also (sorry this is super nerdy), this article hits upon probably my philosophy for the epic movement next year, if i had to come up with one.
"Positive Deviant" by David Dorsey
essentially: students will reach students better than i ever will. it's the difference between being inside and being outside... and though i'll definitely encompass gray area (especially since i WILL be taking a class), i need to realize my own strengths and weaknesses through that and continually remember that i exist to work myself out of a job.
such is the life of a short term missionary... and at this point that's what i consider myself to be.
the goal isnt to multiply people like myself. it's to have others realize their lives in God's hands - that he's gifted them with unique characteristics, interests and strengths, and that those things can be used for his kingdom. i dont want to mold people in drones. i want them to be strong and secure in who they are and the transformation into a life abundant.
example:
"The traditional model for social and organizational change doesn't work," says Sternin, 62. "It never has. You can't bring permanent solutions in from outside." Maybe the problem is with the whole model for how change can actually happen. Maybe the problem is that you can't import change from the outside in. Instead, you have to find small, successful but "deviant" practices that are already working in the organization and amplify them. Maybe, just maybe, the answer is already alive in the organization -- and change comes when you find it.
At least that's what Sternin thinks. And he should know -- not because he's charged corporations millions of dollars to lead them through change efforts but because he has helped save thousands of children's lives by embracing an approach to change that intentionally, forcefully, dramatically, and successfully flies in the face of conventional wisdom.
Sternin's approach traces back to work done by Marian Zeitlin at Tufts University in the late 1980s. At the time, Zeitlin was doing research in hospitals in developing communities to find out why a small handful of malnourished children -- the "deviants" -- were doing much better than the majority. What enabled some children to rehabilitate more quickly than others?
From this research came the idea of "amplifying positive deviance" -- a theory that Sternin and his wife, Monique, put to the test in the 1990s in a dramatically different setting: Vietnam. As staff members of Save the Children, the Sternins helped create a Vietnamese branch of the organization in response to a request by the Vietnamese government to help fight the problem of malnutrition in the country's villages. But once there, the reception accorded the Sternins and Save the Children by the Vietnamese government was less than cordial: They had six months to produce results -- and then it was time to head home.
Faced with a difficult task and an impossible time frame, Sternin reached for an unconventional solution: amplifying positive deviance. "We call conventional wisdom about malnutrition 'true but useless,' or 'TBU,' " says Sternin, sitting high above White Pond, not far from Walden Pond, near Boston. Sternin is on one of his brief stays at his home in the United States before he returns to his work with Save the Children in Myanmar. "It's all about poor sanitation, ignorance, food-distribution patterns, poverty, and a lack of access to good water. Millions of kids can't wait for those issues to be addressed. While you are there, things improve, but as soon as you leave, things revert back to the baseline. Nothing has changed. The solutions are yours. The resources are yours. When you leave, everything else leaves with you."
When Sternin and his wife first arrived in Vietnam, nearly half of the country's children were malnourished. The TBU model simply wouldn't work -- not in the six months that they had to make a difference. Half in desperation, half in inspiration, Sternin turned to the theory of amplifying positive deviance: In every community, organization, or social group, there are individuals whose exceptional behaviors or practices enable them to get better results than their neighbors with the exact same resources. Without realizing it, these "positive deviants" have discovered the path to success for the entire group -- that is, if their secrets can be analyzed, isolated, and then shared with the rest of the group.
i'm going to keep that term in mind....
their steps:
1) "When Sternin and his wife arrived in Hanoi, they started with a clean slate, a beginner's mind. They were ready to listen, not to talk. They knew little about Vietnam, but they were certain that the only way to come up with a plan to fight malnutrition was to discover it within the Vietnamese village culture itself."
2) "When defining the community that you want to change, you shouldn't mix people from different social groups or departments. Your aim shouldn't be to produce a lively conversation among diverse individuals, and you shouldn't mix and match people to jump-start the flow of creative ideas. Everyone in the group that you want to help change must identify with the others in the group. Everyone must face the same challenges and rely on the same set of resources to come up with answers. If group members don't see themselves as working on identical challenges with identical sets of resources, then positive deviance won't work."
