Positive Deviancy
Posted By Rob Millard - 1 Comments -
One of the worst things that can be said of any professional practicing in a professional service firm is "he/she doesn't fit in here." Career-wise, it's often a death blow. This is particularly true in the precision-based professions such as law and accounting (as opposed to creative/design professions, where deviancy is more tolerated and sometimes even encouraged.)
Herein lies a clue as to why these firms often experience such difficulty innovating or even changing. Probably without even realizing the impact of what they are doing, they positively stamp on anything or anyone that goes against the norm.
This was brought home to me this morning reading JP Rangaswami post at Confused of Calcutta, about how creativity is suppressed by using derogatory terms like counter-culture and rebel and deviant when referring to those in our firms who don't conform. A sound-byte:
" ..... every time we do that, we paint a big red X across the backs of the people we so describe and put the firm's immune system on full alert. And the rebels are toast.
Which is often a shame. Because they weren't rebels. Or deviants. Or counterculture whatevers.
They were doing their job. Trying to find a better way of doing things."
and
"Generation M is not innately rebellious or deviant or even countercultural. They have new tools they understand better than we do. They don't have some of the shackles and frames and anchors and tunnel vision we have. And they are asking 'why?' in a number of ways and in a number of places. And they need to be encouraged."
JP cross-references an article in The Times (London) on this topic titled When Deviants Save the Day, that is also very well worth a read. It explores the idea of positive deviancy, with a whole collection of examples ranging from schoolchildren in Mali to multinational corporations.
Positive deviancy is where in a group, under the same conditions, a small sub-set of that group do things differently and perform noticeably better than the rest. Fast-forwarding to the end of the article, the conclusions that it presents for promoting postive deviancy in the organization are as follows:
"FOLLOW THE FOUR Ds
A positive deviant is not always easy to spot. He is not necessarily the office oddball. He just does things differently. And more effectively. Follow the four Ds to find the deviant in your office:
1. DEFINE the problem you want to solve, ie, poor children are malnourished, or employees aren't selling enough widgets.
2. DETERMINE if there are any individuals who exhibit the desired behaviour, ie, poor kids who are well nourished or employees who are selling more widgets than their peers.
3. DISCOVER what uncommon practices or strategies these deviants use to succeed, ie, they eat shrimp from the paddy field or visit fewer clients but spend more time with them explaining marvels of widgets.
4. DESIGN an intervention that would enable others in the community to grasp and practise the positive deviant behaviour, ie, encourage the kids with better diets to cook and eat with the malnourished kids or get the effective widget sales people to give a presentation to colleagues on their methods."
We're not going to reverse the aversion to deviant behaviour in professional service firms overnight, and indeed there are very good reasons why such a need for conformance has evolved in the precision-based professions in particular. But that's a story for another day. What we can do if we see somebody swimming upstream, as it were, is to postpone reaction until we have found out why. Is that person simply being bloody-minded, or is she/he a genuine postive deviant that knows something that the firm would do well to take note of? Positive deviants need to be found and encouraged and rewarded and, above all, retained in the firm. They are the key to developing strategies to respond to today's emerging challenges, faster and more effectively then the competition.
Comments, as always, are most welcome and may be posted below.
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