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Positive Deviance

07 Saturday Apr 2018

Posted by petersironwood in health, management, psychology, sports, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

cooperation, family, Feedback, innovation, life, pattern language, Peer Learning, sports

IMG_9659

Positive Deviance

Prolog/Acknowledgement: 

The idea for this Pattern comes from a book of that title.

I am continuing in the style of trying to write something that explains the Pattern and why it works along the lines of Christopher Alexander’s original book. For this particular suggested Pattern, it seems important to point out some of the caveats and challenges. I may be that this is important for all Patterns but I’m still puzzling over how much these should be a specific part of each Pattern.

Author, reviewer and revision dates: 

Created by John C. Thomas March 23-April 7, 2018

Abstract: 

In any complex situation that you might want to “improve” or “fix,” there are some who are in that situation and have already figured out how to succeed. Instead of designing and imposing a solution, you can find out who the success stories are, observe what they are doing, get feedback from the observed and then encourage those involved in the success stories to share what they do with their larger community. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_deviance

Context: 

Complex problems can often only be solved by groups. In some cases, a problem seems overwhelming, impossible, or insoluble.  People from the “Global North” for example, see a situation such as illiteracy or malnutrition and wish to use their resources and knowledge to solve a problem for others who are experiencing the problem. It is certainly worthy to want to help others and to share abundant resources. However, even when one is careful, it is easy to intervene in such a way that the problem is not really solved but only temporarily ameliorated. In other cases, the problem is actually made worse or the problem that is focused on is solved, but other even more severe problems result.

For example, a so-called primitive society may rely on hunting and gathering for its existence. The people are okay under normal circumstances but have no extra resources to “better” their life. Instead, they are taught by well-meaning people in the “Global North” to grow a cash crop that brings in enough money that they can buy a variety of foods as well as more clothing, medical supplies, and housing. This all works fine until the monoculture crop gets a disease. If the “primitive society” is lucky, this happens fairly quickly while the tribe still retains the necessary hunting, fishing, and gathering skills to survive. In worse cases, perhaps the skills or the lands needed no longer exist and the people are much worse off than they were before the intervention by the “Global North.”

Of course, not every such intervention is well-intentioned. In some cases, the real goal of the interveners is to make a lot of money off a crop of tea, coffee, opium, or cocaine. In other cases, the natives become miners for diamonds or precious metals. It might or might not also be an intention to destroy any possibility that the natives in the land can still live off that land in the way that they and their ancestors have done for millennia.

Even in the best of circumstances, there will be unknown and often deleterious side-effects of interventions. For example, perhaps the women of a particular tribe used to spend considerable time together in the village center pounding roots and talking with each other. Because they were doing this in the center of the village, they also easily helped each other watch all the village’s children and to watch for predators. During this time, all sorts of other “work” might also have been done. The women as a group may have solved many budding feuds within the tribe, or done gentle match-making, or experimented with different shaped tools and so on. Because they bonded with each other, they may have also made family break-ups due to infidelity less likely. The point is that an outside look at the culture may only see “inefficiency” in what is actually an effective social and economic system.

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Regardless of how it came to be, the fact of today is that many people in various parts of the world are in dire need of clean water, food, shelter, or medical care. Within the so-called “developed” world or Global North, there are other widespread problems such as the opioid crisis, obesity, vast wealth inequalities, and, in the United States, mass shootings. We tend to think of such large scale problems, regardless of the geography, as being both general and systemic. And we typically look to use analytical tools to diagnose problems and generate solutions to be imposed by the government or NGO. Such imposed solutions will almost always have unintended consequences, some of which will be negative.

Problem:

There are many problems in the world and the most severe have to do with people’s basic needs not being met. If one tries to solve a problem and then impose that solution, there is a good chance that the solution will be wrong. Even if it’s “correct” in solving the given problem, there’s a good chance that it will have negative side-effects that may be worse than the original problem. Moreover, even if the solution is “perfect” and avoids negative side-effects, it may still fail to be adopted because the people necessary for implementing the solution were insufficiently involved initially in finding, formulating, and solving the problem.

