CHAPTER 3 PRACTICE POSITIVE DEVIANCE FOR EXTRAORDINARY SOCIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE Jerry Sternin ABSTRACT In his own words, Jerry Sternin, widely known as "the father of applied Positive Deviance, " explains the story of how an acute crisis led him to the practice of Positive Deviance (PD). He tells how he was propelled, over a twelve-year period to develop and amplify the approach which has enabled communities of more than 2.2 million people in Vietnam to sustain the reduction of childhood malnutrition and has been replicated in 24 other countries around the world. The chapter includes a step-by step approach to positive deviance, a formula for positive deviance, exceptional stories of change within societies, and a "how to" and "what-to-do" approach to positive deviance that could be applied within organizations, institutions, or your own society. SUMMARY Positive Deviance (PD) is based on the belief that in every community there are certain individuals/entities whose special practices or strategies enable them to find a better solution to a pervasive problem than their neighbors who have access to exactly the same resources. We call these individuals "positive deviants". The PD design provides a tool to enable the community to discover the positive deviants' uncommon, but demonstrably successful strategies. The community then analyzes those strategies retaining only those that are accessible to all its members. Finally, the community designs an intervention, enabling all its members to access and practice the newly discovered PD strategies. PRACTICE POSITIVE DEVIANCE FOR EXTRAORDINARY SOCIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE 21 INTRODUCTION Nasirudin, the great Sufi mystic, appears in different guises in different stories. In one story, he is an acknowledged smuggler. Every evening when Nasirudin arrives at the customs house, the inspectors feverishly search the contents of his donkey baskets to discover what he is smuggling. But, each day their efforts go un-rewarded. No matter how thoroughly they inspect, they find nothing but straw. The years go by and Nasirudin grows richer and richer. The customs officials vainly continue their daily search, more out of habit than hope of actually discov- ering the source of his wealth. Finally, Nasirudin, now an old mans, retires from his smuggling trade. One day he happens to meet the customs chief, who has now retired as well. "Tell me, Nasirudin," pleads his former adversary, "now that you have nothing to hide, and me nothing to find, what was it that you were smuggling all those years?" Nasirudin looks the customs chief in the eye, shrugs his shoulders, and replies, "Donkeys, of course!" In December of 1990, the confluence of a remarkable set of opportunities and potentially disastrous challenges compelled me to find the "donkeys" among the straw or risk professional ruin. POSITIVE DEVIANCE DEFINED "It's easier to ACT your way into a new way of THINKING, than to THINK your way into a new way of ACTING " "IS POSITIVE DEVIANCE JUST 'BENCHMARKING' AND `BEST PRACTICES' IN DISGUISE?" is a question I often hear when talking with people at corporations. The simple answer is "no". Best practices and benchmarking build off a proven success formula. There is nothing wrong with that except that onlookers often view the circumstances that foster the success as quite different from their own. The ex- amples of highly successful development models that have not made it past the pilot phase, or have failed during attempts to reach scale, are all too numerous. Given sufficient time, funding, technical expertise and control over inputs, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to create a successful prototype, be it a community development model, a car, or an efficient production team. Building on best prac- tices and customizing the prototype to meet the particular needs. climate and culture of the intended beneficiary/client virtually assures its success. Try replicating the model, however and in more cases than not, you are greeted with cries of "Not invented here:" "We're not them;" "Our cultural, religious, socio- economic climate is radically different from theirs;" or "It just won't work here" 22 THE CHANGE CHAMPION's FIELDGUIDE_________________________________________________ Why all the resistance? Because you are attempting to impose a model whose best-practice status was conceived and nurtured within the context of a foreign, care- fully constructed, and controlled best-case scenario. The very kernel of its success, its sensitivity to the idiosyncratic climate and culture of the intended beneficiary/ client, renders it sterile in less hospitable soil. I think that communities and corpo- rations alike mirror the body's immune defense response to what is perceived as the threat of foreign matter. Building upon a best-case scenario may ensure the success of the prototype, but usually spells the death knell for efforts at replication or scale. PD begins, therefore, with a "worst-case scenario." It identifies those individuals who should be the least likely to succeed, but