We will continue to explore helping organizations to change when change is hard. The next suggestion that Chip and Dan Heath make in their book, “Switch” is to “Find the Bright Spots”. Bright spots are best practices in the organization or community, related to the desired change. Bright spots should be highlighted in the organization to enhance adoption. This is a well-supported premise that further enhances the work of Everett M. Rogers in “Diffusion of Innovations”. Innovations spread from innovators to early adopters to early majority and beyond. Bright spots are the work of innovators that attract early adopters.

Saving the Children in Vietnam

A Save the Children story illustrates how Bright Spots can make an impact. A new executive was assigned to the Save the Children office in Vietnam. His mission was malnutrition in children. He was an outsider and, although he was invited by the Vietnamese government, was not welcomed by the local people. We learned this same lesson in the Rogers book, when medical professionals were sent to teach a Peruvian village about clean water practices. Outsiders aren’t familiar with the culture of the village, country or company. Their suggestions often ignore existing practices, making change difficult. The executive enlisted the help of some local village mothers to try to overcome his lack of local conversancy and went to work trying to understand the data about the village children.

Initially, the Save the Children executive was burdened by infrastructure issues like clean water, ignorance and poverty. In situations where the actual problem lies atop massive underlying issues, the “riders” in us get bogged down in trying to solve everything and never get anything done. The “rider” needs to be directed to a clear destination and Bright Spots help him to understand where to go. In his search for the destination, the executive asked the local mothers a simple question. When they were interviewing families, did they find any healthy children? The answer was yes. They decided to explore the existing practices that contributed to the few healthy children. 

Gathering Data on Bright Spots

When gathering data on bright spots, it is important to understand details around anomalies. For instance, in the Vietnam example, healthy children that had relatives in the government were excluded from consideration as a bright spot. They had likely been given extra food or access to better resources, something that would be impossible to replicate for the rest of the village. A bright spot needs to be accomplished with local resources and talent so that replication is easy and natural. After accounting for anomalies, the local mothers reported the following:

• Healthy children ate different food than the malnourished children – The mothers of the healthy children were feeding their children protein from little shrimps and crabs that were not usually considered appropriate for children and normally reserved for the adults in the family. In addition, the mothers added sweet potato greens which were considered a lower-class food. The unhealthy children ate soft foods like high quality rice without the added protein or greens
• The healthy children ate similar amounts but more often than the malnourished children – The healthier children ate four smaller meals a day. The malnourished children ate larger meals twice a day with the family which turned out to be too much food for the malnourished stomachs to ingest.
• The healthy children were fed differently – The healthy children were fed by hand, if necessary, and their eating was “actively monitored” by the parents. The malnourished children were encouraged to eat as much as they wanted and to feed themselves.

Everett M. Rogers would have considered these Bright Spot mothers with healthy children to be innovators in the diffusion of nutrition innovation. As we know from Rogers, innovators are rarely considered credible (usually crazy, like me with my composting) and in need of support and credibility from the early adopters to get an innovation to spread.

The Save the Children executive took the data and with the help of the local mothers sponsored cooking groups where mothers would meet at a neighboring home to make food for their families. They were required to bring sweet potato greens, shrimp and crab. By bringing the mothers together and teaching them the new practice he built community support for the new ideas and gave hope to the mothers with sick children. He took the innovation and gathered early adopters to launch an obscure idea into the mainstream.

In a situation where you have a willing “Rider” and “Elephant”, Bright Spots can really get the ball rolling. You can imagine that mothers would be very motivated (Elephant) to make these small changes to save their children. In addition, the changes are clear and simple (Rider-friendly) and do not require confusing directions or solving massive infrastructure issues. The most important part of the change was that everything the mothers needed was readily available to them in their community and didn’t require them to abandon their culture or practices.

Finding the Bright Spots in Your Organization

Organizations often have bright spots that simply go unnoticed because no one asked the right question; Do any of the departments turn in expense reports on time? Are any of the managers highly rated for employee satisfaction? Which IT group has the smallest application backlog?

My PhD is in Industrial and Systems Engineering. One of the things we look for in Industrial Engineering is best practices. We search for the most efficient or cost-effective way of doing something whether it is the order of operations in a plant, or the arrangement of desks in an insurance office. We are trying to eliminate waste (money, time, energy) from a process. How much time do employees spend walking from one place to the next? How many steps does it take to get an order placed or a purchase order approved? Often the best way to solve a problem is to observe employees at work.

I remember a lecture in an undergraduate Art History class where an architect took a unique approach to the design of the sidewalks leading into the apartment building. When the building was done, the architect instructed the landscapers to plant grass from the parking lots to the building. Over the course of the next few months, the people moved into the building. As the people walked from the parking lot to the doors, paths were created in the grass. Over time the most favored/efficient routes from the parking lot to the doors became well-worn paths. Once the favored routes were clear, the architect simply paved over the well-worn paths. The people who knew the most about the many functions of the building, and the needs of the tenants determined the most effective routes. If the design of the sidewalks was a problem, then each efficient path was a Bright Spot.

As evidenced by this story I remember from an undergraduate Art History class, I have always been fascinated by and interested in “Bright Spots”, which are really clever ways to engage employees in solving problems. Where are your Bright Spots? How have you used them to solve big problems?