When it comes to problems in logic and mathematics, there can be some reasonable notion of the “goodness” of a solution which people will agree on, given enough background and training. However, problems in real world settings are generally too complex to allow of legitimate “proof.” People will have different values, preferences, and experiences so that they will tend not to agree unless everyone involved at least has a chance to feel as though they have been involved throughout the process.

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Forces:

  • Real world problems dealing with basic needs are likely to be complex. (If there were “simple” solutions, they would already have been found).
  • An outside group may have knowledge or perspective that allows them to see possible solutions that the people experiencing the problem may not know about or see.
  • Sometimes, people intentionally mislead others; they claim to have a solution to a problem based on superior knowledge or technology but actually, they are just manipulating others.
  • Even when operating with the best of intentions, outside problem solvers may not understand enough about the context, values, and culture to design solutions that will work.
  • People generally want to be consulted on decisions that impact their lives.

* Typically, people within a community are more trusted than outsiders.

  • When feedback loops are slow, delayed, or noisy, people may not know when they have solved a problem or made progress on it.
  • Most solutions to complex problems require the active cooperation of the people most affected in order to be implemented and maintained.
  • A proposed solution is more likely to be adopted if the solution comes from community members.

* In complex problems in the real world, there will often be a large variation in how well people are solving these on their own.

Solution:

When facing a complex, real world problematic situation, instead of having an outside group find, formulate and solve a problem and then try  to implement that solution, instead, seek to find people within the community who have already solved it or partially solved it. Help to understand the nature of the solution and facilitate the communication so that those who have solved it are aware of how they solved the problem and communicate it to the larger community.

Examples: 

1. The idea of “positive deviance” is similar to the progress in “best practices” that is often achieved in sports, arts, and crafts. For instance, in tennis, hitting the ball harder means your opponent has less time to get to the ball and more trouble judging how to hit their own shot. However, if a player hits the ball too hard, it will tend to go out of bounds. Some tennis players have experimented with hitting the ball with a huge amount of topspin. This allows the ball to be hit fast but with a trajectory that allows it to clear the net but still dive down into the court. Because such tennis players have tended to be successful, newer players try to copy these techniques.  Similarly, good weavers, painters, and writers try to understand how those who are “best” at the particular craft achieve the results that they do.

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2. In the opening example in Positive Deviance, aid workers are concerned about malnutrition among rural children in Viet Nam.  Various charities have, in the past, handed out additional foodstuffs to families and the children do better…for a time. Once the charity moves on or runs out of money, however, the nutritional needs stop being met and kids are just as bad off as they were before.

Instead, the authors of Positive Deviance discovered that among a large number of extremely poor rural families in Viet Nam, there were a few who had kids who were not suffering from malnutrition. In order to to find out why, they initially interviewed both these families and the (much larger) group of families whose kids did have malnutrition. These interviews revealed no differences. Of course, there are many possible explanations including luck of getting or not getting diseases or parasites or possibly genetic factors.

When the authors investigated by careful observation, however, they discovered three crucial differences between the numerous underweight kids and the few normal weight kids. First, the families of the normal weight kids included an older relative who fed the kids a noon meal every day. Most of the families fed the kids in the morning before going out to work in the rice fields all day and again upon coming home. The kids could only eat so much during two meals; though hungry, their stomachs were small capacity. The kids ate more total during three meals. Second, the families with healthier kids included in the daily soup, not only rice, but tiny crustaceans and bitter herbs that grew among the rice stalks. Third, the parents of healthier kids were more rigorous about hand-washing. All the kids were supposed to wash their hands before eating, but in the case of the healthier kids, if the family dog came up and the kid petted the dog during a meal, that kid would have to go wash their hands again.

After these discoveries were made, the authors of Positive Deviance did not “explain” to the villagers what the solution was. Instead, the kids were publicly weighed each week. The families of those who were of “normal” weight explained what they were doing. Some families adopted these practices and everyone could see that, over time, these kids began to thrive too. The community became convinced on the basis of what worked for others within the community and as explained by others in the community and they altered their behavior to match those in the community who had a better solution.

