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Posts Tagged ‘positive deviants’

5,127 Prototypes? True Positive Deviants Don’t Give Up

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

By Michael McCauley

I was reflecting on Malcolm Gladwell’s assertion in Outliers: The Story of Success that true expertise requires 10,000 hours of practice. Then I read about James Dyson, father of the modern, bagless vacuum cleaner. His story is  amazing, and he is a true positive deviant. To get his invention to market took him 14 years, multiple lawsuits, and more than 5,000 prototypes!

Dyson credits his confidence in himself and his idea for pulling him through the tough times. Early on he believed that people succeeded only if they had the best of everything - the best idea, the best connections, the best facilities, etc. But then, through a chance meeting with another entrepreneur, he realized that to be successful you had to follow your heart - if he thought it was a good idea, then he should pursue it and not worry about what people thought.

 Another positive deviant, Henry Ford, once said that “”Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” He was a prolific inventor and was awarded more than 160 U.S. patents in his lifetime. But they didn’t come easy. His first automobile company went out of business. He then was forced to leave his second automobile company, and went through financing troubles with his third. However, through it all, he knew his idea was the right one - an inexpensive car for the masses - and he wouldn’t give up.

There are numerous other stories of those who persevered. Whether it’s Dyson with his 5,000+ prototypes or Ford with his multiple tries at forming a successful company, one of the things that makes positive deviants successful is their unending patience, persistence,  and their “never give up” attitude. Today’s world seems to reward just the opposite - we want everything done quickly.

 How many of us are willing to stick with an idea long enough to see it through, even against overwhelming odds? But that’s exactly what positive deviants do - they never give up!

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To Understand the True Nature of Wisdom, Study Positive Deviants

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.

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The Other Side of Positive Deviance

Thursday, December 4th, 2008

By Michael McCauley

In his new book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell looks at the other side of positive deviance. Gladwell asks, How do people become top performers? He attributes success to three factors: hard work, innate ability, and luck.

We in the US may focus too much on innate abiity and not enough on either hard work or luck. How often do we admire a star athlete or a great lecturer and think that it must just come naturally to them?
While ability plays an important role, it is hard work — Gladwell cites the “10,000 hours” one needs before expecting success — that enables positive deviants to exploit their abilities and achieve true success.

The importance of luck is also interesting. Gladwell asserts that some people are just in the right place at the right time. Bill Gates attended Lakeside, a private high school, in Seattle whiich had an active computer club in 1968, earlier than most schools. We all know the rest of the story.

I would posit, though, that many positive deviants create their own “luck,” By staying open to new ideas, networking with peers, and trying different things, they maximize the opportunities they have and thereby the “luck” to which they are exposed.

The balancing of these components — ability, hard work, and luck –makes positive deviant wisdom so valuable. It’s also why organizations must consistently and systematically discover and fuly utilize the wisdom of their own people if they are to remain competitive.

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The Technology of Hope and Change

Friday, November 14th, 2008

By William Seidman

One of President-elect Obama’s messages is about the importance of hope, and its importance to real change. Another portion of his message is about the importance of technology to governing and to communication. His campaign’s use of the internet underscores this idea. In fact, Cerebyte’s technology is a form of hope - a way to achieve more than the organizations we meet and work with ever thought possible.

Positive deviants seek to achieve the possible, which is similar to the idea of hope. Our technology uses positive visualization so that each person can achieve the possibilities of change envisioned by the positive deviants - so that people move into hope - often from frustration or limited vision.

Our technology enables many people at once to experience this hope.

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Why Stop at Positive Deviance?

Sunday, October 19th, 2008

By William Seidman

Why stop at positive deviance?
Positive deviants - “star performers” - bring value to any organization. Their knowledge and, often, passion can spread to others and have a marked positive effect. But what’s the value of knowledge that isn’t spread around? Not much. We focus on positive deviants and we find that passionate commitment to a greater social good is a core element of the reason they are PDs.

Capturing the passion and communicating that passion is the key to getting others to initially respond. Finally, for others to really learn and practice the positive deviance content, people have to have a focused set of experiences that cause the new positive deviant knowledge to be internalized.

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Affirming Your Values to Reduce Stress: Much More than Cheerleading

Friday, October 17th, 2008

 
By William Seidman

Stephanie West Allen is a tremendous source of good information about neuroscience and mediation, and has also written about the relationship between affirming one’s values and reducing work stress.

A research report that really aligns with our findings, “Affirmation of Personal Values Buffers Neuroendocrine and Psychological Stress Responses,” details the impact of personal affirmations on stress levels. The study was conducted at UCLA and UC Santa Barbara by Psychologist J. David Creswell, et al.

The research found that stress is reduced when people affirm their values before doing a stressful activity. Work is very stressful for many people, which is why we have people begin by affirming in writing and verbally their commitment to creating some type of greater good from their work. This creates engagement and stress visibly decreases. It’s a motivator, too.