3) "Set up a situation in which people -- including those who need to change the way that they operate -- can discover, on their own, a better way to do things. Raise questions, but let the group come up with the answers on its own. Establish research guidelines that isolate and analyze the behavior of positive deviants inside the group itself -- and that highlight the superior results that the study achieves."
4) "Before you can recognize how the positive deviants stray from conventional wisdom, you first have to understand clearly what the accepted behavior is. Establish what it is that most group members do. Clarify the conventional wisdom of the average and of the majority."
5) "As you track how all people in the group go about their tasks, and as you begin to list the behaviors that they all have in common, the positive deviants will naturally emerge. At the same time, it will become clear that the deviants have found a better way; their results will prove it. If you've defined your community effectively (in such a way that everyone has the exact same set of resources), then the people who need to change can see how to do it -- if you help them identify the positive deviants."
6) "The next step is critical," Sternin says. "Once you find deviant behaviors, don't tell people about them. It's not a transfer of knowledge. It's not about importing best practices from somewhere else. It's about changing behavior. You design an intervention that requires and enables people to access and to act on these new premises. You enable people to practice a new behavior, not to sit in a class learning about it."
Sternin makes a point of emphasizing the distinction: Don't teach new knowledge -- encourage new behavior. Let the people who have discovered the deviations spread the word in their group. Don't require adherence to the new practices, but do offer incentives for it.
7) Post the results, show how they were achieved, and let other groups develop their own curiosity about them. Celebrate success when you achieve it. Go back on a periodic basis and observe how different groups have changed, and track the results quantitatively to show how positive deviance works. Chip away at conventional wisdom, and gradually alter low expectations by showing, in indisputable terms, the results that come with doing things differently.
8) Make the whole process cyclical. Once people discover effective ways to deviate from the norm, and once those methods have become common practice, it's time to do another study to find out how the best performers in the group are operating now. Chances are that they've discovered new deviations from the new norm. The bell curve of performance keeps moving up, as long as you disseminate the best deviations across the curve and continue to discover new examples of positive deviance among the next group of best performers.
finally, prolific surgeon, writer and author atul gawande's commencement speech for the harvard medical school graduating class of 2004. "ask an unscripted question... see if you can keep the conversation going."
"Positive Deviant" by David Dorsey
essentially: students will reach students better than i ever will. it's the difference between being inside and being outside... and though i'll definitely encompass gray area (especially since i WILL be taking a class), i need to realize my own strengths and weaknesses through that and continually remember that i exist to work myself out of a job.
such is the life of a short term missionary... and at this point that's what i consider myself to be.
the goal isnt to multiply people like myself. it's to have others realize their lives in God's hands - that he's gifted them with unique characteristics, interests and strengths, and that those things can be used for his kingdom. i dont want to mold people in drones. i want them to be strong and secure in who they are and the transformation into a life abundant.
example:
"The traditional model for social and organizational change doesn't work," says Sternin, 62. "It never has. You can't bring permanent solutions in from outside." Maybe the problem is with the whole model for how change can actually happen. Maybe the problem is that you can't import change from the outside in. Instead, you have to find small, successful but "deviant" practices that are already working in the organization and amplify them. Maybe, just maybe, the answer is already alive in the organization -- and change comes when you find it.
At least that's what Sternin thinks. And he should know -- not because he's charged corporations millions of dollars to lead them through change efforts but because he has helped save thousands of children's lives by embracing an approach to change that intentionally, forcefully, dramatically, and successfully flies in the face of conventional wisdom.
Sternin's approach traces back to work done by Marian Zeitlin at Tufts University in the late 1980s. At the time, Zeitlin was doing research in hospitals in developing communities to find out why a small handful of malnourished children -- the "deviants" -- were doing much better than the majority. What enabled some children to rehabilitate more quickly than others?
From this research came the idea of "amplifying positive deviance" -- a theory that Sternin and his wife, Monique, put to the test in the 1990s in a dramatically different setting: Vietnam. As staff members of Save the Children, the Sternins helped create a Vietnamese branch of the organization in response to a request by the Vietnamese government to help fight the problem of malnutrition in the country's villages. But once there, the reception accorded the Sternins and Save the Children by the Vietnamese government was less than cordial: They had six months to produce results -- and then it was time to head home.
