The Power of Positive Deviance

Erika is a coach with the Canadian Positive Deviance Project as well a long time facilitator who helps people bring about positive change in groups which have complex systems. On a personal note I would also like to say that she is naturally disarming and cheery which just may be one of the biggest advantages that she has in the field of PD.

Origin of Positive Deviance

The husband and wife team of Jerry and Monique Sternin formalized what we consider PD is today. Jerry is described as the world’s leading expert in the application of PD and his wife Monique chairs the Positive Deviance Institute at Tufts University in Massachusetts. PD has only been in existence in an official capacity since the 1990′s.

Defining Positive Deviance

The Positive Deviance Initiative website states that, “PD 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.” But if anything, this is only a brief overview about what PD’s main belief is.

PD allows people in large groups to have a bottom up approach to solving agreed upon issues. PD believes that the people that ‘touch’ the problem have the wisdom to solve it. This type of problem solving is used to discover positive actions (mostly considered the minutia) that had previously gone unnoticed. But these actions can be quantifiably measured for progress. PD allows new relationships to form that allow the participants to ‘act their way to a new way of thinking’. In fact, Erika said that if the facilitator/coach is too aggressive with their help that the process of PD can actually fall apart. The idea is to allow the people affected to change their destinies by discovering for themselves what is wrong with their present system and by replacing some of their problematic actions with new habits.

The Approach

The PD model is fundamentally different than traditional “needs-based” problem solving. Not only is the strength of this model derived from the understanding of what the problem is and a willingness to change it, the structure of the change comes from the bottom up:

Positive Deviance Model

Whereas most traditional models have a team with a hierarchy of decision makers on top, PD allows for the flow of information to be decided on by the actual workers first and then the management or overseers are obliged to remove any barriers. At this point Erika stated that one of the most difficult parts of this process is to get the managers to say “yes”.

Throughout this process PD coaches must stay out of the way of the workers and just build or support structures to facilitate ongoing conversations. Since PD is about engaging people, it is usually slow at the beginning and patience is required. The coaches look for the following three things:

1. Positively deviant people and behaviours
2. Innovations that enable and encourage new behaviours or overcome barriers
3. The problem (which inspires people to action)

What the coaches have found is that about 5% of people in any group do things differently to create positive outcomes and it is these people that are fighting the status quo to create a benefit. The PD process strengthens over time as the workers generate mass awareness and actively change their behaviours. Erika quoted several times that “Knowledge doesn’t change behaviour” and that therefore PD encourages changes in relationships.

Typical Stages of the Process

Although every project may be vastly different there are 5 distilled stages to the PD process:

• Defining the problem and understanding what the desired outcome will be.
• Determining if there are PD’s
• Discovering where they are and what they are doing
• Developing new practices
• Disseminating the information (and then leaving quickly)

Bonus Tool/Methodology

A Tool for Positive Deviance: TRIZ

TRIZ is actually a Russian acronym meaning ‘a problem-solving, analysis and forecasting tool derived from the study of patterns of invention in the global patent literature’. (for more information follow the link above)

Simply put this tool is similar to applying a devil’s advocate like approach for problems. Most people understand very clearly how things work in their job and so usually they cannot offer a solution to a problem that exists because they can’t understand what they are doing wrong. But instead, if one tries to help define how a problem can grow (no matter how obvious or silly), a comprehensive list of actions can be made to detail the issues. When the list is complete, the facilitator then asks the group what they haven’t seen or experienced and crosses those items of the list. The one’s that remain are the issues that must be dealt with.

Our mini-case study:
We decided to think about the best ways for our group to pass on a cold virus amongst ourselves that evening. Within a minute we came up with the following ideas:

• hugs/kisses, high-5′s, coughing on others, a buffet, sharing of food, passing a bottle, pepper to aid in sneezing, addition of little children to the room, not washing hands

We then started to cross out the ones that were not done. What was left (circled) for us was our personal recipe for passing on a cold virus for that evening.

