Chapter 11
Defy Convention

The term “deviance” has long been associated with behavior that is harmful, dangerous, or perhaps immoral, such as lying, cheating, stealing, and other dishonorable acts. But sometimes bucking the norm in a positive way—positive deviance—may be more honorable behavior.

“Positive deviance focuses on those extreme cases of excellence when organizations and their members break free from the constraints of norms to conduct honorable behaviors,” writes professor Gretchen Spreitzer of the University of Michigan. “It has profound effects on the individuals and organizations that partake and benefit from such activities.”¹

Positive deviance is the kind of behavior that, when recognized by others, should be commended and praised. It refers to actions that, although outside and even disruptive of the norm, have honorable intentions and positive outcomes.

In this chapter, we look at what happens when bad behavior becomes the norm and how people who deviate in a positive way can drive positive change. As we’ve learned throughout this book, rising to the capacity of great leadership and impact can start with small acts, small changes in behavior. Not only leaders with power and influence but anyone, at any level, can act to start the change— from a lone arborist saving trees or a doctor combatting infection in a hospital to leaders of large organizations.

Slipping into Unethical Behavior

“The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate,” educators Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker wrote in their book School Culture Rewired.²

In the news today, as I write this, the fallout from the Volkswagen fiasco has reached global proportions. If somehow you haven’t heard, it’s been called the “diesel dupe.” As a BBC News article explains, Volkswagen was found to have installed a device that defeated emissions testing, effectively changing the performance results of the emissions tests on its diesel vehicles.³ This “defeat device” was actually a piece of software designed to recognize when the vehicle was undergoing emissions testing by detecting test circumstances. VW has admitted to installing this device on eleven million cars worldwide.

Beyond the mechanics of the deceit and the politics of the scandal lies the question, “How could the people and the culture within Volkswagen have permitted this?” The device was too integrated and sophisticated to have been a mistake produced by lack of oversight, confusion, or even ineptitude. The device, and the deceit, had to be carefully engineered and intentional. But were the engineers working on the software truly aware that they were committing an unethical act?

Diane Vaughan is a social scientist who coined the term “normalization of deviance” to describe the way organizational cultures can begin to drift morally and rationalize that drift over such a slow time horizon that they aren’t even aware of it themselves. Rather than being positive, this kind of deviance is destructive.

As she wrote about in her book The Challenger Launch Decision, Vaughan studied the infamous 1986 Challenger space shuttle explosion and discovered that faulty O-rings, linked to the disaster, were identified as fallible long before the disaster occurred.⁴

NASA, from the beginning of the space shuttle program, assumed that risk could not be eliminated, according to Vaughan, because the ability of the shuttle to perform in a real launch could only be mathematically predicted and tested in simulations. For that reason, the engineers expected anomalies on every mission, and disregarding danger signals, rather than trying to correct any problems, became the norm. For example, after space shuttle Discovery launched on January 24, 1985, and then returned safely to Earth, engineers performed an autopsy on the vehicle, which included carefully examining the O-rings.

In disassembling Discovery’s O-rings, the engineers discovered an alarming amount of grease that was blackened from exceedingly high pressure and temperature. The O-rings in the Discovery launch held but were more damaged than they had been in previous launches. Engineers calculated that the O-ring temperature at the time of Discovery liftoff was approximately 58 degrees Fahrenheit.

“[Challenger] could exhibit the same behavior,” the engineers reported after the examination. “Condition is not desirable, but is acceptable.”⁵ They also recommended proceeding with the next launch of Challenger. In fact, they not only recommended proceeding with the next launch, engineers painstakingly argued their position regarding the tolerable O-ring damage in a formal report.

At the eleventh hour, only a day before the fatal launch, engineers Bob Ebeling⁶ and Roger Boisjoly⁷ contradicted themselves and strenuously argued to NASA officials that the O-rings could stiffen and fail to properly seal the joints of the booster rockets because of the cold January temperatures. These arguments were not persuasive to NASA officials because, after all, they had the original detailed engineering report stating that the risk was acceptable.

It’s important to understand that the engineers were not simply acting or pretending that the damage was acceptable. Up until the engineers made their final plea to officials to halt the launch of Challenger only the day before, they actually believed that there was nothing wrong at all with that classification.

“No fundamental decision was made at NASA to do evil,” Vaughan wrote. “Rather, a series of seemingly harmless decisions were made that incrementally moved the space agency toward a catastrophic outcome.” The O-ring damage observed after each launch was normal. The culture had simply drifted to a state in which that condition was also considered acceptable.

