Bright Spots in Vietnam
One of my favorite stories is about Jerry Sternin. Most of you have probably never heard about Jerry but he was a legend in helping people and communities change.
In the 1990s Sternin was working for Save the Children and the Vietnamese Government had invited the organization to help fight malnutrition. However, once Sternin arrived with his family, the welcome was less than warm. He was given 6 months to produce results – and then go home!
The conventional wisdom about malnutrition was that it was the result of number of problems: poverty, ignorance, poor sanitation and lack of access to clean water.
According to Sternin, all these problems were “TBU” or true but useless! There was no way that millions of kids could wait for all those problems to be solved, and Jerry only had 6 months to make a difference. Most people would have given up but Sternin had a a better idea.
He travelled to rural villages and met with the local mothers. The mothers were divided into teams and went out to weigh and measure every child in their village. The results were surprising! They found kids who were bigger and healthier than the typical child.
Sternin’s idea was to apply so-called positive deviance and locate bright spots. These are people whose exceptional behaviors create better results than their neighbors having the exact same resources!
“Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. But with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say “We have done this ourselves”.” – Lao Tzu
They discovered that the bright-spot mom fed their kids more meals in a day (using the same amount of food). Healthy kids were also actively fed while unhealthy kids ate on their own. In addition, the bright-spot moms collected tiny shrimp and crabs from the rice fields and mixed them in with the rice making the meal more nutritious.
Sternin subsequently had moms practicing the new behaviors and it spread to other villages. It was hugely successful. Over the following two years, malnutrition dropped from 65% to 85% in the area.
So how does this story relate to Beat The Monster? In the last post (Cherry Tomatoes), we talked about the challenge of choice. When we want to change we get overwhelmed by the amount of options that we have. Most of us are held back by conventional wisdom and lots of ‘stuff’, which is all TBU!
So here is the deal! Go and find someone who has already made the changes that you want to do. Identify the few vital behaviors that make them successful and copy them. Find a bright spot and clone it!
Beat It!
Coach Bay
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