Conportamiento Organizacional Sears

AI in Diversity Work: Avon Mexico

Consultants: Marge Schiller, David Cooperrider, Jane Watkins, and Rusty Renick
Focus of the Appreciative Inquiry
This case study describes how Appreciative Inquiry was used to address a need for gender equity in an international direct-sales organization.
Client Objectives
Avon Mexico at the time of this project had about 3,000 employees with a salesforce of 250,000 independent distributors. Although Avon is generally known as one of the best places for women to work, the parent division, Avon International in New York City, wanted to increase the number of women in senior management and executive positions across the company.

Avon Mexico was to be our starting place, and was to serve as a pilot project for the rest of the company. Atthe Avon Mexico headquarters in Mexico City when we began, there were no women on the executive committee and few female executives in general.
What was done
The 4-D model formed the framework for the project: Definition, Discovery, Dream, and Destination.

We built our foundation for success by creating a deeper understanding of Appreciative Inquiry with the clients, and then working with aplanning team -- an internal/external team made up of internal opinion leaders who would help co-define the topics to be studied and be the guides for the external consulting team. We gained a shared understanding of the readiness for change and the methods that would be most appropriate for the site’s culture.

Together we planned the next step: a series of two-day workshops to introduce AItheory, practices and philosophy to people selected to be part of the learning team – those who would conduct the Discovery interviews. This group of 20 formal and informal opinion leaders from across functions and organizational levels was known as “The Pioneers.”

The Discovery phase began with a 2-day workshop for the Pioneers where they learned about AI, developed the first set of questionsto be used in the interviews, practiced interviewing, and planned all the logistics for collecting the data (stories and examples).

We had several challenges in translating Appreciative Inquiry to the appropriate terminology in Spanish. There was concern about the word “inquiry” and some of the multiple meanings it suggested. There was, however, absolute clarity on what we were doing. ThePioneers group soon called AI the “philosophia” -- they understood that AI is not merely a method or technique but a way of living and doing business. Provocative propositions were renamed possibility statements by the client since the translation of “provocative” has multiple meanings in Spanish as well.

One of the defining moments in our first workshop session was when the head of Humanresources, Mr. Pedro Cervantes, stood up on the last day. He was wearing a red sweater. This dignified lawyer started moving around the room with his arms extended. “I am an airplane,” he said with appropriate noises. “One wing of the plane is problem solving and that wing is very strong. The other wing of my plane is Appreciative Inquiry. We have not built that wing to be strong. That is what weneed to do at Avon Mexico.”

The final interview protocol focused on identifying instances of men and women working together effectively. Over the course of about 2000 interviews, these questions helped uncover many best practices and compelling stories that illuminated what it looks like and what it takes for men and women to work well together at Avon Mexico. Out of the most illustrativestories, the planning team was able to construct models of excellence so that the ideal could come alive in people’s imagination.

Sometimes change was instantaneous. At a planning committee meeting the possibility statement that men and women should be represented at all levels of decision making was brought into question since no women were sitting on the executive committee. The President of...