Faced with a difficult task and an impossible time frame, Sternin reached for an unconventional solution: amplifying positive deviance. "We call conventional wisdom about malnutrition 'true but useless,' or 'TBU,' " says Sternin, sitting high above White Pond, not far from Walden Pond, near Boston. Sternin is on one of his brief stays at his home in the United States before he returns to his work with Save the Children in Myanmar. "It's all about poor sanitation, ignorance, food-distribution patterns, poverty, and a lack of access to good water. Millions of kids can't wait for those issues to be addressed. While you are there, things improve, but as soon as you leave, things revert back to the baseline. Nothing has changed. The solutions are yours. The resources are yours. When you leave, everything else leaves with you."
When Sternin and his wife first arrived in Vietnam, nearly half of the country's children were malnourished. The TBU model simply wouldn't work -- not in the six months that they had to make a difference. Half in desperation, half in inspiration, Sternin turned to the theory of amplifying positive deviance: In every community, organization, or social group, there are individuals whose exceptional behaviors or practices enable them to get better results than their neighbors with the exact same resources. Without realizing it, these "positive deviants" have discovered the path to success for the entire group -- that is, if their secrets can be analyzed, isolated, and then shared with the rest of the group.
i'm going to keep that term in mind....
their steps:
1) "When Sternin and his wife arrived in Hanoi, they started with a clean slate, a beginner's mind. They were ready to listen, not to talk. They knew little about Vietnam, but they were certain that the only way to come up with a plan to fight malnutrition was to discover it within the Vietnamese village culture itself."
2) "When defining the community that you want to change, you shouldn't mix people from different social groups or departments. Your aim shouldn't be to produce a lively conversation among diverse individuals, and you shouldn't mix and match people to jump-start the flow of creative ideas. Everyone in the group that you want to help change must identify with the others in the group. Everyone must face the same challenges and rely on the same set of resources to come up with answers. If group members don't see themselves as working on identical challenges with identical sets of resources, then positive deviance won't work."
3) "Set up a situation in which people -- including those who need to change the way that they operate -- can discover, on their own, a better way to do things. Raise questions, but let the group come up with the answers on its own. Establish research guidelines that isolate and analyze the behavior of positive deviants inside the group itself -- and that highlight the superior results that the study achieves."
4) "Before you can recognize how the positive deviants stray from conventional wisdom, you first have to understand clearly what the accepted behavior is. Establish what it is that most group members do. Clarify the conventional wisdom of the average and of the majority."
5) "As you track how all people in the group go about their tasks, and as you begin to list the behaviors that they all have in common, the positive deviants will naturally emerge. At the same time, it will become clear that the deviants have found a better way; their results will prove it. If you've defined your community effectively (in such a way that everyone has the exact same set of resources), then the people who need to change can see how to do it -- if you help them identify the positive deviants."
6) "The next step is critical," Sternin says. "Once you find deviant behaviors, don't tell people about them. It's not a transfer of knowledge. It's not about importing best practices from somewhere else. It's about changing behavior. You design an intervention that requires and enables people to access and to act on these new premises. You enable people to practice a new behavior, not to sit in a class learning about it."
Sternin makes a point of emphasizing the distinction: Don't teach new knowledge -- encourage new behavior. Let the people who have discovered the deviations spread the word in their group. Don't require adherence to the new practices, but do offer incentives for it.
7) Post the results, show how they were achieved, and let other groups develop their own curiosity about them. Celebrate success when you achieve it. Go back on a periodic basis and observe how different groups have changed, and track the results quantitatively to show how positive deviance works. Chip away at conventional wisdom, and gradually alter low expectations by showing, in indisputable terms, the results that come with doing things differently.
8) Make the whole process cyclical. Once people discover effective ways to deviate from the norm, and once those methods have become common practice, it's time to do another study to find out how the best performers in the group are operating now. Chances are that they've discovered new deviations from the new norm. The bell curve of performance keeps moving up, as long as you disseminate the best deviations across the curve and continue to discover new examples of positive deviance among the next group of best performers.
finally, prolific surgeon, writer and author atul gawande's commencement speech for the harvard medical school graduating class of 2004. "ask an unscripted question... see if you can keep the conversation going."
posted by steph at
10:48:00 AM
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