Appreciative Assignments: Drinking Games and Other Social Experiments. February 2017 Appreciative Inquiry

1. 42More articles at www.aipractitioner.com
Practitioner
February 2017 ISBN 978-1-907549-30-4
Volume 19 Number 1
Toon Schraven
Toon graduated with his Master of science in Visual
communication in film studies in 2013. After that, he worked
as a Marketing & communications coordinator at a music
venue. He is now working as a community Manager and
Marketing consultant at a major healthcare facility for mentally
disabled people. Toon is an art-, culture- and science-aficionado
as well as a boxing-connoisseur and lumberjack.
contact: T.schraven@dichterbij.nl
Appreciative Inquiry has been
applied to many organisations
and activities. This spontaneous
application by a young
practitioner, perhaps one of the
least conventional appreciative
assignments discussed on
the pages of AI Practitioner,
is joyful, entertaining and
thought-provoking.
T
he drinking game is an increasingly common trend in contemporary
Western youth cultures. Recently I was in the position to join such a
game: I was on a weekend trip with my friends, twenty young men aged
between 25 and 27. The drinking game we played is called “Kingsen”. It is played
with a deck of cards and thirteen drinking rules linked to the different type of
cards. And, of course, a huge amount of beer.
Schraven: Appreciative Assignments
Appreciative Assignments: Drinking Games
and Other Social Experiments
dx.doi.org/10.12781/978-1-907549-30-4-8

2. 43More articles at www.aipractitioner.com
Practitioner
February 2017 ISBN 978-1-907549-30-4
Volume 19 Number 1
After a couple of “rounds”, I drew an ace of spades, which gave me the privilege
of introducing a new “drinking rule”, whereby a specific assignment has to be
executed every time before a player has to drink beer, for the entire game. Usually
most of the players introduce rules along the lines of: “give the person to your
left a kiss on the cheek before you take a sip”, “spin three times while drinking
your beer” or “pick up an imaginary dwarf from your glass and tell him to wait
patiently while you drink”.
Since I had just finished a three-day introductory workshop in Appreciative
Inquiry (AI), I wanted to test what kind of influence my new set of intervention
tools and my redeveloped vision on achieving goals would be on the group
dynamics and social cohesion. So I decided not to participate in this cultural
youth convention and group tradition, but to take the drinking game to a higher
level in an appreciative way. Therefore my drinking rule became: “Before
drinking, tell someone in the group what you admire or appreciate about him”.
The first reaction of my friends was, of course, uncomfortable avoidance. “Are
you playing one of your ‘management-tricks’?” and “Is this a social tool you
recently read in some guru’s theory?”, they asked.
Superficial to inner values
At first, this reaction reflected on the way everybody interpreted my drinking
rule. So before people had to drink, they told one another that they appreciate
the way their hair was combed, the size of their girlfriend’s boobs and other
superficial or comical physical characteristics. But after some of us started
to break this pattern by appreciating someone’s inner values and unique
personality, the group felt more secure with their novel assignment. Some of
them even used this opportunity to share their appreciation for someone in a
way they had never dared to do before. And the feeling of joint relief that arose
because of that wasn’t even the best part…
After the game, most people (and of course eight crates of beer were partly to
blame!) were still very comfortable in expressing their appreciation for one
another. For fun: “I appreciate it a lot, that you are such a good cleaner”, to
someone in the room after I had dropped a glass of beer. But also seriously: “I
appreciate it that you’re always full of empathy and positive energy”, to someone
who had just given advice about a work-related hierarchical problem. Even the
day after, when we visited Maastricht (the capital of Limburg, Netherlands) to
play a new and typical Dutch game called “Crazy 88”, some people were still in
this inquisitive flow of well-meant complimenting.
Schraven: Appreciative Assignments
Some of them even used this
opportunity to share their
appreciation for someone in a
way they had never dared to
do before.

3. 44More articles at www.aipractitioner.com
Practitioner
February 2017 ISBN 978-1-907549-30-4
Volume 19 Number 1
Crazy 88
You are probably curious about the meaning of “Crazy 88”. No worries: though
I can’t say alcohol is not involved, Crazy 88 is not another drinking game. It is
an outdoor social interaction game which you can only play if you have enough
people to make two or more teams with three or more people each. In this
particular case we were divided into three teams, each containing six randomly
selected people. The mission? To collect as many points as possible. Each team is
released in the same city (in this case Maastricht) with a list of 88 assignments.
The execution of a single assignment wins the team in question a certain number
of points. For example: if you take a selfie with the city’s mayor, you win 500
points. If you drink a beer in a tree you’ve climbed, you receive 50 points. And if
you give a randomly selected person clothing advice, you collect 10 points.
The perfect social experiment
Because there were three groups, each with the same number of people and same
number of targets, this particular situation contained the perfect foundation for
another social experiment. More precisely, another appreciative social experiment.
Before I share my empirical research and correlating results with you, I’ll have to
give you some relevant background information about what my AI trainer recently
explained to me. He said: “Some AI practitioners use the methods of AI in their
professional environment or for organizational interventions; some of them think
in an AI-way when they have to deal with unexpected or difficult circumstances.”
He also said that “every once in a while he meets somebody who consists of AI,
who identifies AI, or, even more straightforwardly, who is AI”.
Since I don’t consider myself as fully skilled in the use of AI interventions, I
would place myself in the second group. I’m a kind of AI philosopher who, for
example, experiences more pleasure in studying the five underlying AI principles
than in intervening using the “4D cycle” tools.
AI by nature
Back to Crazy 88. Since one type of AI practitioner was represented in one team
(me), I needed another practitioner for one of the two remaining teams. As the
night before had proven that the rest of my group of friends weren’t aware of the
phenomenon called AI, I needed one person who could be the perfect example
of somebody who is AI by nature. The only person I know who meets that
requirements is my younger brother. Luckily, he was also with us, and luckily he
took part in a different team. Let’s call his team, ‘Team 1’, the team in which I
participated in ‘Team 2’, and the third team, my control group, ‘Team 3’.
Schraven: Appreciative Assignments
Every once in a while
he meets somebody
who consists of AI, who
identifies AI, or, even more
straightforwardly, who is AI.
My team was enthusiastic
about the focus on success