3. Of course, in some sense, having the whole species “learn” from the cases of “positive deviance” is more or less how major mechanisms of evolution work. There is always variation along many dimensions among the individuals of a species. In any given environment, there are some variations which will confer a relative advantage compared with others. Those with an “advantage” will tend to prosper and have more offspring that those who do not have this advantage. Over time, most of the members of the species will come to have the advantageous trait.

tennisinstruction

Resulting Context:

Once people participate in a community-wide effort to see who and what is being successful and then understand what they need to change in their own behavior. The cohesion and self-efficacy of the community is increased. The solution tends to have fewer “side-effects” and is necessarily respectful of the community culture.

Related Patterns: 

Reality Check, Small Successes Early, Build from Common Ground.

Caveats and Limitations: 

There were no reported bad side-effects to implementing the nutrition and lifestyle changes suggested by the observations in the study. However, we must realize that there could be. For instance, it might have been the case that when everyone started harvesting the bitter herbs and crustaceans, those species might have been killed off. As a result, it could have turned out that none of the kids would now have that advantage.

In general, a solution that “works” for a small minority might not work if everyone does it. We can easily imagine a situation where a few people in a village of farmers are rich while most people are not. A thorough investigation might reveal that the few who are rich got that way because they cheated when they weighed their produce and stole from the church collection plate. This is obviously not a “solution” that will work when everyone does it!

References: 

Pascale, Richards & Sternin, Jerry. (2010). The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World’s Toughest Problems. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press.

http://www.betterevaluation.org/en/plan/approach/positive_deviance

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Author Page on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/author/truthtable

Use Thoughtful Group Feedback Structures and Processes

07 Wednesday Mar 2018

Posted by petersironwood in management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Business, competition, Feedback, innovation, learning, military, pattern language, Peer Learning, RET, sports

caution

Use Thoughtful Group Feedback Structures & Processes

Prolog/Acknowledgement: 

The idea for this Pattern comes mainly from my experience as a Fellow at the Institute for Rational Living. In my two-year Fellowship in Rational-Emotive Therapy (a variant of cognitive, emotive, & behavioral therapy developed by Albert Ellis), I saw about 6-8 individual clients a week as well as running a weekly group therapy session. I participated in a two hour group supervision session with a more experienced senior therapist each week and received very useful feedback. In addition, I participated in several “Pattern Workshops” at various SIGCHI conferences where a similar though slightly different structure of feedback was used. I also have had experiences teaching, tutoring, and providing feedback on scientific papers and grant proposals. These all overwhelmingly positive experiences on the whole. Like most of us, however, I’ve also been subject to a variety of diatribes, harangues, and reviews which were useless as learning experiences.

Author, reviewer and revision dates: 

Created by John C. Thomas March 6-8, 2018

IMG_5216

Synonyms: 

Hamburger feedback. Writer’s Workshop.

Abstract: 

Life is complicated! The human brain is finite. We all make mistakes. Mistakes provide excellent opportunities to learn. Sometimes, we can learn all on our own, but in complex situations, even when we know we have failed, we often cannot tell why or how to improve. More experienced people can provide feedback to help us learn more effectively and efficiently. However, there are many different ways to point out errors and suggest improvements. Some of these ways provide much better learning experiences than others. Therefore, in providing feedback, choose a feedback structure and process designed to maximize the opportunity for learning and minimize negative emotions that can interfere with learning.

Problem:

When it comes to complex behavior in nearly every human domain (e.g., playing tennis or golf, writing a grant proposal or scientific paper, writing a short story, acting in a play, or providing therapy, cooking an omelet, drawing a portrait) there are many ways to go wrong. Generally speaking, people who are just learning a field know when they fail but often they cannot tell what they did wrong or how to improve. To the expert, the error is sometimes obvious. Since the expert teacher has seen the same mistakes made by over and over, it is easy to become impatient. The teacher may forget that even though they have pointed out this same error a thousand times in their career, it may only be the first time it has been pointed out to this particular learner. Even if it’s the tenth or twentieth time, it’s human nature for the learner to “revert” to a bad habit.

