Question: What are you doing?

I spent a lot of time with my niece Hannah today.  She’s two and a bit.  And she is off the charts curious.  One of her favourite questions right now is “what are you doing”?  She’ll wander (and wonder) up and ask you this if you’re reading, making cookies or tipping cows.  What’s inspiring about witnessing and participating in this exchange is that she’s (a) curious enough to ask the question, (b) really interested in the answer, and (c) almost always responds with an “I wanna do it” or a “show me”.

This is, of course, how kids learn.  It’s also how many of us oldies learn but it’s easy to lose touch with that asking feeling.  As adults, we tend to get rewarded for knowing not asking. And, let’s be frank, we tend to do what we get rewarded for.  So it’s a good reminder to get back in touch with what Buddhists call the Beginner’s Mind.

But it’s Hannah’s demand to be included in the doing, and be shown how the doing happens, that is the most provocative reminder for me.  Too often, in life and in work, we settle for a Simple Explanation, even when it doesn’t provide enough information or we’re left wondering “what the WHAT?”  We don’t ask for more because we’re too embarrassed or proud or busy or cool to ask for more insight and involvement.  Or we settle for a simple explanation because we think we already know all there is to know and what more could we possibly learn?  A sure sign of adultitis – and arrogance.

A few years ago, as part of a master’s program, I was introduced to and taught the Practice of Positive Deviance (PD) by a brilliant man named Jerry Sternin.  PD is an approach to organizational or cultural change that is based on the notion that within every group of people that performs a similar function and finds itself faced with a challenge, there are some people within that group – the “Positive Deviants” – who have figured out a way to address the problem and function more effectively, even though their access to resources is exactly the same as everyone else.  Change agents who use the Positive Deviance approach to facilitate organizational and social change believe that the problem and the solution share the same DNA.  Simply, the solution to any given problem lies within the group or community that is struggling with it.  If the superior practices and behaviours of the Positive Deviants can be identified, isolated and used to help encourage and inspire other members of the group to adopt the successful behaviours, the outcomes of the entire group will improve.

In the PD approach to research and organizational and social change, there is a strong focus on behaviour and identifying the specific actions that Positive Deviants take to be successful.  Questions like “what are you doing?”, “how are you doing it?” and “can you show me how?” are critical and the learning that results from digging into specific practice is what provides the basis for change.

Kids do this intuitively.  They want access to the practices of the interesting and successful adults around them.  And they want practice doing the practice – they want to be active participants in figuring out how to do things well.

What would change in your life, your relationships, your work if you really got curious and got curious beyond knowledge and simple explanation and into practice and behaviour?  What would happen if you asked the successful people around you (and they could be successful in any of ways that are relevant to you) what they are doing and if they might show you how?

I’m not going to make any new year’s resolutions this year.  I’m going to identify the people who are doing some things I’d like to do and start asking them to show me how.

And right now, Hannah is demanding an ice cream cone as payment for her coaching and insight on behaviour and practice today so I must away…

For more information about Positive Deviance visit http://www.positivedeviance.org/