Remember the good old days when kids came home from school waving around (or hiding) report cards? Now, imagine your child’s report card displayed a few A’s, a few B’s, and one F. All you see is the F, right? You immediately go into action mode: maybe you should hire a tutor or take away their PlayStation.
If you’re like most association professionals, you switch into this problem-solving mode quite naturally. According to best-selling authors and all-around clever guys, Dan and Chip Heath, we’re wired to focus on problems rather than strengths. This problem-solving mentality usually works well enough—with tutoring, that F can turn into a B—but, in times of change, it’s not the best mindset.
When you look around your chapters, it’s natural to see challenges and problems everywhere. You could spend all day putting out fires and getting caught up in analysis paralysis with so many “priorities.”
We’re going to suggest something different. Right now, you’d do better to focus on bright spots.
WHAT’S A BRIGHT SPOT?
A bright spot is something that’s going right. The Heaths describe them as “early glimmers.” Instead of taking a problem-solving approach to change, they suggest you encourage change by finding a bright spot, studying it, and cloning it.
For example, if you have a chapter or two with an unusually large percentage of early-career members, find out what that chapter is doing differently than other chapters, then figure out a way to replicate that behavior in other chapters.
The bright spot approach has been around a while. It’s also called “positive deviance analysis.” Imagine that as a chapter award: Best Positive Deviant of the Year.
Here’s an example shared by the Heaths that illustrates the bright spot approach. In the 1990s, the aid organization Save the Children sent Jerry Sternin to Vietnam to help reduce the number of malnourished children. Conventional wisdom blamed the problem on polluted water, poverty, and ignorance about nutrition and hygiene.
But, instead of focusing on the problem, Jerry looked for positive deviants (bright spots)—parents with well-nourished kids. What were they doing differently? And, whatever it was, could other parents do it too?
If those parents are receiving funds from wealthier cousins in California, they don’t qualify as a bright spot. Extraordinary resources don’t count, but exceptional behaviors and practices do.
Jerry found six families who followed consistent but rare practices. They served multiple smaller meals a day instead of two big bowls of white rice. They supplemented rice with sweet potato greens and foraged proteins like tiny shrimp and crabs.
These six families were bright spots—beacons of success who demonstrated that the supposedly “impossible” task of solving malnutrition was actually possible for everyone. Jerry and his team arranged for the bright spot mothers to teach their meal practices to families in surrounding villages.
