I was sent a copy of this book by its author John Larish. It had immediate interest for me because in the early 90s I ran a photo library with my dear friend Peter Fox and we were actively digitising our collection using Kodak technology. They were at the forefront of the photographic industry back then yet were able to let that strategic advantage slip through their fingers.

This book is written by an insider who has already written much about the company. It's done in a chatty, informal way giving you the feeling you are sitting with John with a cuppa having a good old yarn.

He details the many lost opportunities: Polaroid, photocopying and of course digital photography.

Out of Focus by John Larish

This is just one of many example Barrie Cassidy gives of Kevin Rudd being, as Professor Robert Sutton calls, a bosshole: someone who leaves followers disrespected, emotionally damaged and de-energized. Cassidy paints a dismal portrait of Rudd as someone who is primarily concerned for himself, someone who seeks the limelight and someone who is obsessed with trying to control everything that might impact his image. According to Cassidy the dislike for Rudd among his colleagues was so great that when the challenge came to overthrow him as prime minister the numbers flowed to Gillard so quickly and overwhelmingly in her support there wasn't even a need for a vote.

I'm really hoping that Kevin Rudd's behaviour detailed in this book is an exception in politics because we can't expect our country to be governed effectively if our prime minister intimidates his staff and ministerial colleagues to the point where no one is willing to disagree or debate the issues which are going to affect millions of Australian's lives. It seams to me that outrageous bosshole behaviour is diminishing rapidly in our corporations I'm pleased to say. In most cases (I wish I could say in all cases) bosses are held to account. That's not to say we can't slow down our efforts to call appalling behaviour. I just hope this book helps those people in politics to realise it's time to dial back the arrogance and direct their power to making a difference for their constituents.

I read this book in two days, which is unusual for me. I found the stories gripping. It's an easy read. The first two-thirds chronicle the period leading up to the 2010 election from the point where Malcolm Turnbull's loses the opposition leadership and the role Godwin Gretch. Then the rise of Tony Abbot at the new opposition leader and his shaky start. But the majority of part 1 of The Party Thieves is focussed on Kevin Rudd. His 2007 election win, his temper and bad behaviour, Julia's rise, and the dismissal. The last third is a diary of the 2010 election interspersed with recollections from Barrie about his days as Bob Hawke's press secretary.

I suspect this book is going to create a lot of controversy. Highly recommend it.

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.

What if a single warrior could have the knowledge of thousands?

Two weeks ago I gave an after dinner speech to the Australian Army Knowledge Management conference. Just before the speech I was introduced to the guy that has responsibility for running the Battle Command Knowledge System, which hosts CompanyCommand along with fifty other forums, Colonel Charles (Chuck) Burnett. I was a bit taken aback as I had a copy of CompanyCommand in my hand and was intending to use it as an example during the talk.

I was fortunate to spend some time talking with Colonel Burnett the next morning and he was very generous with his time. I was particularly interested to hear that one of his greatest challenges is continually justifying the value of the forums like CompanyCommand to his chain of command. Not that having to justify the value of a community of practice is a new thing; its just that having to justify the value of one of the most visible CoP success stories in the world seemed remarkable.

To tackle this, he conducted a survey last year to collect examples of how the communities of practice were making a difference. There were 2500 responses; problems overcome, mistakes avoided, money saved ... lives saved. The collected stories are now a key part of communicating the value of the CoPs (we have previously blogged about this technique here and here).

I will finish this post with a quote from the CompanyCommand book:

It became clear to me...that CompanyCommand.com was not about the website. Rather it was about a community of professionals sharing and learning in a fast-paced dynamic operational context; the technology simply enabled the process. In fact, the more I thought about and observed the...forum, the more I realised that the core technology of the forum was the people and the conversations, not the computer.

Now, I just need to wangle an invitation to the US Army KM conference in October this year ☺

Carolyn runs a company, Connect Marketing, focussed on helping small businesses be brilliant at marketing. We met in 2008 when we were both guests on the Sky News Money Makers program hosted by David Koch. We were speaking on various aspect of collaboration.

And in case you are wondering, we met at Coogee beach.

