Bright Spots

I had the unique opportunity of attending a seminar that featured Chip Health, the author of "Switch. How to Change Things When Change is Hard." His lecture was inspiring and compelling and I can't wait to read his book.

The theme throughout his book is "how to be a Bright Spot" or "how to find a Bright Spot". Bright Spots are tiny fractions of things going right.

I wanted to share this inspiring example with you. I think it might just change how you look at things...

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Ignoring the experts, Sternin traveled to a local village and called together all the village's mothers. He asked for their assistance in finding ways to nourish their kids better, and they agreed to help. As the first step, they went out in teams to weigh and measure every child in the village. Then, they pored over the results together with Sternin.

He asked them, "Did you find any very, very poor kids who are bigger and healthier than the typical child?" The women, scanning the data, nodded and said, "Có, có, có." (Yes, yes, yes.)

He said, "You mean it's possible today in this village for a very poor family to have a well-nourished child?"

"Có, có, có."

"Then let's go see what they're doing."

Sternin's strategy was to search the community for bright spots. If some kids were healthy despite their disadvantages, then that meant something important: Malnourishment was not inevitable. The mere existence of healthy kids provided hope for a practical, short-term solution. Sternin knew he couldn't fix the thorny root causes. But if a handful of kids were staying healthy against the odds, why couldn't every kid be healthy?

To understand what the bright spots were doing differently, the mothers first had to understand the typical eating behaviors in the community. So they talked to dozens of people -- other mothers, fathers, older brothers and sisters, grandparents -- and discovered that the norms were pretty clear: Kids ate twice a day along with the rest of their families, and they ate food that was deemed appropriate for children -- soft, pure foods like the highest-quality rice.

Armed with that understanding, the mothers then observed the homes of the bright-spot kids, and, alert for any deviations, they noticed some unexpected habits. For one thing, bright-spot moms were feeding their kids four meals a day (using the same amount of food as other moms but spreading it across four servings rather than two). The larger twice-a-day meals eaten by most families turned out to be a mistake for children, because their malnourished stomachs couldn't process that much food at one time.

The style of eating was also different. Most parents believed that their kids understood their own needs and would feed themselves appropriately from a communal bowl. But the healthy kids were fed more actively -- by hand if necessary. The children were even encouraged to eat when they were sick, which was not the norm.

Perhaps most interesting, the healthy kids were eating different kinds of food. The bright-spot mothers were collecting tiny shrimp and crabs from the rice paddies and mixing them in with their kids' rice. (Shrimp and crabs were eaten by adults but they weren't considered appropriate food for kids.) The mothers also tossed in sweet-potato greens, which were considered a low-class food. These dietary improvisations, however strange or "low class," were doing something precious: adding sorely needed protein and vitamins to the children's diet.

As an outsider, Sternin never could have foreseen these insights. He knew nothing about sweet-potato greens. The solution was a native one, emerging from the real-world experience of the villagers, and for that reason, it was inherently realistic as well as sustainable. But knowing the solution wasn't enough. For anything to change, lots of mothers would need to adopt the new cooking habits.

Sternin refused to make a formal announcement. He knew that telling the mothers about nutrition wouldn't change their behavior. "Knowledge does not change behavior," he told us in the spring of 2008 (Sternin passed away in December of that year). "We have all encountered crazy shrinks and obese doctors and divorced marriage counselors." The mothers would have to practice it. They'd have to act differently until the different started to feel normal.

The community designed a program in which 50 malnourished families, in groups of 10, would meet at a hut each day and prepare food together. The families were required to bring shrimp, crabs, and sweet-potato greens. The mothers washed their hands with soap and cooked the meal together. Sternin said that the moms were "acting their way into a new way of thinking." Most important, it was their change, something that arose from the local wisdom of the village. Sternin's role was only to help them see that they could do it, that they could conquer malnutrition on their own.

Dozens of experts had analyzed the situation in Vietnam, agonizing over the problems -- the water supply, the sanitation, the poverty, the ignorance. They'd written position papers and research documents and development plans. But they hadn't changed a thing.

Six months after Sternin's visit to the Vietnamese village, 65% of the kids were better nourished -- and they stayed that way. Later, when researchers from Emory University's School of Public Health came to Vietnam to gather independent data, they found that even children who hadn't been born when Sternin left the village were as healthy as the kids Sternin had reached directly. That provided proof that the changes had stuck.

In tough times, we'll see problems everywhere, and "analysis paralysis" will often kick in. That's why, to make progress on a change, we need to provide crystal-clear direction -- show people where to go, how to act, what destination to pursue. And that's why bright spots are so essential: They provide the road map.

Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/142/switch-how-to-change-things-when-change-is-hard.html?page=0%2C1