Authors: Monique Sternin, Co-Founder of Positive Deviance Approach and Lars Thuesen, Change Leader and Positive Deviance Facilitator
1. What attracted you to the Positive Deviance Concept?
Like many other PD practitioners, it is the opportunity to tackle seemingly intractable problems in a total different way: A departure from the standard way of addressing problems from an expert and need based position, by letting the community affected by the problem to find existing solutions within its peers, and innovating in the process.
2. What does “acting your way into a new way of thinking” mean?
In PD parlance, it means that for people to change they need to discover what works for themselves, and adopt & practice the uncommon behavior or strategy that some of their peers have used to solve a specific problem. This very action promotes change. Knowledge alone does not bring about behavior change.
3. What does it mean to be a “non-expert?”
To approach a community with a very complex problem with no tips, suggestions or advice to help them solve the problem. To come as a neutral facilitator. To invite the local experts to come forth with their own solutions and leverage them to the entire community.
4. What is different about the PD approach compared to other behavior & social change methodologies?
PD shares some DNA with other asset-based approaches: The focus on what works well. PD is very different, because it focuses on behaviors that already are being practiced – with success in the communities. The focus on co-creation with and in the communities is also unique: if it is about me not without me. Finally, the combined focus on both hard, quantitative and behavioral data that are owned and monitored by communities both when defining the right problems, discovering PD solutions and dissemination and scaling is an importance feature.
5. What does it mean for PD to not be a “program” to be manualized and replicated, but to be grown within each community?
It is a not a very popular feature of PD that requires that it be always context specific, whereas most pilot projects can be replicated in a “roll out” fashion. What needs to be replicated is not the fidelity to the method (by definition adaptable) but the integrity of the principles.
6. How do you “scale up” a PD informed project?
There are many ways to scale up a PD pilot project: ripple effect from a successful pilot, geographical expansion via training center, entertainment education, etc. A PD informed project, if successful, is doomed for extinction, but its impact is sustained because of the social change that happens during the life of the project.
7. What is the role of a facilitator? What are the most important skills needed?
The role of the facilitator is to be a catalyst for the community to come together, to provide the unique opportunity for the community to uncover solutions and innovate to solve their problem. The most important skills required include: ask open-ended questions, be a good listener, be curious, and most importantly, be humble.
8. How do you get trained in Positive Deviance work?
You need to learn by doing it. You cannot be trained in a vacuum. The best way to learn is by trials and errors, to experiment with the PD approach basic method and process, and apply its principles. There is a generic guide available on the PD website which needs to be adapted to the type of problem and the context in which PD will be applied.
9. What is the most challenging aspect of the PD approach?
The paradigm shift or different mindset from the part of donors, organizations and governments: which is for experts to become learners, for teachers to become students and for leaders to remove barriers for bottom up change
10. Why is the PD approach not better known and widely applied given its positive record?
The PD approach defies standard ways of solving problems. It is a belief in the community agency and people’s capacity for goodness and for solving their own problems. In our expert-driven world, the suggestion that the community can harness its own wisdom and “know-how” is unfamiliar and slightly threatening.
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