Furthermore, as Tversky and Kahnemann pointed out, coaches and teachers may find themselves “drifting” over time toward more and more emphasis on negative criticism rather than praise for a job well done. The reason posited by Tversky and Kahnemann is “regression to the mean.” Basically, performance in anything varies somewhat randomly over time. This random variation can be fairly large even as performance on the whole is improving. If a coach or teacher says something positive after an unusually good performance, chances are that the next performance will be somewhat worse. On the other hand, if a coach or teacher says something negative after a particularly bad performance, regression to the mean says that the next performance will usually be somewhat better. Over time, coaches and teachers tend to be punished for praising good performance and rewarded for criticizing bad performances. (I expanded on this idea to our self-criticism in “Why do I Self-Down? Because I’m an Idiot?”). Both praise and criticism can provide informative feedback. However, they are quite different in terms of the emotional impact that they make. Except for the very least self-motivated students, criticism will tend to provide too much stress for optimal learning. The newer or less intuitive the thing being learned is, the lower is the optimal level of stress.

In addition to the emotional impact, there is another problem with criticism. It often tends to fixate the attention of the person on the wrong things making further errors even more likely. If a golf coach, for example, says, “I’ve told you a hundred times! Don’t life your head up while you putt! You keep missing left because you keep lifting your head up, lifting your head up, lifting your head up!” Well! Even apart from making the student more nervous (which will make it harder to learn), by focusing on the student’s error, the coach has put it firmly in their student’s thought pattern: “Putt coming up. Don’t LIFT UP YOUR HEAD.”

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Even without the social and emotive element, providing feedback that is really useful can be difficult. In the case of putting, for instance, you may miss a putt left for many reasons: you might have misread the slope; you might have misread the grain; you might have been aiming the putter blade left; you may have hit the ball of the center of the putting blade; you might have hit the grass behind the ball; you might have swung the putter on a curved path (and, indeed, one cause of that could be lifting up your head too early); there are imperceptible imperfections in the green; you might not have noticed the extremely brisk wind. Even a marvelously skilled instructor is going to have difficulty knowing which of these many reasons is in fact the case.

Context: 

Complex skills require long training. Generally speaking, people will get much further in any field of human endeavor if they have formal or informal training and teaching in that field. The more complex the field, the more training is required. The better the coaching, training, teaching, or mentoring the student has along the way, the better will be their ultimate level of skill, other things being equal. Teaching is often done in classroom settings with only one teacher and many students. If the teacher does criticize a student, it is generally done in front of the whole class. The teacher seldom has the resources to find out why a student made an error. Feedback in the form of public ridicule can be worse than no feedback at all.

While formal teaching and training form one set of contexts for which it is useful to provide structured group feedback, there are many others. For instance, ten people submit a paper to a conference but only one gets in; ten people with a realistic chance try to win a gold medal in ice skating but only one does; ten people vie for one job with a job interview. None of these are primarily meant to be teaching experiences, but there is no reason that they cannot be. In fact, it is not just contests that provide opportunities for structured feedback from others; any time people face a challenge and meet it, is an opportunity for learning.

Forces:

  • Our brains are not infinite but finite. We all make mistakes.
  • Learning from others who have relevant experience can shorten learning time.
  • Humans are social creatures. We feel good when we get praise from others and feel worse when we get criticism.
  • Even a good teacher cannot see all the circumstances of a complex situation as well as a student’s peers might.
  • Because teachers are way beyond the learning phase of elementary skills, a students peers, who are closer to the learning phase, can sometimes offer better feedback.
  • We tend to believe informative feedback about our behavior more as more people give that same feedback.
  • Due to regression to the mean, over time, some instructors and teachers come to rely much more on punishment than praise.

* Instructors often see and correct the same wrong behavior thousands of times. They may tend to be impatient, forgetting that it isn’t this student who has made all those errors.

  • Each person only knows a small proportion of another person’s situation and individuality. Feedback from a group of peers may all convey the same information but someone may say exactly the “right thing” for this person in this situation.

Solution:

Whenever a group is attempting to solve problems and address issues of any kind and wishes to improve its abilities over time, then it pays to provide feedback to those attempting to learn from peers as well as superiors in thoughtfully structured ways. The method should provide the optimal information but also the right emotional tone to optimize experience as well as learning outcomes.