somehow or other have managed to do just that! By choosing those least advantaged, who have no access to special resources, but yet have succeeded against all odds, PD guarantees the accessibility of their successful strategies. If they can do it, anyone can. And because the selection of the PDs comes from within a given community, PD ensures that "it is invented here;" "They are us, so if they can do it so can we;" and most convincingly, "it can work here, because it does!" POSITIVE DEVIANCE PROCESS 1. DEFINE the problem and what the outcome of a successful program to address it would look like. (This is usually stated in terms of behavior or a state of being.) Example: Define Problem: Poor children are malnourished (a state), or employees do not participate in company community projects (a behavior). Define Successful Program Outcome: Poor children would be well nourished or employees would participate in community projects. 2. DETERMINE if there are individuals with the community who already exhibit the desired behavior (i.e,. identify the presence of Positive Deviants). Example: There are already today poor families in the community who have wellnourished children or there are employees outside of the Corporate Responsibility office, who actively participate in corporate community projects. 3. DISCOVER their uncommon practices or strategies that enable the Positive Deviants to succeed when their neighbors do not. PRACTICE POSITIVE DEVIANCE FOR EXTRAORDINARY SOCIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE 23 Example: Poor families with well-nourished children add shrimps, crabs, and greens to their children's diet and feed them four times a day rather than twice. Or, employees who participate in community projects, tutor students online from their desks. They choose weekend projects which are targeted for families and enable them to participate while spending quality time with their wives and kids. 4. DESIGN an intervention enabling others in the community to access and practice the PD behaviors. Example: Bring mothers of malnourished children together to cook and feed the identified PD foods to their children. Require all moms to actually bring a handful of the new PD foods (shrimps, crabs, greens) everyday, thus creating a new habit. Create a roster of volunteer activities which can be done online fro m the employee's desk. Hold an online volunteer workshop for all employees. Encourage employees to volunteer by providing an extra one-half hour at lunchtime for those who volunteer for office-based community activities. BACKGROUND: DESPERATE TIMES LEAD TO DESPERATE ACTIONS In 1990, the US Save the Children (USSC} received an unprecedented invitation from the Government of Vietnam to create a program that would enable poor villages to solve the all-pervasive problem of childhood malnutrition. What was unprecedented about the invitation was that at that time the US government had a full embargo against Vietnam and had no diplomatic presence in the country. Save the Children asked me if I would leave my post as director of their Philippines program and go to Hanoi to open the Vietnam program. Although, (or was it because?) the challenge was so formidable, I eagerly accepted, and in December of 1990, I left for Hanoi along with my wife, Monique, and son, Sam, to become the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth American residents in that city. The challenges facing me as country director were overwhelming and had a programmatic as well as political nature. THE CHALLENGE In 1990, between sixty and seventy percent of all Vietnamese children under the age of suffered from some degree of malnutrition. It was clear to the government that traditional supplemental feeding programs (implemented by indigenous and international development organizations) provided temporary solutions at best and 24 THE CHANGE CHAMPION'S FIELDGUIDE________________________________________ were dramatically unsustainable. Although there were significant gains in children's nutritional status during the period of program implementation, they were all but lost after the programs ended. The reasons for the failure were not difficult to discern: a) villagers were passive program beneficiaries who were neither encouraged nor required to change any of the underlying behaviors/practices which led to their children's malnutrition; b) the nutritional gains which were realized during the program's implementation were completely based on external food resources which were no longer accessible to villagers after the implementing agency departed; and c) the major focus of the program was on providing additional food, with little or no attention paid to improving the all-important child caring, and health-seeking behaviors associated with good nutritional status. In short, "they came, they fed, they left" and nothing had changed. On the political front, many officials were not at all happy to have Save the Children; an American non-governmental organization (NGO) working in Vietnam at the very time the US government was actively trying to punish the country through its embargo.