Posts Tagged ‘positive deviance’
Friday, June 26th, 2009
By Michael McCauley
Sometimes I find positive deviants in places I might not have thought to look.
If there’s an industry that’s perceived to lack innovation and creativity, it would be estate planning . Estate planning clients are very risk-averse. They want to preserve their wealth, and maximize the value that is passed down to the next generation. Are there positive deviants even in this conservative, risk-averse industry? You bet! Lee Brower is a great example.
I just finished reading Brower’s new book “The Brower Quadrant.” I have had the privilege of knowing Lee for several years now. He is incredibly engaging in person and his book is a great insight into his underlying beliefs. His “prescription” for living is something that anyone can benefit from, whether you’re in your teens or your 70’s.
Lee has worked in the estate planning industry for many years, mainly focusing on high net worth clients. What makes him a positive deviant? Like positive deviants that we see in other industries, he has taken the conventional wisdoms and thrown them out the window. Instead of conceiving of estate planning as simply shielding financial assets, he sees it as optimizing all of a family’s assets, including their collective wisdom and experiences. In the estate planning industry, this is a pretty radical notion.
Has he been successful? Absolutely! Again like other positive deviants, he has not only challenged the conventional wisdoms, he has created a vision around his approach that engages others.
Do you think that your industry or specialty is too “cookie cutter” or too procedure-driven to have positive deviants? Do you think that performance has already been optimized in your company? Think again! If someone can begin a revolution in the estate planning industry, why not in your industry? You just have to keep your eyes open and really look for them.
Positive deviants are out there.
Tags: estate planning, Lee Brower, positive deviance
Posted in best practices, leadership, management consulting, positive deviance, positive deviants | No Comments »
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
By Michael McCauley
In her recent column, “How Questions Can Drive Leadership Success“ in the weekly of the National League of Cities , Dr. Barbara Mackoff posits that asking the right questions can drive municipal leadership success. I couldn’t agree more!
Dr. Mackoff seeks to encourage the use of the wisdom of positive deviants. Instead of asking, ”What’s wrong here?” she suggests that we ask, ”What do we want more of here?”
How refreshing!
I just finished reading Lee Brower’s new book, The Brower Quadrant . In it Lee supports Mackoff’s approach, saying, “To be true leaders we need to ask different questions. Asking different questions leads us to different answers. Different answers lead us to different, and often better, results.”
Next, Mackoff suggests that we look around and see who is already solving this problem. Again, this is a positive deviance approach. In any organization, there are people who consistently and systematically outperform everyone else. These are the people we should be focusing on. They are the ones that can help us with work through our challenges and adopt the successful behaviors they have made them so successful.
There are several additional suggestions that Mackoff provides in her column to help determine if the solution defined by the positive deviants is the right one for your particular city and to ensure that we get the most leverage possible.
Tags: Barbara Mackoff, leadership, Lee Brower, National League of Cities, positive deviance, The Brower Quadrant
Posted in best practices, leadership, management consulting, positive deviance, positive deviants, positive leadership | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
By William Seidman
Recently, I had the good fortune to work again with writer and sales expert (at Portfolio Decisionware) Karen Stevens and ShadeTree Technology’s founder and CEO, Jim Banks. These are two great sales people. They are true positive deviants: they’re unusually successful at what they do, consistently outperform, and think freshly and creatively.
It is amazing to me how complete and conscious their mental models of the sales process are. I was talking with Jim while he showed me features of his technology on his website. I couldn’t follow him because he was thinking so fast and he was showing me only the surface aspects of his approach. There’s a lot to learn!
I did some Cerebyte-style Wisdom Discovery - a piece-by-piece analysis of what she does and how she does it - with Karen, and she revealed a completely different model of sales: a model based on being a detective. Turns out that detective work greatly enhances results…
Positive deviants are just incredible-they think in such different ways. Getting their mental models is not really the issue; getting others to pay attention to their thinking is the real challenge.
