Photo by Danielle MacInnes
THE BIG IDEA: within any community, no matter how dire the problem or how limited the resources, there are some folks who have already figured it out. Finding them and identifying what they do differently is the key. It’s called Positive Deviation, and it’s a potent concept for world-changers.
“Positive Deviants” help a community (or organization, or family) they are a part of to better understand itself: by contrasting expected norms with unexpected ones, a community can choose behaviors that create more of what it actually wants.
Case in point: In the 1990’s Jerry and Monique Sternin worked in Vietnam to alleviate child malnutrition. Over time they realized that even in the poorest villages, not all children were malnourished. Looking closer, they noticed that those children’s families had adopted certain practices that were different than others:
Feeding kids even when they were ill with diarrhea (not the community norm)
Supplementing their children’s diets with “low-status” foods that other families chose not to eat
Feeding their kids more frequently during day
This gave the community a whole new set of options and questions to grapple with, malnutrition began to lessen, and Positive Deviance as a theory base was born. There’s so much more to dig into, but the point in this moment:
Community self-awareness is essential and – when we move out of ‘expert’ and ‘best practice’ mode – the most natural, human approach in the world. We know ourselves best. And we don’t know others nearly as well as they know themselves. As influencers, then, the powerful question becomes:
How are you helping the people around you to know themselves better? More deeply? Contradictions, flaws and all?