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The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World's Toughest Problems

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For those who are unfamiliar with the terms "outliers" and "positive deviance," the former refers to "an observation or phenomenon that is numerically distant from the rest of the data," an "extreme deviation from the mean." Malcolm Gladwell has written a book, Outliers: The Story of Success, in which he examines a number of individuals such as Bill Gates who become peak performers. As for "positive deviance," Richard Pasquale, Jerry Sternin, and Monique Sternin explain it as an awkward, oxymoronic term. "The concept is simple: look for outliers who succeed against all odds...The basic premise is this: (1) Solutions to seemingly intractable problems already exist, (2) they have been discovered by members of the community itself, and (3) these innovators (individual positive deviants) have succeeded even though they share the same constraints and barriers as others."

The co-authors acknowledge that the positive deviance process is not suitable for everything and suggest that "the process excels over most alternatives when addressing problems that "(1) are enmeshed in a complex social system, (2) require social and behavioral change, and (3) entail solutions that are rife with unforeseeable or unintended consequences." Also, this process should be at least considered when the given problems are viewed as "intractable" after prior solutions failed. Moreover, the process redirects attention from "what's wrong" to "what's right" - observable exceptions that succeed "against all odds."

I can personally attest that, on the basis of my extensive experience with corporate teams involved in process improvement initiatives (e.g. to reduce cycle time, improve first pass yield), the PD approach is almost always the best to take. Presumably the co-authors will not object if I suggest that "what doesn't work" and "what does work" could - and probably should - be used instead of "what's right" and "what's wrong." If I understand the authors (and I may not), they assert that the PD approach improves the chances of answering questions and solving problems that might not otherwise be accessible. Just as this PD approach is not suitable for every task or objective, it is also not suitable for everyone who could become involved.

So, when and how to decide which approach to use? The co-authors acknowledge that the standard model is probably the best course of action for roughly 70-80% of change problems encountered. "But when empirical experience leads us to conclude, 'we've tried everything and nothing works,' harnessing local understanding may be the only way to break the impasse." I agree while noting that (a) most change initiatives fail or at least fall far short of expectations and (b) most of those failures are the result of insufficient engagement but those "in the trenches" during the implementation process.

The bulk of the material in this book focuses on how the PD approach has helped to alleviate some of the world's toughest problems associated with childhood malnutrition in Vietnam, female circumcision in Egypt, hospital infections, "early wins, squandered gains" at Merck, and "girl soldiers" in Uganda. In these and other situations, the co-authors explain a natural progression of change within evolutionary systems that can be incorporated into the PD approach: change can disrupt prolonged equilibrium, "a precursor to death or stagnation"; an invitation to become involved in change requires those who accept to vacate a comfort zone (what James O'Toole characterizes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom") and share ownership of challenges to orthodoxies that create turbulence; change agents become self-organized as new forms and new solutions emerge from the inevitable tumult; and of course, there are unintended consequences because living systems "do not follow a linear path. One can disturb them in a manner that approximates a desired outcome - but never fully direct them."

I congratulate Richard Pasquale, Jerry Sternin, and Monique Sternin on a brilliant achievement. The information and insights they provide in abundance substantially increase their reader's (this reader's) understanding of "nature's way" (i.e. modularization, selective variation, preservation of cultural and biological DNA, and the natural progression of change) and, especially, the implications for those in positions of authority. They call for "nothing less than a role reversal in which experts become learners, teachers become students, and authority figures become catalysts for bottom-up change." In my opinion, this book is an operations manual for change initiatives that could perhaps save the human race. I invite those who challenge that assertion to read...and then re-read...this book.

I recommend this book without hesitation or limitation. The breadth of opportunity presented by positive deviance, as an idea, a mindset, and a methodology, is a bit staggering. Every profession or field can be affected - health care, economic development, organizational development, social activism, leadership development, politics, and so on.

It has already become a lens with which I think about and pursue my work. And it is an easy read, full of real world stories and examples.

Well done!

When charting a course, many of us are fond of saying "we don't know what we don't know." In this delightful book we are reminded that all too often in reality, "we don't know what we do know." Or, as Yogi said, "you can see a lot by looking." This is a book about just that: examining complex social systems, looking for unique positive behavior, coming to some level of understanding, and then propagating the better practice.