In the NASA example, the existence of the damaged O-rings after each launch was deemed acceptable. It became an implicit, and accepted, rule that everyone simply tolerated and believed to be quite normal. But if we step back for a moment and study the situation, as Vaughan did in her analysis, that acceptance of damaged O-rings seems pretty crazy.

Questioning the Craziest Rules

Last year I heard the most amazing behavioral science story. It goes like this: several years ago researchers working with monkeys confined five in a single enclosure. Each day they placed a banana at the top of a ladder. The monkey who first climbed and attempted to retrieve the banana was sprayed with cold water. And then the rest of the monkeys were also sprayed with cold water. Miserable.

After a few days, the monkeys started grabbing, holding, and biting the monkey who attempted to get the banana, because of course everyone else would get doused with cold water. Pretty soon no one attempted to get the banana. They learned that they would get both sprayed with cold water and attacked by their peers if they tried to climb the ladder—two miserable outcomes.

Then one day the researchers removed one of the monkeys and brought in a new monkey. The very next day the new monkey raced to get the banana but was immediately set upon and attacked by the other monkeys, who refused to allow him to reach the banana. The new money is likely thinking to himself, “What the heck? What’s wrong with you monkeys?”

After several days of repeatedly being held back, finally the new monkey succumbed to the culture and stopped trying to reach the banana each day.

Over time the researchers would remove one of the older, experienced monkeys and introduce a new one. And each time the new monkey was taught by his peers not to go for the banana. Until finally, all of the original monkeys had been rotated out and only newer monkeys, trained by their peers, remained in the cage.

And still no monkey attempted to get the banana each day, although no monkey now in the cage had ever had the experience of being doused with cold water. While no monkey in the enclosure could ever explain or understand why none of them tried to get the banana, they all complied with this “rule” that had no logical origin.

The story is amazing, a poignant metaphor for our everyday lives. Immediately I started looking for the original study to read it, and write about it. It has fascinating implications for our personal lives, our teams, our workplaces, and our inability to question why we participate in the habits and rituals we do every day without even questioning them.

Here’s the thing: the story isn’t true. According to Dario Maestripieri, a professor of comparative human development, evolutionary biology, and neurobiology at the University of Chicago, the experiment never existed; the study never happened.⁸ It was originally described in a business book twenty years ago and repeated over and over by many others. I was disappointed but not surprised. The story is so plausible and compelling that it begs to be told.

Like the monkeys in the banana story, we can easily get trapped into repetitive behaviors without ever asking why we do what we do. And, as with the banana story itself, we sometimes find stories so compelling that they become folklore, repeated over and over until they become gospel truth without anyone ever questioning the origin.

Often we believe that, if we try something new—attempt a novel experiment at work to improve a process or develop a new product—our bosses and peers will meet us with rejection. So we stop trying. But we should still show up every day with an open mind and willing to try something new— go out on a limb, smash a barrier, break a taboo.

Organizations need to constantly guard against slipping into a norm that is unproductive and even potentially dangerous, and be on the lookout for, and embrace, deviance that is positive.

Embracing Positive Deviance

The concept of positive deviance first appeared in nutrition research in the 1970s, when researchers Monique and Jerry Sternin observed that, despite the poverty in a community in Vietnam, some poor families had well- nourished children even though they did not have access to additional money or resources. The researchers used the information gathered from these outliers to plan nutrition programs, drastically reducing the rates of youth malnutrition.

“It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking, than to think your way into a new way of acting,” the Sternins and coauthor Richard Pascale subsequently wrote in The Power of Positive Deviance,” which they based on their research.⁹

Fortunately, some people choose to go against the flow of behavior around them, yielding positive results. Such was the case of Paul King, a British arborist, and Jon Lloyd, an American doctor.

Saving Trees

The Arbor Day Foundation describes the elm tree as “stately with its vase- shaped, broad crown . . . a tree whose history is closely linked to much of American history.”¹⁰ But in the twentieth century, elms came under attack by a fungus. The fungus caused what became known as “Dutch elm disease.” The disease, first identified in 1921, was spread by elm- bark beetles and had wiped out elm trees around the world, from Asia to Europe, and finally in the Americas. By the early 1990s, very few mature elm trees were left in the United Kingdom.

Over the years, experts had tried many different interventions to stop the spread of the disease.¹¹ Early efforts focused on cutting down diseased elms or burning them, in attempts to isolate the problem. Later arborists tried using chemicals, such as DDT, but stopped after they discovered the DDT not only killed the beetles infecting the trees but also endangered birds, squirrels, and pretty much all organisms, including humans.

