What KM practitioners can learn fromPositive Deviance

Credit: Flickr Sondra Stewart

ActKM, CanberraOctober 2010David Gurteen

The Vietnam Story

Credit: Flickr Sondra Stewart

The Vietnam Story

PD was first applied by Jerry and Monique Sternin through their work with Save the Children in Vietnam in the 1990s. 

At the start of the pilot 64% of children in the pilot villages were malnourished. 

Through a PD inquiry, the villagers found poor parents in the community that had well-nourished children. 

They went on to discover that these families were feeding their children foods that other villagers considered inappropriate; they washed their children’s hands before meals, and fed them three to four times a day instead of the typical two meals a day. 

It was these simple “deviant behaviours” that made all the difference but instead of simply telling parents what to do differently (or creating a best practice document!), they helped the villagers design a program to act their way into a new way of thinking. 

To attend a feeding session, parents were required to bring one of the new foods. They brought their children and while sharing meals, learned to cook the new foods. 

At the end of the two year pilot, malnutrition fell by 85%.

The Power of Positive Deviance

Stories

Childhood malnutrition in Vietnam Female circumcision in Egypt Girl soldiers in Uganda Infant mortality in Pakistan

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The PD Process

The PD approach is best suited to problems that require behaviour and social change.

Five basic steps carried out by members of the community:

1. Define the problem and desired outcome.

2. Determine the common practices.

3. Discover the uncommon but successful behaviours and strategies through observation and inquiry.

4. Design an action learning initiative based on the inquiry findings and execute the project.

5. Monitor and evaluate the project. Share improvements as they occur. Discern the effectiveness of the project.

What we can learn!

Principles

Avoid grandiose aims.

Start with the problem.

Participants are not coerced.

The community discovers the solution for itself.

If solution repeated - start again.

The facilitators only teach and support the process.

Key success factor is OWNERSHIP of the problem and the solution.

Best practice is avoided.

All stakeholders are encouraged to be involved.

Avoid grandiose aims

Avoid grandiose aims.

The approach is evolutionary.

Knowledge Management should be focused on real, tangible intractable problems not

aspirational goals.

It should deal pragmatically with the evolutionary possibilities of the present rather then seeking

idealistic solutions.

Dave Snowden

Start with the problem

Start with the problem.

The community defines and/or frames the problem.

Credit: Flickr tph567

Involve everyone

Communities have the people and the ability to self-organize to respond effectively to a common problem.

Know-how is not concentrated in the leadership of a community or in external experts but is distributed throughout the community.

All stakeholders are encouraged to be involved.

Don’t do things to people

Participants are not coerced.

They can opt in or opt out.

Credit: Flickr tph567

Allow people to take responsibility

Communities already have the solutions to the problems they face and they are the best people to solve them.

Allow the community to discover the solution for itself.

Never give them the solution.

And never teach the solution

Don’t take short cuts

If the solution is repeated in another community then start again.

Credit: Flickr haechoo

Seek sustainable solutions

The PD approach enables the community to seek and discover sustainable responses to a given problem.

Because the demonstrably successful but not widely adopted behaviours are already practiced in the community.

Only facilitate

The facilitators only teach and support the process.

They are not experts in the problem or the solution.

On no account do they contribute directly to defining the problem or the solution.

Let the community own the problem

Key success factor is OWNERSHIP of the problem and the solution.

Credit: Flickr eurodrifter

Avoid best practice

Best practice should be avoided.

It can trigger the NIH syndrome.

Credit: Flickr oxfam-italia

Quotations from the book

There is no silver bullet

Discoveries from one community cannot be repackaged and provided to another as a silver bullet.

That's a "best practice" rollout and it invariably evokes the immune rejection response.

The objective is engagement

The real objective isn't just "knowledge" or getting an 80--20 understanding of the situation.

The overriding objective is engagement, creating a buzz, mobilizing people to take action.

Learning is shaped by social context

Explicit knowledge, conventionally delivered like pizza (neat boxes with toppings of concepts, theories, best practices and war stories), is consumed by the brain but not metabolized into action.

The learning we call intuition, know-how and common sense gets into the blood stream through osmosis. It is shaped by social context.

We are walking on a trampoline

Unintended consequences get to the heart of why you never really understand an adaptive problem until you have solved it.

Problems morph and "solutions" often point to deeper problems.

In social life, as in nature, we are walking on a trampoline.

Every inroad reconfigures the environment we tread on.

Don’t suppress variation

Corporations, in the name of efficiency, suppress variation by "getting all the ducks in line."

To optimize productivity, they evolve highly refined and internally consistent operating systems.

Payoff - results - as long as the music lasts.

But ... all that streamlining and re-engineering limits diversity, suppresses self-organization ... and curtails a bottom up emergent response to disruptive change.

Information has a social life

Contrary to widespread faith in "communication" and "knowledge transfer," information has a social life,

and unless new insights are embedded in the social system they evaporate.

It is practice that advances knowledge

Knowledge does not advance practice. Rather practice advances knowledge.

It is easier to change behaviour by practicing it rather than being taught about it.

“It is easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than think your way into a new way of acting”

The Vietnam Story

David GURTEEN Gurteen Knowledge Fleet, United Kingdom

Tel: +44 7774 178 650 Email: david.gurteen@gurteen.com

www.gurteen.com

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