
story from your partner. Once the first interviewer has completed all the questions
and taken notes, please switch roles and continue the process. Each interv iew
should take approximately 20 minutes. Leave 10 minutes to complete the
Summary Sheet for each question.
INTERVIEWER:
Your task is to interview another person and draw out their story so that they relive
not only the facts, but the “music” – the feelings, the energy, the excitement, and
the color of their story.
There are no right or wrong answers to these questions! It is fine to help someone if
they are drawing a blank, for example, by asking questions – the clarifying
questions listed below each question, or your own. If they don’t have an answer
right away, allow them time to think of a related story. Amongst everyone
participating, there will be a wide array of responses. Please be sure not to tell
your story while listening to your partner.
You will want to take notes as you listen to your partner’s stories, as you’ll be
working with this for the rest of the day. The Summary Sheet will help you
summarize the interview. Please review it before you start.
INTERVIEWEE:
Answer the questions as truthfully as possible. Your partner will read you the
questions and you will have a copy to review. If you need time to think of a story,
take your time and tell your story with as much detail as you can remember.

7. 6
More Tips for Interviewing
 Take good notes and be listening for great quotes and stories. Read through
the summary sheet before you start your interview to better understand what
you should be listening for.
 Let the interviewee tell his/her story, please don’t tell yours or give your
opinion about their experiences
 Use probing questions to draw out the details of a person’s story. Some
possible probing questions are:
o Can you tell me more?
o Why do you feel that way?
o Why was that important to you?
o How did that affect you?
o What was your contribution?
o What was the organization doing that helped you do this? For
example: systems, leadership, resources, structures, etc.
o What do you think was really making it work?
o How has it changed you?
 Be genuinely curious about their experiences, thoughts and feelings.
 Some people will take longer to think about their answers- allow for silence
 Remember this is an “appreciative interview”- we want to hear about the
times things were at their BEST. Steer the conversation to the positive at all
times.

8. 7
Interview Question 1A
In today’s world, most of us are juggling and balancing many responsibilities in
both our professional and personal lives. When we add our flexible schedules,
paid time off, working remotely, and shifting priorities, it is easy for the lines to get
blurred sometimes. For as important as it is for us to be “on” when we are at work,
making sure we are organized and staying on task, it is just as important to ensure
that we turn “off” to rejuvenate our batteries and rest.
When we are at our best, we can balance our professional and personal lives and
make sure that we meet both our personal commitments and the commitments of
our organizations. We find a way to eliminate wasted time, to focus on key
priorities, and to cooperate to achieve shared goals. When organizations are at
their best, they encourage work/life balance and make sure their employees
honor that balance.
Firm Solutions Performer Outside Guest
Tell me about a time when you
experienced a comfortable sense of
work/life balance. What contributed to
it? What did you do to create the sense
of balance? How did you
communicate your needs?
Tell me about an experience you had
where you heard about a company
offering their performers work/life
balance – whether you only read about
it or actually worked with the company.
What was your impression of that
company? How did you feel it would
positively impact your service?

9. 8
Firm Solutions Performer Outside Guest
What is it about your organization that
best supports you in creating work/life
balance?
What do you appreciate about working
with an organization that supports
work/life balance for their performers?
Firm Solutions Performer Outside Guest
Thinking about your organization, what
one thing could be done to help you
create a better work/life balance?
Tell me about how you support work/life
balance in your own organization?
What results do you see as part of this
initiative? What are some things you
could do to help create a better
work/life balance?
Interview Question 2A
In today’s complex and ever-changing business environment, teamwork

10. 9
is an essential ingredient for success. In high performance organizations teamwork
fosters collaboration across departments and functions, and results in the
organization’s being easy to do business with.
Winning teamwork requires common goals, open communication, and full
participation in planning and decision-making. Most people work best in a team
environment where enthusiasm and team spirit are high, where ideas and
information are shared, and where team members work together to accomplish
common goals. It has been said that the results of teamwork are greater than the
sum of the parts. The synergy that comes from winning teamwork adds value to
team members, customers, and the organization.
1. What are the qualities in your existing team that most foster enthusiasm,
information sharing, and collaboration towards common goals?
2. Describe the best, most winning teamwork that you have ever been a part
of.
 What was it about that team’s activities that caused you to define them
as the best?
 What were all the conditions that allowed that winning teamwork to
emerge?
3. What could you do to foster winning teamwork at an even higher and more
consistent level, throughout your organization?

11. 10
Interview Question 1B
Thriving organizations create and maintain exceptional levels of customer loyalty.
Loyal customers are great customers. They help assume good will. They provide
information and time that helps us give them what they need. They share great
ideas. They invite new customers.
Customer loyalty is something we earn. We earn it by listening to what our
customers want, and if possible exceeding their expectations…by treating them
with genuine respect and caring…by creatively anticipating ways in which
products and services can become more and more customer friendly.
It is cheaper and more satisfying to keep a customer than to find a new one. By
earning customer loyalty, we build ourselves a competitive edge, which puts us in
a leadership position and keeps us there in the future.
1. Think of a time when you were a customer, a very loyal customer: It could be
of a large organization, or it could be of a neighborhood babysitter.
 What were the most significant things that this person did to earn your loyalty
in the first place?
 How did they learn about what was important to you? How did they stay
current with your needs, as time went on?
 Describe an episode when this loyalty was tested yet sustained. What did
your provider do to keep you engaged, and if necessary rebuild the
relationship?

