The famous William Gibson quote above is generally considered in the context of advanced technologies. Makes sense, seeing as he is a science fiction writer. But I'd like to bring the concept down to a more tangible, prosaic level. One that has value for large organizations.

Specifically, Gibson's quote is a good way way to think about innovative practices that are present in a given ecosystem or community, but which are unknown to most people.

A few months ago, the Boston Globe ran an article titled, The power of positive deviants. It profiled an new way of thinking about innovation, "positive deviance". What is that?

Positive deviance is an approach to behavioral and social change. Instead of imposing solutions from without, the method identifies outliers in a community who, despite having no special advantages, are doing exceptionally well. By respecting local ingenuity, proponents say, the approach galvanizes community members and is often more effective and sustainable than imported blueprints

The article includes an example, in which a authorities were seeking ideas to fight incidents of the MRSA bacteria, which cling to clothes for days and are thus hard to counteract. In canvassing hospitals for a solution, researchers came across the practice of a patient transporter, Jasper Palmer. He would ball up his hospital gown, and stuff it in his inverted hospital gloves. It turns out, this is highly effective in stopping the spread of MRSA. His technique has been widely adopted, and is now called the Palmer method.

See...the future of MRSA control was already here. It was just unevenly distributed.

There are two key concepts in positive deviance:

1. Outliers as sources of innovative practices
2. The power of a practice that emerges from a community, not one imposed from outside it

While the Boston Globe article focuses on efforts for improving humanitarian and social problems, the approach is a useful one to consider in the context of solving tough problems for any organization.

Which Organizations Benefit?

Well, any organization can benefit from looking for examples of positive deviance to solve problems.

But perhaps the approach is best suited for companies with these qualities:

• Large, with workers distributed geographically
• Many employees engaged in similar tasks in these various locations

The distribution of the workforce has the effect of letting different ideas propagate independently. Each person has her own ideas for how to solve different problems that will inevitably occur. Consider this evolution in the realm of work practices. Multiple species of practices can emerge, and some are better suited for long term sustainability than others.

The similarity of activities means the positive deviances can be sources of value for others. Otherwise, these outlier practices are only of value to a limited set of peers.

Eliciting Those Positive Deviations

This is the challenge, isn't it? How can organizations surface the outlier, positive deviations of employees? This is a conundrum that has bedeviled the knowledge management industry for years. People do not simply record all the things they know and do. It's not in the flow of their daily work. There's no motivation to sift through all the different things they do to.

Rather, organizations need to go looking for their positive deviants, because they're out there. Two models exist for this:

1. Organizations treat the mining of these positive deviations as a campaign
2. Individuals post their call for examples of how others address a problem

The first model is great for generating a large set of possible solutions to a problem. It leverages the internal communication infrastructure, and the motivation that comes when senior managers are backing an initiative. Rewards can be included in the campaign, increasing the motivation.

But that doesn't have to be the only way. Individuals will face problems that colleague have solved previously, perhaps in an unorthodox way (e.g. the Palmer method for MRSA). Letting individuals cast a call for ideas is necessary as well. Don't make them wait until a full campaign is undertaken.

Crowdsource the solution from one's peers. With Spigit (disclosure: I work for Spigit) the process of crowdsourcing for solutions is easy, enriched with analytics, anchored with workflow, searchable by everybody, and provides the basis for generating reputation scores and rewards.

The great part of this is that solutions coming from others in the organization will generally get a warmer reception than a solution from a consultant. It's just the nature of us. We listen to those who face the same challenges we do first, before someone who doesn't know the business as well.

Go ahead, find the positive deviants in your organization. Make the future a little more evenly distributed.

(Cross-posted @ the Spigit Blog )