The book combs a lifetime of the most difficult kind of fieldwork by Jerry and Monique Sternin with a lifetime of teaching and writing by Richard Pascale to create a genuinely good book - one that is good on several levels. Leaders dealing with organizational change of the most difficult kind will find The Power of Positive Deviance to open up a world of tools that go often ignored in over structured change programs. But on an altogether different level it is a story book about remarkable case studies - childhood nutrition, female circumcision, deadly MRSA infections, and others - stories that are all about engagement, leadership, commitment and hope.

But it is not just a book about incredibly difficult problems; it is a book about how leaders can re-think their own organization by "re-looking." Easy to say and hard to do. The irony is that organizations spend enormous resources attacking negative deviance (as in "let's do a root cause analysis and fix the problem") but little or no effort looking for things that are "out of spec" in a positive direction. This is a book about how to do that - how to see what is happening, now to nurture it, and how to build a culture that embraces that kind of stimulus and change. For me that may have been the most powerful take-away: look for what is working - even better than you thought - figure out why and embrace it.

While the title of this book may put off some potential readers of who have developed allergies to social science language, it is actually a very creative and innovative book about knowledge. The authors have taken a concept that is reasonably well known and applied it to some very diverse settings to show how it can be usefully applied. The concept in my (over) simplified view can be explained as "some people in your society or organization may already be working in new and more valuable ways and you should pay attention to them and maybe spread the news about what they are doing" This book is a wonderful and valuable read-it is a valuable contribution to the growing literature on the democratization of knowledge, within organizations and in the world at large. Highly recommended.

Certain paradigms - child malnutrition in postwar Vietnam, female genital mutilation in Egypt, hospital MRSA infections in the US - seem to be intractable elements of their communities' intrinsic fabric and, thus, unchangeable and beyond repair. This book by Richard Pascale, Monique Sternin and the late Jerry Sternin demonstrates the reverse: Even stubborn social problems are correctable if you search for a solution inside the affected community. Each dysfunctional social behavior the authors studied yielded a functional exception: a "Positive Deviant." Communities can learn the wisdom of their deviating members and use their solutions to stamp out problems. In this readable, detailed, humane exploration of this deductive method and its dynamics, the authors show how to share hidden knowledge to create change. Using wide-ranging case studies, they explain how exceptions to the rule can lead to a common good. getAbstract recommends this book to those compelled by social dynamics or intent on solving community problems.

Positive Deviance is a concept that all leaders in post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction operations should be aware of. While many of the examples of Positive Deviance in action are taken from the Aid community and world, its application to a whole host of challenging problems is obvious. The approach (very well explained and supported with lessons learned), critically is a people-centric approach. As Charles Handy (British economist and management writer) once commented: "Check your management consultants at the door - you are the best people to solve your own problems - if you aren't, then you are in the wrong business". Pascale and the Sternins reinforce time and again, facilitating change is very different to leading change. As a facilitator, using the positive deviance approach involves encouraging those people who are at the center of experiencing a problem to search for and identify the "outliers", those amongst them who despite everything else, are coping with the problem better or who are less affected by the problem, and then getting the larger affected community, business, organization, enterprise to "watch closely", to observe the behaviours, practices, approaches of the outliers amongst them to note what is different - the positive deviants have found ways that can be shared widely amongst the entire community, and because it is the community that finds the distinctive practices, behaviours etc, they are more inclined (with appropriate sustained support - the book has examples of what happens when this is not provided),adopt the outlier practices. This book grips one of the fundamental failure points of change management - it works through those being changed taking ownership of the change process from the start, not being the group that change is "done unto", and being required to "buy into it". The book is thoughtfully constructed, easy to read in its chapters, and I would recommend it highly for anyone interested in transformative change.

The Sternins and Richard Pascale have done wonderful work finding realistic solutions to difficult problems, and this book present their efforts very well. The concept of Positive Deviance (PD) is simple and compelling enough, yet the work of PD is not easy. I appreciate the clear descriptions of what it takes to tap the creativity of the people directly involved in a problem to come up with effective remedies that last.