12. 11
Interview Question 2B
In a changing world, the competitive edge goes to organizations that can
change, grow, or learn faster than others do. When at their best, organizations
embrace continuous learning and become learning organizations in which people
continuously challenge themselves to move out of their comfort zone, think in new
ways, and acquire new knowledge and experiment with new ways of working.
Continuous learning creates an exciting work environment, full of creative
possibilities for the organization and its members. It stimulates people to beyond
the usual to discover and create better, more financially and socially effective
ways of doing things.
1. What appeals to you most about the concept of continuous learning?
2. Describe an organization or environment you’ve been in that has most
inspired you and others to want to learn.
 What made this such a favorable place for learning?
 How did you and others grow and change, as a result of being in this
environment?
 What contributions were you able to bring back to one another, the
organization, or the world at large, as a result of having been part of this
system?

13. 12
Discovery Break-Out Groups 1
Task: Form Groups and Report Out
Time for Activity: 25 minutes
Purpose: To discover what makes us our best.
1. With your interview partner, join a group and assign roles.
 FACILITATOR – assures each person that wants to speak is heard within time
available. Keeps the group on track to finish their task on time.
 TIMEKEEPER – Keeps the group aware of the time left. Monitors report-outs
and signals time remaining to the person talking.
 RECORDER – Writes the group’s output on flip charts, using the speaker’s
words. Asks people to restate long ideas briefly.
 REPORTER – Delivers reports to the large group in time allotted.
2. Go around the circle, introduce your interview partner and share a couple of
highlights from Questions 1-3 (2 minutes per person)
3. As you listen to the stories, what common themes do you hear? What seems to
underpin the high-point experiences? What energizes you about what you are
hearing? As you listen, begin to think about what you think is part of the positive
core of this group, and of Firm Solutions.
4. The recorder will record on a flip chart meaningful stories, exciting images,
inspirations, and quotable quotes.
5. As a team, choose one story to share with the large group.
6. Reporter will give a 3-minute report on the story selected by the group.

14. 13
Discovery Break-Out Groups 2
Task: Stay in same groups with your partner to identify all of the energizing
elements of the stories and best experiences that were just presented to you.
Time for Activity: 20 minutes
1. Based on all of the stories you have heard, what are the assets and strengths
of your group and of all the groups? Pick up to ten things that are the very
best about the people in this room and the Firm Solutions community
(employees, customers, clients, vendors, any other constituents). What
strengths, best practices, values, capabilities, etc. do we want to keep, even
as things may change in the future?
Note: Everything on your list should relate to an experience that at least one
of you has had or heard, or a quality or life-giving force you shared. In other
words, this is not a brainstorm of what could underpin success, but an
exploration of what actually was there when the best experiences were
happening.
2. Reduce your discussion to one flip-chart to present as a group. After
presentations, stick your flip-chart up on the glass wall.
3. On your way to lunch, take 3 sticker dots and place them up on the flip-
charts with the themes and ideas that give you the most energy/which you
think are most important.

15. 14
Discovery: “Do It” Groups
Task: Identify a project area and think of opportunities and initiatives that bridge
the best of the Discovery phase with a plan for the future.
Time for Activity: 30 minutes
1. Go to the flip-chart of your assigned number.
2. In these groups, identify possible opportunities/initiatives that we could focus on.
Prioritize your top 3.
3. Prepare a 3- minute commercial/presentation to be announced to the group to
encourage others to join you in a focused “Do It Group.”
4. Listen to the commercials, join the “Do It” group that most interests you- you can
also stay in your same group but this is your opportunity to join the initiative that
excites you most.

16. 15
Dream: Aspiration Statements
Task: To create an aspiration statement around your chosen initiative that bridges
the best of “what is” with your own speculations of “what might be” for the
preferred future of Firm Solutions.
Time for Activity: 45 minutes
What defines an Aspiration Statement?
An aspiration statement reflects a value or goal related to our discovery of what
already works best in our group or organization. It can be helpful to think of an
aspiration statement as a guidepost or vision statement towards which the group
can plan, educate and effect change.
It is provocative to the extent to which it stretches the realm of the status quo,
challenges common assumptions or routines, and helps suggest real possibilities
that represent desired possibilities for the organization and its people. We
challenge ourselves to dream big, to think outside the box and refuse to be limited
by our current understandings of ‘how things are’ in creating a vision of the future.
Dream about the opportunities for success within our grasp. Create a set of
statements about what would our organization look like if it were designed in every
way, to maximize and preserve the positive topics we’ve chosen to study.
Organizational elements or factors you may wish to include:
STRATEGY STRUCTURES SYSTEMS
STYLE SHARED VALUES SKILLS
STAKEHOLDER RELATIONS SOCIETAL PURPOSES STAFF
NOTE: Aspiration statements should not by constrained by time, funds or
administrative hurdles. Aspiration statements might reflect goals that seem
fantastic, but they actually reflect an ideal that can be worked towards over time
and through collaboration and inspired design.

17. 16
Instructions:
1. Form groups and select a Discussion Leader, Timekeeper, Recorder and
Reporter.
2. Write aspiration statements: As a group, describe a future that reflects and
builds on areas identified in the Discovery and Dream phases that are
important to you and valued by the organization and its people. Record
aspiration statements on a flip chart.
3. Imagine Firm Solutions has been featured in a positive article in “Inc.”
Magazine. Based on your aspiration statements, create a headline and a
visual image for your statement and include this in your presentation.
4. Be prepared to report out to the larger group.
Guidelinesfor AspirationStatements:
As you develop aspiration statements, make sure your statements are:
 Desired. Does it reflect what you really want?
 Bold and provocative. Is it a stretch that will challenge and engage others?
 Affirmative. Is it stated as if it is happening now?
 Grounded. Is it grounded in reality and is it a real possibility?
 Unconditionally positive. Is it written in positive language? Will it bring out the
best in people, the organization and the members it touches?