In the 1970s, treatment of Dutch elm disease switched to biological fungicide weapons, which have been largely, and often completely, ineffective. Finally, the University of Amsterdam developed a vaccine in the 1980s that has been more effective than previous efforts.

Paul King tried something completely different. During the 1980s he was working in Essex, England, as an arborist. His job was to go around the countryside and trim bushes and trees. He was always amazed and impressed by two elm trees near his home that somehow were thriving while, elsewhere throughout the country, elms were sickened with disease.

“My job in the 1970s and 1980s was cutting down diseased elms,” King is quoted as saying in an article in the British newspaper The Independent. “Over the years we must have cut down thousands and it was heartbreaking. But I always noticed how these two particular elms near my house somehow survived.”¹²

As the article goes on to explain, King decided to try an experiment. In the 1980s, he took cuttings from the two healthy trees and from those cultivated more in a greenhouse. Over a period of thirty years, elm trees across the British countryside continued to be decimated by Dutch elm disease, with the notable exception of those cultivated from King’s original cuttings.

Scientists are not quite certain what makes King’s strain of elm so resistant to Dutch elm disease, according to the article, and it’s possible his trees may succumb over time. But, at the moment, he was creating a novel, and positively deviant, solution to a persistent and systemic problem that was previously unsolvable.

Solving a Widespread Infection Problem

Darryl was a wounded war veteran at the Pittsburgh VA hospital back in 2005. While in the hospital, he acquired a nasty bacterial infection, Methicillin- resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which required four separate surgeries on the wound on his leg.

Of the various incidental bacterial infections we can get inside a hospital, MRSA is one of the nastiest. The symptoms are swollen, painful red bumps that resemble pimples or boils. The affected area might be warm to the touch. And unlike, for example, the AIDS virus, which is fragile and easily perishes in open environments outside the host, MRSA can live on hospital surfaces for up to six weeks. Between 1976 and 2004, hospital- acquired MRSA infections increased thirty-two-fold. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that each year almost two million people get an infection simply from being in a hospital. Those hospital-acquired infections kill almost a hundred thousand people each year as well.¹³

Darryl knew that he’d gotten the bacterial infection either through direct contact with someone carrying the bacteria, or by contacting a surface or medical device that was carrying it. When doctors, nurses, and clinicians walked into Darryl’s room, he watched them closely. If they didn’t wash their hands, he smiled warmly at them and then looked at the sink. If the medical providers didn’t get the gesture immediately, he did it again until they got the point. It was patients like Darryl who prompted the hospital to post signs in the rooms that say, “You have a RIGHT to clean hands. Please remind EVERYONE to sanitize or wash their hands when entering and exiting your room.”¹⁴

Doctors Jon Lloyd and Rajiv Jain led the MRSA prevention efforts for the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System. They had previously tried a top- down, mandated approach to preventing the spread of the bacteria. On the basis of the continuous improvement principles of the Toyota Production System, the hospital had begun making cleaning agents and gowns readily available for the clinicians and instituting a mindset of “hand hygiene.”

The approach worked, but it was also slow and expensive because it required purchasing expensive supplies and materials and hiring additional staffing to monitor and administer the program throughout the hospital system.

Then, in 2005, Lloyd read an article in Fast Company magazine about positive deviance and the research of Monique and Jerry Sternin in Vietnam. He was intrigued and, following the Sternins’ model, he and the medical caregivers at Pittsburgh’s VA hospital looked around the facility and found people, such as Darryl, who were successfully implementing their own small deviant practices, with incredibly positive results.

Lloyd had a eureka moment. “The expertise to tackle MRSA is right under our noses,” he declared. “There are hundreds of experts here. The key is recognizing that the solutions to the problems exist among the staff and the patients.” Thereafter, Lloyd and Jain began to collect the positive- deviance practices of clinicians and patients, then share and teach those practices until they became formalized and part of the social fabric of the hospital community.

Since 2009, the incidence of healthcare-associated infections has been decreasing steadily in the United States, in part because many health care organizations across the country have adopted the practices pioneered by Lloyd and Jain.¹⁵

Reaping Financial Rewards Through Positive Deviance

On Monday, August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made its third and most devastating landfall, with sustained winds of more than 125 mph. Inside the headquarters of Hancock Bank in Gulfport, Mississippi, Katrina’s thirty- foot storm surge had driven four feet of water throughout the ground floor and destroyed the elevator system.

A tornado had ripped out thirteen thousand windows on the face of the building and blown glass, furniture, and debris throughout the interior. The bank had a one- inch- thick steel roof that had been peeled off by the gale-force winds, exposing the interior of the seventeen- story building to the storm and deluge. And in the basement, the central data center was being flooded and blasted with falling Sheetrock as the interior walls crumbled and fell.

