I have just finished The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World's Toughest Problems by Richard Pascale, Jerry Sternin and Monique Sternin) a book I have been waiting for some time to come out. I am very glad to say the wait has been well worth it.

Positive deviance has received a lot of attention since the concept was laid out in a series of articles way back in 2000 – one in the Harvard Business Review and the other in Fast Company. The concept has recently received a new boost since it was covered in both Influencer: the Power to Change Anything and by Chip and Dan Heath (where they called them ‘bright spots’) in Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.

Positive deviance is based on the observation that in every community or organisation, there are certain individuals or groups (the ‘positive deviants’ or ‘bright spots’), whose uncommon but successful behaviours enable them to find better solutions to a problem than their peers. Positive deviance identifies these individuals or groups, who have access to exactly the same resources and face the same challenges and obstacles as their peers, and examines their behaviours and attitudes, which help them avoid problems that plague the rest of their community.

The concept of positive deviance is therefore relatively simple. It involves the identification of people who manage to thrive in a situation where most fail; figuring out what those people are doing that is different from the majority; and then getting everyone to engage in the same actions, thereby solving the problem. Sounds simple enough right? The book shows the challenges encountered in trying to use positive deviance to make a difference to a wide range of seemingly intractable problems.

The book is based around six in-depth case studies (a chapter each) on the use of positive deviance to address childhood malnutrition in Vietnam, stopping female circumcision in Egypt, reducing hospital infection rates in the US, reducing infant mortality in Pakistan, boosting sales within the pharmaceutical firm Merck, and helping reintegrate girl soldiers in Uganda.

Each of these chapters is an in-depth analysis of the power and limitations of positive deviance and how they have learnt and adapted the approach as they have gone along. These case studies really bring to life the context, situation and challenges they faced in each scenario. They are detailed, have a lot of information in them, and I've gone back and re-read most of them a number of times, and each time something new has jumped off the page for me.

Some of the key lessons I've taken, or had reinforced, from these case studies include:

1. We focus too much on the ‘what’, and not enough on the ‘how’.

We are drawn to the 'technical' stuff – the 'what', the specific practices and tools that make the individual positive deviants successful;

“That's the easy part – and only 20 percent of the work. What matters far more is the 'how' – the very particular journey that each community must engage in to mobilize itself, …discover its latent wisdom, and put this wisdom into practice.” This point really made me think about the number of articles I have articles about positive deviance, and how the vast majority of them focused on the ‘what’ the solution – not on the ‘how’ the solution was found and integrated into a community – from my experience the hard stuff.

As the authors say: “The greatest barrier to the success of positive deviance approach comes not from the members of the community themselves but from the “experts” who seek to help them...” There is fantastic story of how a suggestion around the use of tongs for Fried Chicken fundamentally changed an expert’s view on how to deal with, and beat, MRSA

3. Creating compelling and concrete portrayals of the problem at hand.

I absolutely love the story of using chocolate pudding to bring to life MRSA and its impacts in the VA Hospital in Pittsburgh

4. Change starts with changing practices

The conventional wisdom is that knowledge changes attitudes and attitudes change practice. Positive deviance reverses that. It starts with changing practice. As people see that changes make a difference, their attitude changes and they internalise the knowledge.

As the authors say; “its easier to act your way into a new way of thinking, than to think your way into a new way of acting… Once positive deviance behaviours have been discovered, the design must provide those who seek to learn with both the opportunity and the means to practice the new behaviour. A focus on practice rather than knowledge has proven to be a key element in bringing about lasting behavioural change...”

5. Use Deliberate Practice to practice the new behaviour

There is a lovely sidebar headed ‘choreographed conversations’ about training positive deviance participants in Egypt to start conversations around female circumcision. It is a great example of some of the key elements of deliberate practice.

6. Positive deviance is not the same as ‘Best Practice’

What comes out of the positive deviance process should not be confused with ‘best practices’ that we all are familiar with in our organisations. ‘Best Practices’ are typically identified by those at the top and then presented to everyone else for adoption. Positive deviance, on the other hand, is based on discovery by the practitioners themselves, which promotes buy in, acceptance, and change.

The book finishes with some absolute nuggets in how to undertake positive deviance work in a section called the ‘Basic Field Guide to Positive Deviance’. It provides a step by step guide (as much as you can within a process as fluid as that of positive deviance) on the key activities within a positive deviance initiative, as well as some really practical tips they have picked up during all of their work. My favourite one is; “Let silence speak! (Pause for twenty seconds after asking a question. That’s long enough to sing happy birthday!). Try it, you’ll be amazed how long twenty seconds actually is!

Overall, I have thoroughly enjoyed The Power of Positive Deviance (http://tinyurl.com/2vykgaz). It is detailed, it’s in-depth, and provides a huge amount of information about positive deviance and the challenges to apply it to solve real world problems. It did take some effort in parts to relate the chapters back to my world. Not always easy to link stopping female circumcision in Egypt with and the challenges that I face in creating change within organizations, but the links and the lessons are there.