Final Thoughts

I was amazed at some of the real world case studies that Erika brought in to share. The PD process has been very successful in extremely large and complex systems in which people know the problem and they want it to change. I would encourage people to read up about some of the amazing global case studies that are shared on the Positive Deviance Initiative website. The stories are inspiring and well worth the read. Along those lines here are a couple of more links to take advantage of:

• The Official PD Workbook
• The Plexus Institute

Appreciative Inquiry Cycle

The Basics

Appreciative Inquiry aims to search for the best in people, their organizations, and applicable situations which affect each of their immediate worlds. It is a systematic discovery that allows a ‘best of scenario’ approach through the practice of asking questions that support an ecosystem’s positive outlook and the ability to increase its potential and harness positive forward momentum. AI assumes that every problem has a rich ecology of purely inspirational but untapped components. Instead of negativisms which spawn criticisms that often nullify opportunities, AI leads groups to iteratively discover, dream and design their own destinies. Appreciative Inquiry should also be applicable, provocative and collaborative.

In practice, Appreciative Inquiry is the art of crafting and asking questions that will strengthen the ability of an ecosystem to better anticipate, capture and amplify positive potential. ‘Positive change’ is the core of this practice which focuses on the following four processes:

1. Discover | The identification of organizational processes that work well.
2. Dream | The envisioning of processes that would work well in the future.
3. Design | Planning and prioritizing processes that would work well.
4. Destiny | The implementation (execution) of the proposed design.

A Case Study – OCADU

On June 09, 2010 I participated in a DwD session led by Dr. Douglas Reid, a strategy professor at Queen’s University School of Business. Our goal that night was to help OCAD with their rebranding.

In its past OCAD had difficulties in transitioning from the ‘Ontario College of Art’ to the ‘Ontario College of Art and Design’ and now they were faced with the new name of the ‘Ontario College of Art and Design University’. This problem was detailed by an OCADU Director and is best summed up by mentioning that there is great passion for the University at all levels.

So for the next couple of hours we spent the time determining the conditions, forces and factors that made OCADU a great experience. We thought about the process first and then decided that 3 characteristics would best help the challenge of creating a new identity for the school. These characteristics were:

• Receptivity to all ideas
• An iterative-based solution
• The idea of ‘fun’

In short we decided to take in everything that was said, we didn’t rush to conclusions because we knew the solution was going to be iterative and we fully embraced the process. We talked a lot about what OCADU was doing well and what it could do even better; we never dwelled on its mistakes, or invited any ‘blamestorming’. We worked hard at asking useful questions that helped to reveal more about the positive nature of the University and did so without having to justify (in a defensive position) anyone’s ideas. Very quickly we got to a common ground and even if it wasn’t always entirely on point, many of the tangents we went on were productive. What we came up with was the following:

Positive thoughts about OCADU

Our conclusion after this exercise was not about what needed to be done differently this time or what needed fixing. Instead the Appreciative Inquiry process lead us to name the positive attributes of the University and further distill which of these could best be harnessed for marketing the change from a College to a University label. The OCADU Director left with a plethora of thoughts and positive insights into the merit of the institution and now has a generous platform on which to begin the new marketing transition process.

On a personal note this is only the third or fourth time I have used this process but it certainly gave some of the best results I have ever witnessed. I believe the difference in this session was that the participating group signed on to the AI methodology and understood its potential from the start. Thanks to everyone who participated and thank you to OCADU for the real life challenge.

KAOSPilot’s Intelligent Ecology

Uffe gave us only a quick synopsis about KAOSPilot and referenced it as a school whose purpose is to ‘create positive societal change through personal growth and enterprise’. He also gave us a small diagram on where he believes KAOSPilot is situated. This he calls ‘The Intelligent Ecology’.