As reported by James Pat Smith, of the Gulfport Community and Regional Resilience Institute, COO John Hairston, in the shelter of a nearby building, managed to call security IT manager Jeff Andrews, who was in Chicago.

“Jeff, the building’s a total loss,” John yelled into his cell phone as the winds howled outside. “You’ve got four days. Bring up the systems, get it current. I may not be able to talk to you again for a while. . . . If we cannot get the systems up, we don’t have a company.”¹⁶

The following morning, the bank executives huddled over the hood of a car in the parking lot. It was Tuesday, August 30. The next day would be payday. Most of their customers would be getting paid the following morning, many by direct deposit. They needed those funds desperately for basic food, shelter, and clothing. Credit cards would be useless. The region was devastated, the infrastructure flattened. With sporadic electricity available, cash would be critical to sustaining people’s lives.

Serving customers from Texas to Florida, Hancock Bank was one of the primary banking providers in the region. But without power at its branches or ATM facilities, there was no way the bank’s customers could access their funds to buy basic needs. Fifty of Hancock’s regional bank branches were offline, with no power or access to customer account information.

Those executives in the parking lot of Hancock’s headquarters then did something remarkable: reminded of the original charter of the bank to serve communities first, profits second, they asked their branch managers to open no matter what. Without power or lights, and some without doors or windows, that afternoon ten locations opened for business. Several of those locations served customers from card tables in front of the shattered bank. Within three days, thirty locations opened for business and invited people in.

In exchange for an IOU on a Post-it Note, with only a name and an address if they had no identification, each makeshift bank provided $200 in cash to anyone who asked for it. That’s right— in the critical week following Katrina, without requiring either proof of identification or verification of account information, Hancock Bank pulled cash from destroyed ATM machines, dried it out, and put $42 million into the local economy.

According to bank CEO George Schloegel, less than $200,000 was not returned. And in the five months following the disaster, thirteen thousand new accounts were opened, and bank deposits grew by $1.5 billion. Yes, billion. Hancock Bank had definitively become the bank of the community.

That’s the power of knowing the right thing to do and actually doing it, no matter how far it deviates from business as usual. It’s what happens when leaders are courageous enough to disrupt the status quo, deviate from the norm in a positive way, and live their values—just as the CEO of Schering- Plough did in the next story.

Encouraging Others to Be Positively Deviant

At a global company meeting in October 2003, in Atlanta, the new CEO of Schering- Plough, Fred Hassan, stood onstage before thousands of sales professionals from around the world and said the following: "If you are put in a position where you must decide between making a sale that involves doing something you don't feel comfortable with—something you won't be proud of later—and walking away from that sale, then walk away. As your CEO I'm telling you to choose long-term trust and integrity over short-term gain."¹⁷

Hassan had only been named CEO in April of that same year. His philosophies and opinions were not yet well-known throughout the organization. He knew he was taking the risk of alienating some of the successful sales professionals who were making a killing on quarterly commission checks from short-term transactions. In addition to providing this message of focusing on integrity, he led the change of the commission structure to incentivize longer-term relationships with customers. He knew some salespeople would leave, and they did.

But something else happened. Starting in the spring of 2004, Schering-Plough enjoyed more than four years of double-digit growth. Then came 2008, and the growth ran dry for most everyone. Yet, even during this period, Schering- Plough continued to innovate and introduce new pharmaceuticals to the market, as well as to return consistent earnings for shareholders and community. Schering-Plough hired and retained those sales types who took the long view.

In a conversation I had with Hassan in April 2013, he put it this way: “People want to do something right and be a part of something bigger than themselves. . . . I didn’t expect it, but I got a long standing ovation that day.”

In this example, Hassan refused to accept the dogma of the past, instead deviating from the norm in a positive way, rejecting the common philosophy of “that’s the way we’ve always done it around here.” That phrase, when adopted as a mantra, can be the greatest impediment to progress and innovation. Like the executives at Hancock Bank, Hassan was deeply courageous and willing to lead with the strength of his values and conviction. He was, in effect, asking the entire sales force to upend the way they do business to align with higher values.

Most organizations include individuals or groups whose uncommon practices or strategies enable them to find better solutions to difficult or intractable problems. The trick is to find and identify these positive deviants and collect their stories and practices, and then scale them. Any of us can play the role of disrupter. And any of us can harness our curiosity and find those positive disrupters who live in our midst. It just takes a little courage and curiosity.