Lastly, a word of advice. If you want to easily understand the concepts and principles of positive deviance and get excited about it and how it has been used – start with Influencer (http://tinyurl.com/yuvg54) and Switch (http://tinyurl.com/37bnsoz). If you need to get senior stakeholders and sponsors excited about the concept, do the same. If you then want to try and use positive deviance in making a difference to the challenges you face, read The Power of Positive Deviance (http://tinyurl.com/2vykgaz).


About the authors:

Richard Pascale is an academic at Oxford University, and author of numerous books including Surfing the Edge of Chaos (http://tinyurl.com/334ceb3). Jerry Sternin was the world's leading expert in the application of positive deviance before his death in December, 2008. Monique Sternin has been an equal partner in these efforts and now heads the Positive Deviance Institute (http://tinyurl.com/kmqjb9) at Tufts University.

In our work to help organisations make their strategies stick we often start by helping the executives get clear on their purpose. Why does their enterprise exist? If you have facilitated these types of sessions you probably seen this happen a million times: the group circles in on the essence of what's important and then suddenly they get bogged down nit picking words and trying to incorporate every possibility. In large organisation each executive wants to ensure their part of the business is included in the purpose statement and if you let this happen you end up with mush.

Here's what I do which makes a big difference. Just when they start to get bogged down I call a time out and ask them to watch this video.

From that point on everyone refers back to the Dan's messages and pull each other up when they start acting like a 10th grade school teacher and we move along at pace.

Here is an example of a purpose statement we helped deliver from the Transport Accident Commission: "A future where every journey is a safe one."

It's interesting to note that Dan uses a story to get his message across and clever use of animated graphics.

Earth Hour has been held annually since 2007, in late March. In that first year, Earth Hour focussed on getting one city, Sydney, to switch off its lights for 60 minutes. In 2010, over 1 billion people participated in 128 countries and over 4000 cities. Where did this global phenomenon originate? What forces were arrayed to make it happen?

I hadn't thought much about those questions until last night, when Shawn and I were at a conference dinner and heard Todd Sampson (of the Gruen Transfer fame...oh yeah, he has also climbed Mt Everest solo) talk about creativity. Todd described how, in 2006, he met with five other people in the Hilton hotel in Sydney. The group wanted to tackle a big question: how do you change people's behaviour for the benefit of the planet without using fear? The answer they came up with… Earth Hour. The World Wildlife Fund got behind the initiative, people's imaginations were ignited and the rest is history.

We are always on the lookout for little things that make a big difference. Earth Hour shows us that we can switch off our lights. Time to start making some beeswax candles in preparation for the next Earth Hour which will be held at 8.30pm 26 March 2011.

Last year Terrence Gargiulo and I delivered a webinar in the triple threat of storytelling. It was really popular and we had a great time doing it.

Well we're back for another webinar, this time we're exploring how to become a better storyteller by applying some specific and deliberate practices.

Here is our little marketing blurb. Sign up details are at the bottom of this post.

Have you wondered why you are not making better progress at becoming a storyteller at work? Are you finding it difficult to find good stories to tell? Are your stories relevant to your colleagues or do they look at you blankly wondering what planet you're on?

Spend 45 minutes with master business story practitioners Shawn Callahan of Anecdote and Terrence Gargiulo of MAKINGSTORIES.net as they share deliberate practices you can employ today to be a better storyteller.

We will conduct the session as a conversation involving everyone. Yippee!

We expect you'll walk away with three things from this session:

• Three practices to deepen your storytelling skills
• Ideas from other attendees of how they improve their skills or what works for them...what works in their organisation
• Some specific resources for finding good stories

We're doing this webinar twice, one timed for Asia Pacific and the other for the Americas. Just click on the link of the webinar you want to attend and fill in your details.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM Aust. EST  

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM USA PDT

Looking forward to chatting with you on the call.

When we started Anecdote in 2004 our web presence consisted entirely of this blog. We gradually built content, and a following, but every now and then people would say, "we really love your blog but what exactly do you do?" So for some time now we've been planning a website that described our consulting work.

So it is with quite a bit of excitement that this week we launch www.anecdote.com.

In the coming weeks you will also see a refresh of the blog. It looks a little tired next to the new website.

Love to know what you think.

In a fast paced workplace dominated by tasked focussed folk hell bent on ticking boxes and creating outputs, it can be difficult to get your story heard. The conversation can go something like this:

"OK, what's the next item on the agenda?"

The preceding conversation reminded Jean-Pierre of something they should really avoid that happened last year. "You know getting this job done really reminds me of what happened last year. Do you remember how Gary pulled together everyone from budget and wholesale and we had that crazy time creating the budget report?"

"We probably don't have time to reminisce. Trish, would you like to report your planned next actions."

