Page 46 - The Power to Change Anything

Find Vital Behaviors 35

individuals who are offering up best practices haven’t scientif-
ically compared the best to the rest, found the differentiating
behaviors, taught these behaviors to new subjects, and then
demonstrated changes in the outcomes they care about, they’re
not the people we want to learn from.
Second, in many of the areas where you’d like to exert influ-
ence, the vital behaviors research has already been done. For
example, if you want to learn how to live healthfully with type
one diabetes, two vital behaviors have already been found: Test
your blood sugar four times a day and adjust your insulin appro-
priately to keep your blood glucose in control. These two
behaviors substantially increase the likelihood of a normal,
healthy life. If you search carefully, you’ll find that good schol-
ars have found the vital behaviors that solve most challenges
that affect a large number of people.

STUDY POSITIVE DEVIANCE

Let’s add another tool that can help us in our search for vital
behaviors. It draws from a long-tested methodology often used
in social research and is known as positive deviance. To see how
this method works, we look more closely at the Guinea worm
efforts conducted in Africa and Asia.
The destructive pest has been largely eradicated by a strat-
egy devised by a small team at The Carter Center and Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention. Leaders from The Carter
Center didn’t have the luxury Ethna Reid had of conducting
controlled laboratory experiments. It was simply not practical
to study hundreds of villagers and perform statistical analyses
on behavioral differences to arrive at the vital few they would
then attempt to influence across the continent. They had to
find a different strategy.
“Positive deviance” can be extremely helpful in discover-
ing the handful of vital behaviors that will help solve the prob-
lem you’re attacking. That is, first dive into the center of the