Tags: Cerebyte, Jim Banks, Karen Stevens, outperform, PDWare, Portfolio Decisionware, positive deviance, Sales, ShadeTree Technology, wisdom discovery
Posted in best practices, management consulting, organizational change, personal change, positive deviance, positive deviants, wisdom discovery | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
By William Seidman
Tribal knowledge is important, and important to the work of training managers. Seth Godin explains it here (the video is 12 minutes long). The transmittal of tribal knowledge was on our minds at the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI)’s annual meeting earlier this month in Orlando, Florida. I attended a presentation by Jon Revelos . The focus of the training was the use of stories in training. There was a great discussion about the value of story-based learning when holding and delivering critical tribal knowledge. In the presentation, we talked about ways to show the value of a narrative to management by emphasizing positive deviant stories. Positive deviance stories proved increasingly valuable because they are richer in content and have a more direct connection to performance. We also talked about the use of stories when motivating and sustaining responses, which effectively connects stories to impact.
Jon is now driving a compliance training program — these can be pretty dry. He is looking for ways to bring stories into compliance training. Again, positive deviants are an opportunity because they treat compliance as a fundamental tool to achieving a greater social good. All of this is consistent with our work with positive deviance, and it was an altogether interesting and exciting presentation.
Tags: ISPI, Jon Revelos, positive deviance, positive deviant stories, Seth Godin, story-based learning, tribal knowledge
Posted in organizational change, personal change, positive deviance, positive deviants, story-based learning, wisdom transfer | No Comments »
Monday, March 23rd, 2009
By William Seidman
What do we have to do with colorectal cancer screening? We’re about positive deviance, organizational change, digital coaching, and management consulting, right? Yes - and it’s especially gratifying when our program is used to save lives.
We work with Peter Guttchen at Organizational Resources Group (ORG), a longtime partner of Cerebyte. ORG uses our program, renamed for their purposes “IdeaNet Solution” (not to be confused with a lot of other “IdeaNet”s out there) - which in their words, “builds a sturdy bridge between planning and doing.”
Organizational Resources Group works closely with the American Cancer Society on a program for the screening of colorectal cancer. This disease is nearly always curable if detected early. But people are resistant to the idea of getting a colonoscopy, the single most effective screen for the disease. The screening test (recommended for anyone over age 50) is comparatively expensive, requires some preparation, and is done under light sedation. It saves lives. Even though colonoscopies need be done only once every ten years for healthy people, there is resistance toward any screening that reminds people of cancer.
Using IdeaNet, The American Cancer Society is creating a program that will bring many more people into routine screening. This has terrific potential to save lives, and we’re thrilled to play a part.
Tags: American Cancer Society, cancer, colonoscopy, colorectal cancer, Digital Coaching, management consulting, organizational change, Organizational Resources Group, Peter Guttchen, positive deviance
Posted in digital coaching technology, management consulting | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009
By William Seidman
I recently had a discussion with a colleague about how people learn best. He favors letting people explore, with minimal structure and a lot of choice. It’s a permissive parenting and teaching style which may work with some people, some of the time. But our experience has shown us that people often don’t have the ability to choose, especially between two reasonably good options.
Lack of knowledge scares them. New situations scare them. Fear of the unknown can be powerful inhibitor.
Most people, when learning something new, really benefit from and like to have a good role model. Positive deviants are the best role models.
Tags: learning, Making choices, positive deviance
Posted in personal change, positive deviance, positive deviants | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
By William Seidman
Yesterday I led a webinar for the Ohio Heartland Chapter of the International Society for Performance Improvement. Julie Snyder and Tom Roach of “Leadership Beyond Limits” helped make it happen, and Suki McIntosh of OHISPI hosted.
Our use of the science of positive deviance, best practices research, and change initiatives inspired a key question: Does our scientific approach to change frighten people who are reluctant to change?
My answer: Of course it does! People who don’t want to change resist any method that promises to help them to change.
Our change process - any change process - works only when people want to do something differently and are willing to work to make it happen. Training, videos, digital coaching technology, webinars, binders … none of this drives change with organizations and people who want to stay the same and work in the same old ways. Cerebyte’s success comes from working with organizations, companies, and people who want to change - and want to know how to do it and make it “stick.”
Tags: best practices, digital coaching technology, Julie Snyder, Leadership Beyond Limits, neuroscience and change, OHISPI, organizational change, positive deviance, Suki McIntosh, Tom Rausch
Posted in best practices, getting change to "stick", management consulting, neuroscience, organizational change, personal change | No Comments »
Sunday, February 8th, 2009
By William Seidman
One of our partners in the work we do is Edward Ferris, Managing Partner at Charlesmore, a management consulting and organizational strategic change firm. One of the biggest challenges in organizational strategy is implementation - and this is where we at Cerebyte have so much to offer.