4. 45More articles at www.aipractitioner.com
Practitioner
February 2017 ISBN 978-1-907549-30-4
Volume 19 Number 1
After we were released in the city, each team went in a different direction
and started to execute the ‘easiest’ assignments impulsively. However, when
the tasks that were more difficult to perform came, some claimed that it was
impossible to execute every single assignment and that was is better to focus on
the easier (but also less valuable) assignments. Some members of Team 3 even
got anxious, nervous and reactive, and said things like: “you can’t do this!’”, to
another team member who was about to propose to a total stranger or “I don’t
approve this!”, to another team member who was about to sing a serenade in
front of a full cafe terrace.
Focus on success
Fortunately, after I decided that we couldn’t use any type of negative energy
because that would be counterproductive to our goal, this was not the case in my
team (Team 2). In fact, my team was very enthusiastic about the focus on success
from the start. Therefore I said to my team that “to me all of these assignments
are amazing and I believe that with our team we will be able to execute every
single assignment on this piece of paper!”
David Cooperrider once said “Is it possible that through our assumptions …
we largely create the worlds we later discover?” Since we had decided to pay
attention to the feeling of shared success after executing an assignment, instead
of paying attention to the assignments which some of us believed were too hard
to execute, we created a world of pleasure and triumph for ourselves.
Evaluating success over a beer
After having a couple of small successes we were evaluating and investigating
those successes in a positive way – while drinking a beer on a terrace. I asked my
team why they believed that we were successful in executing every assignment
we had so far had (I later realized that in doing so I determined the affirmative
topic of that conversation). Their answer was in its simplicity:
“Because everybody in our team is willing to execute those assignments that
fit their personality and expertise,” I replied: “So let’s keep focusing on that
successful strategy! As long as we keep saying to each other every single time we
read a new assignment that we’re able to execute it, we eventually will execute it!
We have to address everybody’s individual expertise and personal qualities”.
And it worked. Each time a friend read out a new assignment, somebody in
the circle stated that this would be the perfect one for someone in the team to
execute, because he believed the task would fit that person perfectly. The only
reason we weren’t able to execute all of the assignments had more to do with the
six o’clock-deadline, rather than with a lack of courage in our team.
Schraven: Appreciative Assignments
Since we had decided to
pay attention to the feeling
of shared success after
executing an assignment,
instead of paying attention
to the assignments which
some of us believed were too
hard to execute, we created a
world of pleasure and triumph
for ourselves.

5. Back to Table of Contents
46More articles at www.aipractitioner.com
Practitioner
February 2017 ISBN 978-1-907549-30-4
Volume 19 Number 1
In Team 1 my brother managed to do the same thing by focusing on the hardest
assignments first. They started with one of the toughest assignments to execute:
to organize a drag-race with scooters. He said that “once we found out that
we were able to execute assignments that difficult, we knew that the easier
assignments would be possible as well”. A significant detail: in both Teams 1
and 2, not consulting each other, some people still expressed their appreciation
for one another after someone else executed an assignment, exactly as they had
the night before: “I appreciate it that you’ve just entered that museum without
paying the entrance fee”.
These different types of focus on success were reflected in the teams’ results and
in the corresponding rankings: Team 3 collected 2,200 points; Team 1 earned
3;700 points. But we, Team 2, we scored 5.400 points and won Crazy 88!
So what is my conclusion? What have I learned from my male weekend trip,
full of appreciative drinking games, social experiments and the execution of
adolescent assignments?
All assignments are suitable for AI
Two things. First, all type of assignments, no matter if they are work-related or
not, are suitable for Appreciative Inquiry and associated interventions. Moreover,
they’re more fun to execute once you start to execute them in an appreciative
way. Furthermore, you will probably have more success in executing them.
Second, once you’ve decided to start executing an assignment in an appreciative
way, don’t just appreciate that particular assignment and the method by which
you’ve chosen to execute it, but also appreciate the different individual qualities
and personalities of the people involved and make sure that these individuals
reciprocate.
If you stick to these two simple rules, you will have plenty of time and room left
to enjoy drinking beer and – even more important – to do so with your friends.
References
Cooperrider, D., Barrett, F. and Srivastva, S. (1995) Social Construction and Appreciative Inquiry: A
Journey. In Organizational Theory. In Management and Organization: Relational Alternatives to Individualism.
Ed. Hosking, D., Dachler, H. P. and Gergen, K. Ashgate Publishing.
Schraven: Appreciative Assignments