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Our mind is full of beliefs, assumptions and values which affect what we do and how we do it. Much of what we assume comes from our experiences, especially if we've told ourselves and others the story of what happen and what it means for us. Our stories help us remember and embed our assumptions.¹ If we want to change our actions we need new stories that create and embed a new belief, assumption or value. We need to see it and feel it before we will change.²

One can take a systematic approach to triggering these new stories by first uncovering the assumptions you or your group live by and then designing simple experiments to test these assumptions. Kegan and Lahey do a terrific job describing a process for uncovering assumptions in Immunity to Change.³ They don’t mention stories in their approach but as I was reading their practical chapters at the end of the book it was screaming out to me that what they were advocating was a systematic way to trigger stories that could replace the unhelpful ones. The aim is to create new stories for yourself that help you to act in a new way.

Our assumptions and beliefs nearly always serve a purpose because if they didn’t they would have gone the way of the Dodo. But sometimes these same assumptions hold us back. Here is an example of a big assumption that really seemed to limit what this person thought was possible.

It was clear she’d had a bad experience and was operating under the assumption that you must be guarded and careful with whatever you say to those in power otherwise you might loose your job. Now here was an assumption worth testing.

The first step is to start to think like George Costanza from the Seinfeld sitcom when he decided to do the opposite of everything he would normally do. As Jerry says in the episode, “if every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.” So take the assumption “I assume if I’m frank and open with my boss, he will get angry” and design a test that does the opposite of what the assumption would advise and do the opposite. It’s important to note that your experiment should be safe. Avoid tackling assumptions where you believe an action will result in death, being fired, losing a relationship etc. Break down these more dramatic assumptions into smaller, less dramatic ones and test around the edges at first.

Then, most importantly, notice what happens. Kegan and Lahey suggest you plan for the results and think about the things that will indicate what happened and whether they tell you something new about the assumption. What did you think and feel? What did others think and feel? Which outcomes would really lead you to question the validity of your assumption?

Strong assumptions are unlikely to yield in a single test. You will need to conduct a series of experiments and reflect deeply on the results. Each experiment will create a new story for you and the ones that produce something counter to your preconceived ideas, the ones that are unanticipated will be the ones you will tell others and a change in mindset and behaviour will follow. Of course all this assumes you really want to change.

References

1. Schank, R.C. & Berman, T.R. 2002, 'The Pervasive Role of Stories in Knowledge and Action', in MC Green, JJ Strange & TC Brock (eds), Narrative Impact: Social and Cognitive Foundations, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahway, New Jersey.

2. Kotter, J.P. & Cohen, D.S. 2002, The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Massachusetts.

3. Kegan, R. & Lahey, L.L. 2009, Immunity to Change: How to Overcome it and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization, Harvard Business Press, Boston, Massachusetts.

4. Patterson, K., Grenny, J., Maxfield, D., McMillan, R. & Switzler, A. 2008, Influencer: The Power To Change Anything, McGraw Hill, New York.

It was going to be difficult to surpass their last book, Made to Stick, where they showed us that people wont pay attention unless our message is simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional and a story. And it was going to be even harder practising what they preached to make Switch stick. But I'm delighted to report that they've pulled it off and have created an engaging and useful work on how to change things when change is hard.

Switch is arranged around an analogy (immediately visual and sticky). When we are making a decision we're often torn between our rational, logical reasons and our emotional, intuitive feelings. Chip and Dan ask us to imagine an Elephant and its Rider (the mahout). The Rider represents the rational and logical. Tell the Rider what to do, provide a good argument and the Rider will do it. The Elephant, on the other hand, represents our emotions, our gut response. The Rider might like to avoid that hamburger and chips but there is very little the Rider can do if the Elephant really wants it (OK, so I'm telling you what happened last night). To complete their analogy they include the Path they are travelling along. If the Rider can direct the Elephant down a well prepared Path then there is a good chance for change. The Path might represent, for example, access to user friendly technology or effective office space design. Switch is arranged in three parts: Direct the Rider, Motivate the Elephant and Shape the Path.

On Saturday in 2000 ... In 1990 ... A doctor was asked ... Crystal Jones joined Teach for America in 2003 ... These are the first few words of the first four chapters and apart from the last chapter each starts with a story. And within each chapter are more stories. These stories are well chosen and illustrate the behaviours we need to adopt to effect change. The whole book is focussed on behaviours and rightly makes the point that change comes from changing people's behaviour. That's the level you need to take. A leader cannot afford to stay aloof. For change to occur they need to get into the detail as well as stay strategic.

