A December 2000 Fast Company article by David Dorsey focused on a
change agent named Jerry Sternin. His job with Save the Children was
to the change the face of malnutrition in Vietnam. I will refer you
to the excellent article available online to tell the rest of the
story.

See: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/41/sternin.html


The approach claims that one can never bring a permanent solution
from the outside. "In every community, organization or social group,
there are individuals whose exceptional behaviors and practices
enable them to get better results than their neighbors with the exact
same resources." The approach is almost the opposite of the "best
practice" model of change agentry.

Here are the steps in the article.

"1. Don't presume that you have the answer." I think this is the
biggest one for a change agent to remember. We become almost jaded by
hearing the same stories and thinking we have some solutions. The
first task is to always listen and learn. Solutions must come up
within the culture or social set addressed.

"2. Don't think of it as a dinner party." While it is true that we
can learn from diverse backgrounds and approaches, in the case of
most churches, the practices or innovations needed must come from
another church that is viewed as a peer. They must identify with the
other organization. They must feel they are working with similar
enough circumstances and resources.

It is possible to be inspired by a church very dissimilar from
another church, but very difficult to implement some of their
practices.

"3. Let them do it themselves." The article advises change agents to
set up situations where people can learn on their own. Change agents
should raise questions, highlight or platform some of the positive
deviants but let the group of those that need to change take it from
there.

"4. Identify conventional wisdom." In some ways this means clarifying
what the average church in the group is doing. Many times
conventional wisdom was very productive in a previous era, but is no
longer. In the case of the Vietnamese culture, certain foods were
deemed low class, even though they were nutritious. By showing how
the positive deviants used these foods to improve nutrition, others
then could lay aside their previous bias.

"5. Identify and analyze the deviants." As you look at a group of
churches, you can identify those that are getting the results that
you seek. If you have defined the group correctly, then the rest of
the group can as well. This allows the group to investigate the
deviants for different practices. Help the group identify those
behaviors that are leading to success.

"6.Let the deviants adopt deviations on their own." The task of
change agents is not to transfer the knowledge but to design an
intervention that enables the targets to practice the new behavior.
In the case of the Vietnamese villagers, they were invited to a
cooking class held at the home of the positive deviant where they
cooked meals using the low class foods for the entire group. In the
case of churches, a change agent would have to enable a team from one
church to learn from the deviant and then try the new practice over a
period of time.

"7. Track results and publicize them." The results from each village
were publicized. There was a communications effort. But then the task
is to wait until other groups are interested enough to want to learn
for themselves. Turning the process into a program does not help aid
change. A target group has to be ready to change themselves, curious
about what could help make the changes, and willing to invest
themselves in studying those that are positive deviants. Then they
have to practice applying the behaviors.

"8. Repeat steps one through seven." Disseminate the best deviant
behaviors across the system but help people go back and look for new
behaviors constantly. The answers are different for each group but
they can form new groups with different peers.

This article further pushes me in the direction of teaching
congregations that serve as positive deviants where other churches
can learn. However they must feel enough like a group in order to
learn. These churches would have to examine their own conventional
wisdom about what should work but isn't working now to bring the
changes they desire.

I am reminded of the model that New Hope Church uses through their
practicum program as well as the "Doing Church as a Team" program.
Both programs allow visiting groups to look behind the scenes, ask
questions and watch the behaviors of a variety of persons at the
church. The conference is the conference they do for their new
members and attenders, they merely allow outsiders to be a part as
well. The practicum allows pastors to follow their pastors around for
5 days and learn as they go. Then, pastors can adopt or try certain
behaviors for themselves. It is not a perfect fit to the situation,
but it's getting there.

I am sure that most of you can create and devise even more
interesting and important ways to apply this idea. After you try one,
send it in, I would like to hear what you have learned in the process.

A lot of this information is found around the nutrition literature.
Here are a few resources for you for further research.
http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/80697e/80697E00.htm#Contents

http://www.unicef.org/pdeduc/education/pdf/vol1.2_nov98.pdf