‘Your company’s secret change agents’
Harvard Business Review May 2005
Change Management, say the authors, is more about bridging the gap between “what is happening and what is possible”. Traditionally, this involves digging out the source of the problem, hiring experts and assigning the change challenge to a strong leader.
But there is a better way. Search out the “positive deviants” in your organisation and copy their example. These insiders are already practicing the answers to corporate problems. The “positive deviant” model is about channelling their creative solutions into standard organisational practice.
Six steps are recommended.
1. “make the group the guru” (promote bottom-up team leadership).
2. “reframe through facts” (use hard data to challenge orthodoxy).
3. “make it safe to learn”.
4. “make the problem concrete”.
5. “leverage social proof” (seeing is believing).
6. “confound the immune defence response” (allow the natural popularity of positive deviance to defeat cynicism).
A challenge for positive deviance is persuading leaders to become followers. Such role reversal is unpalatable to many traditional leaders who as a result victimize positive deviants. No wonder they are shy.
Abstract by Professor Malcolm Rimmer, head of La
Article in Harvard Business Review by Richard Tanner Pascale and Jerry Sternin
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