Positive deviants

As staff members of Save the Children, Jerry and Monique Sternin were given a difficult assignment in the 1990s to help the Vietnamese branch of the organization to fight the problem of malnutrition in the country’s villages. They were given six months and about $500,000 to accomplish what the UN was unable to do after several years and $2 billion dollars.

They realized that throwing more food and money at the problem would not solve it long-term, and giving lots of Western advice might only help until they left, and then the advice would leave with them. It would take unconventional wisdom to accomplish their objective. It was their lack of resources that caused them to find an innovative solution they were able to use with great success.

Jerry realized that the solution had to come from within the community, so he paid careful attention and noticed that within each of the villages they visited there were always a few children who were not malnourished. The mothers of these children were suffering from the same conditions as other villagers, yet they had somehow achieved much better results for their children.

Sternin labeled the mothers of the well-nourished children as “positive deviants”. He referred to a deviant as someone who achieves positive results outside of the norm because they deviated from typical behavior. In a standard bell-curve distribution, these deviants would be in the top 1 percent.

What they did differently produced a better result for their children, and Sternin believed that if he could identify it and then get the other mothers to adopt the positive deviants’ behaviors, it could save many children. The system he designed was so successful that malnutrition dropped by 65 percent-85 percent throughout the villages involved with his program. Again, this was with limited resources, in hostile conditions, and primarily accomplished through changing patterns of behavior.

The lessons that worked to save starving children in Vietnam could prove useful for your business in the CNMI. Many businesses are starving from financial “malnutrition”. With the pullout of JAL and the recently announced layoffs and flight changes by Continental Airlines, it is only a matter of time before many other business owners find themselves “starved” of customers, or individuals may literally be starving from lack of employment.

Yet, in the midst of this economic upheaval that will touch the lives of most individuals and families on the islands, there are those business owners who represent the positive deviants of the community. They are experiencing increasing sales and profits, and their biggest problems deal with hiring more qualified people and maintaining good service and customer relations as their business expands.

We know they exist, because we are working with some of them. One has been able to triple sales in the last 18 months, and several have had to expand their floor space to deal with an increasing demand in their products or services. And when the bottom eventually drops in the CNMI, these businesses will not be totally immune, but they will continue to earn a profit and will be able to do so without letting go of one employee.

You may know of some businesses that qualify as positive deviants. What are the owners doing differently that causes them to achieve outstanding results? What lessons can you learn from their success and apply it in your business? Many of them are more than happy to share what they know, and you might be surprised at the simplicity of their answers. Often, you will find that they don’t realize that their behavior is much different from the norm.

Maybe the solution to your problems can’t be imported from the outside. Jerry Sternin believes that the real answers to your biggest problems may be lying within your community or even within your own organization. “The traditional model for social and organizational change doesn’t work,” Sternin asserts. “It never has. You can’t bring permanent solutions in from outside.”

You may have employees performing above the norm and who carry out their duties in a manner that outpaces their peers. These positive deviants can be at any level of your organization. They typically try lots of things and do not follow conventional thinking. Examine what they do differently, and then encourage others to adopt their actions if you feel it would benefit the organization. You may find that it will only take a few internal changes to create a dynamic difference in the value you provide to your customers, and ultimately the value that comes back to you.

(Rik is a business instructor at NMC and Janel is the owner of Positively Outrageous Results. They can be contacted at: biz_results@yahoo.com)