Maybe some of this helps (From a briefing on SOD):

Strategic Appreciation and Design is a New Approach
Relies on an open-ended critical method.
Strategic Appreciation generates an improved understanding of the larger system in any situation with any scope or depth.
Design is concerned with creation of systems-of-actions designed to exploit identified tendencies and potentials, in order to change existing situations in desired directions.

Why is Strategic Appreciation and Design needed?
We often act before we understand our situation well enough.
As a result, we define our problems incorrectly, which leads us to apply the wrong solutions.
Ill-conceived solutions for ill-defined problems actually create greater problems.
This new approach encourages the free movement of good ideas and makes the reasoning of our actions more transparent, helping us to see how to improve what we are doing.

What is different about Strategic Appreciation and Design?
Challenges and improves our normal thought processes and decision procedures.
Focuses on a more robust form of intellectual leadership defined as the ability for an organization to move good ideas around.

Before, during, and after imposing solutions to solve problems.
Strategic Appreciation and Design is time intensive, and works best when considering future action. It is also a sound method for assessing current operations, and evaluating past actions.

The goal of Design is the creation of more favorable, self-sustaining situations.
Assessment shifts away from learning about any single action to a focus on monitoring transformation of the system itself and sustaining sensitivity to the need to make adjustments by reframing both system understanding and operational approaches to better deal with emerging conditions.

As the diagram shows (I know, what diagram? If I can figure out how to paste it in I will), reframing can occur at any point where new knowledge is developed that challenges existing understanding of the system.
As understanding increases, formulate actions to transform the system to meet our aims; identify potentials, opportunities, risks to these actions; identify how to ensure self-regulation of system after our inject in the system.
Pay attention to the creation of a learning structure to enable observation of the system during action.