As a business storyteller Switch is a treasure trove of stories to be retold in organisations. Last week I was running a strategy workshop and I wanted the group to identify a set of guiding principles for their organisation. So I told them the story of the Brazilian railway that was going broke and how Alexandre Behring and his CFO created four rules to guide everyone's spending behaviour to get them out of debt. I shared the rules with the participants and they knew exactly what I meant and were able to easily create their own guiding principles. Strategy execution is a change initiative and Chip and Dan advise us to script the critical moves.

Here is the structure of the book. Notice how each section is a pointer to behaviour.

Direct the Rider: Find the bright spots; Script the critical moves; Point to the destination

Motivate the Elephant: Find the feeling; Shrink the Change; Grow your people

Shape the Path: Tweak the environment; Build habits; Rally the herd

On page 58 we encounter our first clinic and I must admit I groaned slightly when I bumped into it. Getting me to do exercises while I'm reading is normally a pain. I was going to just skip the clinic but decided to have a read and the thing I noticed was that the repetition of the ideas in another context was really helping me to remember. I knew repetition is important but I guess the story approach sucked me in and reinforced it.

One the first things I check when I get a book like Switch is to see whether it is comprehensively referenced and what type of studies are being referred to (if any). Switch passed with flying colours. The endnotes are expansive and they share a swag of evidence for each point they make and often used the psychological experiments as stories rather than just presenting the facts.

Switch is a book that will be read by senior leaders. It's engaging, well written, funny in parts and insightful. If you're an change practitioner in an organisation I recommend you buy a handful of copies and give them to your leaders. In my experience they wont read it right away but then they'll jump on a flight and start and wont stop. At this point you'll not only have a supporter but someone who will compel your involvement. Malcolm Gladwell has served me well in the past and Switch is in the same league.

Dan and Chip Heath have a new book coming out (Feb) and they sent me a copy of the first chapter. The title is Switch and like their last best seller, Made to Stick, it promises to be a keeper. It's all about how to motivate people to change. The first chapter has left an indelible impression because of the strong image they conjured to explain what we need to consider to influence change: the Mahout (they call it The Rider), the Elephant and the Path.

Changing behaviour involves a struggle between our rational and well-reasoned thinking and our emotional urges. The mahout represents the rational and reasoned. If the mahout clearly understands where he needs to go he'll direct his charge that way.

The elephant represents emotional urges. While the elephant might be happy to go the way the mahout directs, if she decides to go another direction there is not a single thing the mahout can do about it.

The path represents anything that might impede or assist the mahout and the elephant to get to where they are going. You want the path to be as easy to follow as possible.

So how does this translate to a business setting? Imagine you're a leader of an organisation that's decided to compete on exemplary customer service. To engage the mahout you need a clear rationale describing why customer service is so important. You would find the research that shows the factors that influence customer service and illustrate to the mahout in everyone the concrete actions you want them to take. Engaging the Mahout, however, is the easy part and the one most organisations spend most of their time doing. The hard bit is the elephant.

Engaging the elephant, the emotion, will take action and stories about things that happened. You might start by telling some stories of customer service blunders to grab their attention. Here's one that happened to me recently. It's important you find stories from the organisation. Real life examples. Negative stories, however, often in themselves wont change behaviour, partly because people don't know exactly what they need to do to get it right. So you also need to find stories of great customer service from your company. We call them Gibson stories because William Gibson (the sci-fi writer) once said: "the future is already here; it's just unevenly distributed." You just need to find these stories that represent your company's future. Tell them. Get people to discuss them. Inspire that elephant.

After engaging the mahout and the elephant you need to pave the path and remove anything that's getting in the way of progress. This might be a rewards system that's encouraging the wrong behaviour. Or it might be an IT system that is unintegrated and hard for call centre staff to use slowing down their support for customers. There are a myriad of obstacles to remove from the path.

Don't forget, the Heath brothers were the authors of Made to Stick which dedicates a chapter to the power of stories. Chapter one is full of great stories. Some you might have already heard, such as the 424 gloves that save a company millions or the 100,000 lives saves by the Donald Berwick and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

The Heath brothers conclude the chapter by saying:

Whether the switch you seek is in your family, in your charity, in your organization, or in society at large, you’ll get there by making three things happen. You’ll direct the Rider, motivate the Elephant, and shape the Path.

Photo credit: goofball12

Seth Godin has a new ebook out called What Matters Now. It consists of 80 or so thought leaders each with a page to talk about an idea that matters to them. Each idea is summed up in a single word such as Dignity, Autonomy, Attention, Difference. You can download the ebook here.

