RTV # 48 Find the bright spots.

A Year of Raising the Village. Week #48 - Find the Bright Spots

At Raising the Village - we are proponents of strength based thinking and strength based approaches. So when we first heard about the work of Jerry and Monique Sternin, we were intrigued by a new strength based change model - one that "flips the standard protocol on its head" - called positive deviance.

In their book entitled The Power of Positive Deviance: How unlikely innovators solve the world's toughest problems, authors Richard Pascale, Jerry and Monique Sternin outline a highly village-like approach to tackling complex issues. They write;

Positive Deviance is based on the observation that in every community there are certain individuals or groups whose uncommon behaviors and strategies enable them to find better solutions to problems than their peers, while having access to the same resources and facing similar or worse challenges.
The Positive Deviance approach is an asset-based, problem-solving, and community-driven approach that enables the community to discover these successful behaviors and strategies and develop a plan of action to promote their adoption by all concerned.

Their discovery of this method was in Vietnam, 1990, working with very poor villages whose children suffered from malnutrition. The cause of the malnutrition was systemic - lack of clean water, immense poverty, no social support beyond the occasional food handout, a collapsed health care system, a US trade embargo against Vietnam, and the inevitable political hurdles.


This fascinating story is told in their book, and also in Switch by Dan and Chip Heath (another great read about change). The positive deviant practices were found by interviewing families who, despite the villages' dire situation, had children who were well nourished. They called these families bright spots. What made their practices different was identified by the villagers and local volunteers. The practices that could be replicated were then introduced to the village. The consultants played a background role in the process as the villages, themselves, found strategies and implemented them.

The result? A 65-80% reduction in childhood malnutrition in 22 Vietnamese provinces with a total population of 2.3 million. And the change (drum roll please) is a sustainable one!

Real, sustainable change, according to the Sternins, begins with new behaviors rather than new knowledge. And since these new behaviors come from real people – rather than from top down or fancy consultants – there’s real ownership of the solution rather then merely a buy-in. In this process, the very people whose behavior needs to change to solve the problem are the ones who discover the solution.

At first we thought - well good for them but that kind of thing wouldn't work in North America! The book goes on to tell a number of stories from other places around the world - including Pennsylvania.

So...this week's village raising strategy borrows from the thinking of positive deviance. As community builders, let us re-frame how we approach community change, and consider how we can support a process that finds and spreads the positive practices of the bright spots.

We would LOVE to learn from your experience! Please share (through comments or by email) your stories about finding positive deviants and enabling them to spark sustainable change.