We’ve also found that review of a passionate statement from the positive deviants by a user of the system creates engagement, which reduces stress, and also seem to positively motivate people. Can a mirror neuron effect occur solely though contact with positive deviant language?

By William Seidman

Stephanie West Allen is a tremendous source of good information about neuroscience and mediation, and has also written about the relationship between affirming one’s values and reducing work stress. 

A research report that really aligns with our findings, “Affirmation of Personal Values Buffers Neuroendocrine and Psychological Stress Responses,” details the impact of personal affirmations on stress levels. The study was conducted at UCLA and UC Santa Barbara by Psychologist J. David Creswell, et al.

The research found that stress is reduced when people affirm their values before doing a stressful activity.   Work is very stressful for many people, which is why we have people begin by affirming in writing and verbally their commitment to creating some type of greater good from their work. This creates engagement and stress visibly decreases. It’s a motivator, too.

We’ve also found that review of a passionate statement from the positive deviants by a user of the system creates engagement, which reduces stress, and also seem to positively motivate people. Can a mirror neuroneffect occur solely though contact with positive deviant language?

 

 

 

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Telecommuting or Goofing Off?

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

By William Seidman

I recently read an interesting article on telecommuting, which names the biggest issue as trust that people are actually working - or are they goofing off? I ran into this recently with a new company that wanted to partner with us. The company makes software that tracks the time that someone uses MS Word or Excel files in their systems.

The main target? Telecommuters. The foundation of their system is that managers don’t trust that telecommuters will work as hard as people in the office.

Putting aside the highly inflated perceptions about how much people work in an office (remember coffee machines and water coolers), the issue is trust.

If people are motivated by a commitment to a social or moral good, as they are when they work with positive deviants, they will work very hard.

When they create their own work schedule and track their own progress, they will work very hard.

We coach people remotely - from Oregon to Israel and Malaysia - and the work always gets done. Our system creates and nurtures the trust that makes telecommuting not just fuel-efficient, but sensible and easy.

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Tension and Fear are Poor Catalysts for Change

Friday, September 19th, 2008

By William Seidman

These are incredibly turbulent times: a critical national election here in the US, a plunging stock market, turbulence in the economy, and wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia - to name a few.

It’s well-documented by Jason Zweig, Stephanie West Allen, and others that our brains are wired to put us into a state of tension and fear in these conditions.

It’s all also well-documented that this state is not a good basis for making business or any other important decisions, because it’s too much about our emotional state and not enough about analysis - which isn’t to say that our emotions are “wrong,” or an unreliable basis for decsion-making.

An effective best practices program can mitigate some of the impacts of turbulence by engraining the the responses to fear deep enough into people’s thought patterns that they act in their best interests, even if extremely scared.

The keys are to focus on a set of underlying principles that positive deviants use, and have enough repetition of the principles so that they can govern response even during periods of extreme stress.

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The Learning Style of Positive Deviants

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

By Michael McCauley

Positive Deviance is usually limited to the domain that’s the focus of a person’s interest and innovation. This doesn’t mean that positive deviants focus on just one thing. Instead, they are always looking for general knowledge that can be used elsewhere - often in their field. They have an intellectual curiousity and continue to learn and grow.

Some of the greatest positive deviants have gained their insights by applying learning from other - related or unrelated - areas to challenges they face in their area of focus. Think about the inventors, the tinkerers, the folks who can do a lot with a little - This “crossdomain” appilication can provide some of the most insightful, and useful, innovation. Wilson Greatbach applied his knowledge of engineering, electronics, and human biology to the problem of heart blockage. The result? His invention of the pacemaker. Marvin Camras trained as an engineer and was motivated to record his cousin singing opera. He ended up inventing magnetic tale recording.

Positive deviants never really know where their next great “ah ha!” moment will come from. They’re observing, thinking, learning - looking for new ideas that just might come in handy.

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About this blog

Friday, July 11th, 2008

Welcome to Cerebyte’s Blog, our ” Wisdom Journal.” This site was created to provide a source of web-based information and conversation on current ideas on organizational and personal change. How does it happen? What makes it so difficult? The hard parts, the fun parts - it’s all grist for our mill. Have you had an experience with change in your organization that was less than positive? We like to freely exchange ideas and look forward to exploring with you. We are William Seidman, Michael McCauley, and Rick Grbavac, and we’ll be sharing our blog with guests sometimes, too.

Do you remember some of the companies that couldn’t change? I do. They’re gone now. Some were even the “late, great,” and I was sad to see them go. Best practices which were, in fact, static may have done them in. Organizations transform themselves by changing the people in them. Either you hire new people or get the ones you have to change. But what about “doing things the old way”? When those ways work, they must be transmitted to people coming in. “Positive deviants” are the people in your organization or group who, somehow, and maybe quirkily, manage to get it right - with the same tools as everyone else. The tricky thing to figure out is how to utilize those valuable people to teach and transmit their wisdom to the rest of us. We at Cerebyte love this stuff and hope you’ll join the conversation! - Bill

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