Examples: 

  1. At the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy, all the Fellows, including me, tape-recorded all our sessions (with the client’s knowledge). Each week, a small group of us (3 or 4) met with a Supervisor (a much more experienced therapist). We would typically play a segment of one of our sessions that we had found particularly troublesome in some way. After that, the Supervisor would fist ask the therapist who had played the tape what they were trying to accomplish and what they felt they had done very well at. Then, the Supervisor would ask that therapist what they saw that they could have improved upon and how.

The Supervisor then asked the peers for additional feedback, beginning each time with some additional positive thing. This was followed by suggestions for improvement. It would not be helpful, for instance, to say, “Be more empathic.” If someone did say that, the Supervisor might say something like, “Can you offer some specific suggestions; e.g., what has worked for you in becoming more empathic?”

At last, the Supervisor would give additional feedback and again beginning with additional positive aspects of the interaction and ending with additional suggestions for improvements or a summary of what everyone else had said. Although this sounds very formal, it typically felt quite natural. As psychologists, we all knew why this feedback was being provided in this manner and appreciated it.

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2. At Patterns Workshops, those who write a proposed Pattern present it to the group for feedback. These feedback sessions are structured in a very particular way which seems to work quite well. In broad outline, the writer supplies a written version of their Pattern. The are then asked to briefly summarize the pattern and read aloud a small part of it. Then they are asked to sit outside the rest of the group who are in a circle. Now, they are to be silent and listen (to be a “fly on the wall”). The rest of the presentation of the Pattern and the feedback will be hosted by someone else. The author is not to talking except for a brief clarification question. Everyone in the group is invited to give feedback on both Structure/Content. They are always asked for positive comments first and then suggestions for improvement. If someone has essentially the same comment as someone else, they can simply say, “Ditto.” When all the relevant feedback has been collected or time runs out, the author is thanked, invited back into the circle, and someone tells an irrelevant story or joke.

From my personal experience, not being allowed to talk during feedback and hearing the same thing from ten people is a truly amazing experience. By not being allowed to prepare your rebuttal — because there is no rebuttal — you instead listen to what is being said and are able to process what is said at a much deeper level. You think about what it means to your Pattern. What is outlined above are what I consider to be the main features that are most relevant to this Pattern. However, if you are interested in a succinct yet detailed suggested structure, see Jim Coplien’s Pattern for Patterns Workshops linked below.

https://sites.google.com/a/gertrudandcope.com/info/Publications/Patterns/WritersWorkshop

3. Readers will see similarities among the first two examples. In other contexts and in other cultures, different types of feedback sessions will be seen as effective. Ideally, the structure will have been developed through experience so as to maximize group learning, as opposed say, to feeding the ego of the most experienced member of the group. Another example of a structure process is in Code Reviews.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_review

4. Toastmasters is an organization designed to teach people how to give better presentations and provide peer feedback. Here is a link to a nice feedback guide by one of their members.

http://blog.toastspot.com/22-tips-for-giving-effective-feedback

5. After Action Reviews. The US military conducts After Action Reviews (AARs) as a standard part of learning from training exercises and field experience. Some of the same suggestions appear again: the spirit of the investigation is key; preparation is key; the purpose is not to point fingers but to learn how to do better.

Claude

Click to access tc25-20.pdf

Resulting Context:

Once a group experiences useful feedback delivered in a clear and constructive fashion, it maximizes the chances that learning will take place, and that the process itself is a positive one. Over time, a group may become even more effective over time as mutual trust is gained and people begin to gain proficiency in the process.

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Rationale:

People learn from feedback more effectively if feedback includes positive statements; is specific and actionable; if they have a chance to suggest their own improvements first.

Related Patterns: 

Reality Check,

Metaphors: 

Make love not war. In all seriousness, feedback can feel more like the exercise of power — a kind of intellectual bullying — than it does like a learning experience. Poor feedback or even accurate feedback ineptly delivered feels like a sales person trying to guilt trip you into buying something. You feel manipulated and slightly dirty. It’s also a lot like a neighbor playing their rock music at full blast. It mostly feels obnoxious and not suited to your current situation or needs.

References: 

Thomas, J. (1978). Why do I self-down?  Because I’m an idiot? In Rational Living.

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