International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)

Positive Deviance: Why the Answer Is Already in the Community | Prof. Arvind Singhal

Duration: 9:22 982 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

Positive Deviance represents a transformative approach to social change that fundamentally reverses traditional methodologies by shifting the focus from external expert solutions to internal community wisdom. Instead of importing evidence-based practices developed in controlled environments and attempting to persuade communities to adopt them, this method begins with a leap of faith: asking whether individuals within the same community facing identical adversities have already found a way to achieve better outcomes. The core premise is that if such success exists locally, the solution must lie in uncommon variations of practice already present within that community, thereby unlocking answers through the collective wisdom of the people rather than imposing outside fixes. The speaker contrasts this with the often disappointing results of traditional expert-driven models, noting that despite extensive needs assessments and risk analysis, experts have historically failed to solve complex global problems. Positive Deviance addresses this by starting with the assumption that a solution has already been discovered by someone on the ground. Rather than seeking abstract evidence-based practices, researchers look for practice-based evidence—identifying specific behaviors or strategies that deviate from the norm yet yield superior results. Once these local innovations are identified, the goal is to amplify them, ensuring that the solutions are sustainable because they originate from within the community and are owned by those who face the challenges daily. This approach requires a significant shift in mindset, moving from an authoritative stance to one of humility and collaboration. Experts must adopt the role of "non-experts," entering the field with a spirit of inquiry rather than instruction, asking improbable questions like, "Is there someone here who has solved this problem despite all odds?" The process involves co-designing technical knowledge with local sensibilities, as illustrated by work in agriculture and livestock management where farmers mix crop residues or use specific machinery to improve nutrition. By integrating sociological and participatory methods with scientific know-how, the approach validates local innovations while providing the necessary support to scale them effectively. Ultimately, Positive Deviance fosters a more dignified and sustainable path for social change by empowering communities to own both their problems and their solutions. This shift from cognitive analysis to working with the heart ensures that interventions are culturally relevant and resilient, as they are rooted in the lived experiences of the community members themselves. The speaker emphasizes that this collaborative calculus is essential for future work in areas such as sustainability and agriculture, proving that when scientists and communities unite to identify and amplify existing local successes, they can create lasting impact without needing to invent entirely new solutions from scratch.

Read the full video transcript

[music] >> Yes, I think positive deviance is a very special approach to social change because it completely flips the traditional way of doing things. The traditional way of doing things is to think about evidence-based practices coming from experts tested in a hot house and you bring them to a community and you say, "Ah, let me persuade you this is good. You should adapt." In positive deviance, you begin at a very different place. You don't come up with a solution, you come up with a question. And the question is based on a leap of faith. [music] And the faith is that you say, "Is there somebody out here who, facing the highest odds, against all the adversity, has found a way to have better outcomes? And if they are indeed here in this community having better outcomes, then what is it that they are doing which is uncommon?" So, what they are doing that is uncommon is a variation in practice. They must be doing something different. So, the innovation lies with the community. The solution lies with the community much like the problem lies with the community. And by identifying the uncommon practice which yields a better outcome, you in some ways have unlocked the answer to a very complex problem with the wisdom residing in the community. That makes positive deviance >> [music] >> deviation from the norm, variation of practice to be most powerful. I for 20 years worked with an expert mindset [music] that as experts you can do needs assessment, you can identify gaps, you can analyze the problem, you [music] can analyze who's at the highest risk. And the results, as the literature would show, as our experience with projects would show, is rather dismal. Otherwise, we would have solved all the problems of the world, but we haven't. So, what made me acutely aware about the value of positive deviance was that you begin with the solution. Somebody has solved the problem. And if you can just figure out what is it that they are doing that deviates from the norm and resides within the community, then you can scale the the the solution are within the community. So, it was you can say a disappointment with traditional ways of thinking where you're looking at evidence-based practices to now having a mindset that the answer is here, and instead of an evidence-based practice, you need to look for practice-based evidence, a variation in practice that is evidentiary of a better outcome. Frontline researchers should know that by asking a different question, you can figure out what the most appropriate locally validated innovation is, so that you can find a way to amplify it. As I said in diffusion of innovations practice, you believe that you know what needs to be diffused because it's an evidence-based practice. Here, you are saying somebody has solved the problem. I don't know how they have solved it. Let me figure out what is it that they are doing that is different than how things are done with deviation of practice, and you find a way to, once you've identified it, amplify it. Oh, I think what ILRI is doing with uh um you know, your scientist Birgit Habermann and all your other colleagues who are working here is you have figured out a way to take the sensibilities of the positive deviance approach, the faith that somebody out there has solved the problem, a farmer, a household, uh and to integrate that and validate that with technical know-how, and also with a series of sociological and participatory approaches. So, I do think that the work that ILRI is doing, whether it's with respect to um fodder for livestock and how to use crop residues with nutritive content. Uh how to use a mechanical thresher or a grinder where you can mix elephant grass and other nutritive components to soil residue. And those are little things that you are doing where you are bringing in co-designing in some ways technical knowledge with positive deviance sensibilities. The faith that the practices that are uncommon in this very context are here and once you identify them, they're more sustainable because they come from within the community. Yeah, I think there is some degree of internal work that is required. And the internal work is not so much cognitive work as it is working with the spirit and working with the heart because fundamentally positive deviance believes in the notion of humility which is a heart characteristic. Uh so if you or we are humble enough to say I don't know, but there's somebody else here who knows. Or as Monique Sternin, one of the co-founders of the positive deviance approach, says that the role of the expert in positive deviance is to be a non-expert. You come in with humility, you come in with a belief, and you ask a question, a question which is an improbable question, an implausible question, almost an impossible question. Is there somebody out here who facing all the odds has solved the problem? And if they have, then the answer is here. I would just say that uh to my friends here at uh ILRI uh doing the work that you do with agriculture, with livestock, with issues of sustainability, uh and here in Ethiopia, in Nairobi, uh I think uh this is really very, very important work. And uh to show that one can co-design uh solutions with community and uh scientists coming together uh provides uh so much more dignity uh to the process of change, where you are believing that the community can own the solution in as much the same way as they own the problem. And I think that's the kind of calculus that we need going forward for this [music] kind of work. >> [music] [music]