There's a misconception that stories must be long-winded and don't add much value to a "business" conversation. Of course the very opposite is true. We've listed a few reasons on why stories are important to business but in this case stories provide concrete examples of what to do or what to avoid. Examples that people could put into practice. But before they will listen to your story they need to answer a couple of questions in the positive: is it relevant? is it plausible?

With these requirements in mind, here are 4 tips to get your story heard at work.

1. Preface your story with a relevance statement (a sentence or two) that highlights why the group should listen. "We don't want to make the disastrous mistake Gary and the team made last year," should get people in the previous example interested in the story.
2. Keep your story short. You can say a lot in 90 seconds so you should aim for a story that's about that length.
3. Avoid the 's' word. Steer clear of the terms 'stories' and 'storytelling' because they trigger the wrong mindsets in your listeners, ie. probably made up, for entertainment, unbusinesslike. Instead talk about real life experiences, things that happened, case studies or just launch into the telling (after your relevance statement) with a time marker (which clearly implies you are telling a story anyway) such as last year, in 2007, last week, on Tuesday etc.
4. Or course your story hasn't really been heard until people reflect on what was said so finish your story with a question to get your listeners talking about the story. You might ask, "I wonder what we can learn from that experience?" or "What do you think are some of the significant lessons?"

In the 1970s Irene Pepperberg was studying for her PhD at Harvard in theoretical chemistry but wasn't really loving it. Then she learned about the interesting work that was happening in training animals to communicate with humans. People were working with chimps and dolphins and amazing strides were being made. She was hooked and threw in her chemistry studies and switched to working with animals,

She decided her animal of choice would be a parrot. You would train them to talk and they lived for a long time. So Irene got a Grey Parrot and called him ALEx, which stood for Avian Learning Experiment.

But the research community thought she was nuts. Parrots had small brains, the size of a walnut, and weren't parrots merely pets anyway. How could she be objective in her research? Getting funding was hard but she managed to get a one year grant to get started.

In the first 10 years Alex learned 50 labels for objects. He could tell if an object was one of 7 colours, up to 5 shapes, whether the shape was 2-6 cornered and what material is was made from, such as wood.

Irene would ask him questions and Alex would answer.

"Alex, what's this?"

And he would say, "block."

"Good birdie, and what colour?"

"Blue."

"Good boy, and what shape?"

"Four corners."

"And what matter?"

"Wood."

But despite the progress Irene struggled to get significant support for her work. Grants would come one year at a time rather than the 3-4 years that was normal. Her marriage broke down but she kept going with her research with Alex.

When Alex was 15 they were asked to do a BBC radio interview. By this stage Alex was developing quite a personality because he could now ask questions and interact with Irene.

To start the interview Irene was in a room with the radio host where Alex could not hear what was happening. She told the audience that she was holding an orange square piece of wood. And then the audience hears Irene's heels, click, click, click, as she walks into the room with Alex.

"Alex I'm going to ask you some questions, we are going to do some work." Irene shows the wooden square and says, "What colour?"

And in his little birdie voice Alex says, "No, you tell me what shape."

"OK Alex, it's four cornered. Tell me what colour."

"Tell me what matter," says Alex.

"OK Alex it's wood. Can you tell me what colour?"

"No, how many?"

"Alex, there is only one toy here. Alex, come on, what colour?"

"No, tell me what shape."

"OK Alex, time out, you are misbehaving," and you hear Irene's heels click, clicking as she starts to walk out the door, giving him a time out, and then comes a little birdie voice,

"I'm sorry ... come here ... orange."

Alex and Irene became famous in both the popular press and among her academic colleagues. They had achieved so much to show how animals can communicate with humans.

Sadly Alex died in 2001 aged 30, twenty years younger that what Irene expected and she was devastated. But she showed everyone that amazing things can be done with time, persistence and a parrot with the brain the size of a walnut.

I heard this story on The Moth podcast. You can hear it here.

This evening I was reading Business Model Generation (thanks Tom Graves for sending me a copy). It's an approach for designing your business model and comparing it with others, such as your competitors. It is one of many approaches that illustrates the phenomenal effort that goes into developing business models and strategies. Yet despite all this strategic effort leaders often assume that everyone will just know and understand the strategy and their role in it.

Without strategic clarity, a clear understanding of the strategy that everyone knows, strategy development is a waste of time.

So here's a little test you can apply to your organisation. Don't be too alarmed if you fail many of the questions, many organisation do. But if you do, come and chat to us about strategic stories.

5 questions to test whether your organisation exhibits strategic clarity:

1. Can the executive team simply and clearly describe the strategy without referring to notes (or powerpoint slides) aided only by simple sketches they make themselves?
2. Does the executive team all believe in and describe the same strategy?
3. Do the decisions and actions leaders make confirm the strategy, especially what is said 'no' to?
4. Does everyone in the organisation knows the strategy and understands how their work supports it?
5. Does the organisation's significant others understand the strategy (partners, clients, suppliers) and how they play a part?