Affirmation. Not That I Need It Of Course!

I deliberately subtitled this blog "The views of a marketing deviant" not because I was projecting a subliminal message but because I think conventional wisdom and common sense are not necessarily wise or that common. While entirely sceptical about new paradigms and hyperbole, my philopsophy of accentuating the negative means I'm always looking for the new way that works (even if it isn't actually new).

Thus the approach of Jerry Sternin developed from his time at Save The Children is music to my ears. "Maybe the problem is that you can't import change from the outside in. Instead, you have to find small, successful but "deviant" practices that are already working in the organization and amplify them. Maybe, just maybe, the answer is already alive in the organization -- and change comes when you find it."

He advocates searching for positive deviants whose abnormal behaviour enables them to outperform their peers in the same environment and to persuade the rest of the community to change their behaviour to that of the positive deviants. It's an approach that has saved lives and for me that gives it more credibility than the latest four-quadrant matrix or technology mash-up.