But for the majority of his talk Uffe Elbaek led a frank discussion for three hours on his experience of birthing an extremely large and socially sensitive project from point zero to fruition in a condensed time line of only two and a half years. During this time Uffe had to not only deal with the many third parties involved, such as the political organizations, vendors, sponsors, and citizens of the city of Copenhagen but also the very basics of putting together a team from scratch. I mention this because when he started the team it was only one person deep – himself. As the key organizer he had to start by resolving some of the key issues such as time, money and people. Was there enough time to get this event off the ground, was there enough money to support the event and who were the people that would support and participate in the Games to make them a success.

He viewed all these questions as if he was forging long-term relationships with every stakeholder that he encountered. He wanted his team to become the nucleus of a communications hub for lively two way discussions and not just a central hub where directives were given. He encouraged the organizational structure to help strengthen conversations between the stakeholders themselves. This he believed helped augment the stakeholders’ relationships within the greater Games community.

Because of his belief in openness Uffe didn’t start this undertaking with his own concept of what the Games should be but instead he developed a plan of action that he calls the ‘Dehok Project Model’.

It starts with the ‘idea’ and ends up with the ‘how’ – how to implement. You will of course notice in the diagram that the ‘concept’ does not get recognized until the ‘need, purpose and value’ get realized. As a side note he quoted a common saying in Denmark for ‘purpose’ which I will have to paraphrase: “Your purpose must be so succinct you can pee it in the snow”. (this one I will always remember)

Uffe believes that the Dehok model is useful to combat what he calls the ‘Project Paradox’, whereby most projects start with an ‘end date’ but very little accumulated knowledge with which to make proper decisions. Here the goal is to compress the gap between the decision and knowledge curve as best as possible.

The Dehok model allows the core team to realize an open outcome rather than a predestined one because it indulges varied experiences to manage change. More specifically, this model does not focus on the final concept but instead encourages the team to focus on a consensus allowing them to work together in an atmosphere containing less internal conflict. He believes, as do I (and most of us I imagine), that a cohesive team structure is best united to solve a set of problems when they all believe in their common goals. This process starts with an idea but consistently appreciates the requisite variety of ideas that develops through different personalities. Of course the end goal is a mutually beneficial outcome.

This talk was one of the better more comprehensive ones that I have ever been to. My suggestion would be to go see him if you have the opportunity. Thanks Uffe.

The other week the following question was asked of the group: “What does (a) design(er) offer to a process of transformational change?” As a group of individuals we spent some time writing down our independent thoughts about this question on post-it notes and then pooled our ideas on a wall. We each talked briefly about our ideas and then afterwards our group attempted to coalesce our results into a minimal number of unnamed but broadly defined categories.

Results

These results are uneditied and in their raw form taken from the post-it notes.

Group A
Open Mind
Deep Listening
Overcoming the fear
Space to challenge assumptions

Group B
Cross Discipline
Fresh Perspective
Consensus

Group C
Inclusive
Collaborative
Different Perspectives
Collaboration

Group D
Make Decisions
Curration
Intuitive
Efficient Organization of Ideas
Analysis
Understanding of when to keep going and when to leave it alone

Group E
Work optimally within constraints
Functional Solutions
Constraints can be operational or creative

Group F
Appropriation/Adaptation
Ideas can be borrowed and adapted

Group G
No Starting Point
Sense of Randomness
Divergence then Convergence
Adapt to the Unexpected
Welcome emergence
Explode it open then narrow it back

Group H
Contextualize
Synthesize

Group I
Iteration
Refine, review, refine, review

Group J
Elegant
Esthetics
Harmony

Group K
“Simplexity”
Make it clear, coherent and comprehendible
Feels effortless
Clarity

Group L
Multiple formats of presentation
Give Ideas Context
Communicate for mutual understanding and progress
Tell ideas as stories
Illustrative explanations

After inspecting this list I can say we failed at keeping the groups down to a minimum, but I think the content of the list speaks volumes about how design can help create solutions to issues. Too often we think of design as an end result but it should be part of the conversation that helps us evolve better solutions. Just as it is a designer’s job to create something worth taking notice of, when applied properly, the process of design can help concepts or ideas be more readily understood.