Dan and Chip Heath have a page with the title, Change. They incorporate three ideas in their one-pager that is dear to our work: stories, positive deviance and changing behaviour. Here is what they wrote.

We’re wired to focus on what’s not working. But Murphy asked, “What IS working, today, and how can we do more of it?”

You’re probably trying to change things at home or at work. Stop agonizing about what’s not working. Instead, ask yourself, “What’s working well, right now, and how can I do more of it?”

Chip and Dan Heath are the authors of Made to Stick and the soon-to-be-released book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard.

It's not a coincidence that the Heath brothers decided to tell a story to illustrate their idea and try and persuade the reader to adopt a different approach to change. They dedicate a chapter to the power of stories in their book, Made to Stick and conclude the book saying that most of the other effects described in the other chapters are encapsulated in stories. So let's look at some of the features of this story and why it might be effective.

The simple story structure creates an image for us of both Bobby and Murphy (and let's not forget Ms. Smith). I can see Bobby sitting on a swivel chair restless and bored. If the story creates vivid images for us there is a good chance it will grab our attention and we will remember it. We've all seen Bobbys in our life, so it's easy to picture him in this story.

Names are important. Humans care about other humans. We want to know the names. Case studies often lack names and suffer for it. Again it creates attention through authenticity and empathy for people.

Also notice how they start with the story and then provide the advice. They didn't want the reader to slip into a confirmation bias where we automatically discount suggestions as our first instinct. The story first allows us to pull the idea to us, own the idea ourselves before a suggestion is made by the experts.

Digital Habitats: Stewarding Technology for Communities by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White and John D. Smith

I’m often the technology steward for communities of practice (CoP). I create the Ning spaces and configure ‘em, I setup the email lists, I work out whether we should have a wiki or a blog or a discussion forum or some other combination of communication technologies. As you can see I’m quite a geek: I really do love it.

And whenever I get stuck I’ll contact my friends at CPSquare: Etienne, Nancy and John. And while I know they all have a deep understanding of CoPs I tend to ask Etienne the theory questions, Nancy the technology questions and John the group dynamics questions. Together they are a formidable team. Sadly I think their new book, Digital Habitats, will give them strong cause to suggest I should RTFM: Read The Flipping Manual.

Digital Habitats (DH) has a single goal: to help the reader understand the role of technology steward in cultivating a community of practice: what is it, why you would do it, are you are cut out for it, how to do it and where to find help. But it is not a shoppers guide nor a roadmap for technology selection.

There is a lovely photo of Etienne, Nancy and John in the preface and I feel that reading DH is like have a friendly conversation with them on a sunny balcony. They provide the context, a little theory, then lots of practical tips supported by real life stories to ground it and make it memorable.

For me there are three ideas in this book I have already put into practice with great effect.

Experience shows us that all know that communities of practice are different, and sometimes poles apart. DH introduces the idea of community orientations to help us understand where the emphasis might lie and therefore what technologies make most sense.

There are 9 orientations: meetings, open-ended conversations, projects, content, access to expertise, relationships, individual participation, community participation, serving a context. With my engineering communities, for example, I’ve asked the members where they see their current orientation and then ask them to identify where they would like to be. A community might start off very content focussed but realise that the real benefits will come from providing access to expertise. By understanding this orientation gap the technology steward can start introducing tools to facilitate the future orientation needs.

The second idea I find useful is how my friends (I was going to say ‘the authors’ but it didn’t feel right) describe the range of activities a community might be engaged in. The axis range from informal to formal and learning from to learning with. This diagram helps me ensure I’m thinking about the full range of possibilities when helping communities members design their CoP.

DH envisages three types of readers: deep divers, attentive practitioners and just do it-ers. The just do it-ers are directed to chapter 10 which contains an action notebook. It is a series of checklists to help you think about the role of the technology steward. What I love about chapter 10 is that I can jump in and start learning about the role by doing things and then come back to the descriptions contained in the rest of the book when it is more meaningful for me. DH makes the job of finding the relevant descriptions in the other chapters easy through a multitude of cross-links from chapter 10 to the relevant book section.

There are very few practical community of practice books available (I can think of 3 others) and Etienne has already had a hand in writing one of them. So Digital Habitats is a valuable addition to this exclusive club. It’s highly readable and practical and will definitely help make a difference to the quality of your technology support for your community of practice.