Edward has been doing a lot of work in India, second only to China in growth in Asia. The global recession that started in the US is less noticeable in these two countries. China has been dialed back, but with four times the population of the US and a growing (rather than shrinking) middle class, we can still consider it strong.
The reality of vast internal markets in these two countries (its citizens actually consume what their countries produce) means that many businesses in China and India can continue to grow without, in fact, playing globally. This internal growth isn’t going to be perpetual, but for now it’s pretty significant.
We are looking to companies in China and India for some great opportunities for our coaching for positive deviance, organizational change, and best practices - in whatever sector they are in.
Tags: best practices, Cerebyte, Charlesmore, China, Edward Ferris, global recession, implementation, India, internal markets, management consulting, organizational change, organizational strategic change, positive deviance
Posted in best practices, business, management consulting, organizational change, positive deviance | No Comments »
Sunday, January 25th, 2009
By Michael McCauley
The January 19, 2009 issue of Newsweek has an interesting article on wisdom, “Don’t Forget the Owls.” Several researchers in fields ranging from neuroscience to art, music, and law have recently received more that $2.7 million in grants to figure out what wisdom really is.
The 38 approved proposals, conducted under the auspices of the University of Chicago, will focus on finding wisdom in such diverse areas as computer algorithms, classical literature, pheromones, and ant colonies. Why look in such unusual places? The program’s directors, John Cacioppo and Howard Nusbaum say, “We’re trying to think out of the box.”
Surprisingly, this far-reaching study won’t be studying the wisdom of positive deviants, those individuals who perform far above the norm in their areas of expertise. It seems only logical that, if you want to understand what wisdom is, you would study the people who have been most successful at doing whatever it is they do. The very definition of a positive deviant implies that they possess significant wisdom. That’s why, in order for an organization to make any significant changes to its culture, it must work with its positive deviants. Determining what they are doing differently from everyone else - the keys to their success - is the first step to positive organizational change.
The study of the insect world and the arts may yield new insights as to the nature of wisdom, but academia should also study the positive deviants, a huge source of wisdom in our world.
Tags: ant colonies, Howard Nusbaum, John Cacioppo, Newsweek, pheromones, positive deviance, positive deviants, University of Chicago, wisdom, “Don’t Forget the Owls”
Posted in positive deviance, positive deviants, wisdom discovery | No Comments »
Friday, December 19th, 2008
By William Seidman
Jerry Sternin, Brooklyn-born innovator, humanist, and pioneer of Positive Deviance and the Positive Deviance Initiative, died peacefully on December 11th at the age of 70. Visiting Lecturer and Director of the Positive Deviance Initiative at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts, he and his wife, Monique Sternin, had also received a Ford Foundation Grant and a Rockefeller Foundation Grant to study and to further the applications of Positive Deviance.
The Sternins’ work reached back to the work of Marian Zeitlin at Tufts in the 1980’s. Eventually the Sternins would work with communities in Southeast Asia and Africa, helping fight rural malnutrition there. Dozens of international and regional or local nongovernmental organizations (INGOs and NGOs) utilize Positive Deviance-based findings and programs in more than 30 countries.
The truth of Sternin’s findings, and his radical approach to change, was simple enough: Real change begins on the inside - whether a family, a community, or an organization. He studied families and communities and proved that his theory worked. He died just several days before Positive Deviance, and his work to reduce the spread of the hospital-borne staph infection MRSA, was profiled in the New York Times Magazine’s “Year in Ideas” issue.
One of Sternin’s maxims, reported in the Times piece, asks us to solve problems by thinking about how we act, rather than acting upon how we think. We at Cerebyte use this in our coaching and in our assessments of the organizations we are fortunate enough to help. The challenge is to motivate others - the people who are not the positive deviants - to adapt the practices that work, and that have come from within the organization and deserve recognition and, then, adaptation.
Tags: Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Jerry Sternin, Marian Zeitlin, Monique Sternin, MRSA, positive deviance, Tufts
Posted in positive deviance | No Comments »
