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The Outliers Among Us: Harnessing the Unexpected for Positive Change
The power of positive deviance
If you are not using ‘positive deviance,’ you may be missing out. But what is it?
Positive deviance departs from the typical, breaking from the norm and using unexpected behavior to produce incredible, far-reaching, positive effects.
Research shows outliers often succeed against all the odds, figuring out problems others cannot solve.
Back in the 1990s, Jerry Sternin was the director of the ‘Save the Children’ program in Vietnam, and he had a big problem.
His job was to find a way to feed impoverished villagers and their malnourished children, but his funding had been cut. Plans to bring in food, experts, and new agriculture techniques flew out the window.
Nevertheless, what he did next was a game-changer.
With no money to throw at the problem, the team enlisted locals’ help (after all, they were the real experts), asking them one simple question:
Who among them had the best-fed children?
What they asked amounted to who in the village broke from convention and could feed their children while others were starving.
