Positive Deviance and Leading Causes of Life: A First Conversation

April 16, 2020

What do you get when you mix PD with LCL?

That’s what 75 people from a dozen countries—from India to South Africa to Nicaragua and the Netherlands—sought to find out. Hosted from El Paso, Texas, the socially-distanced gathering explored the synergies and opportunities between “leading causes of life” (LCL) and “positive deviance” (PD). The online conversation that was originally scheduled to take place in El Paso used Liberating Structures processes, so at points many smaller conversations were going at once.

The group included a number of LCL fellows, leaders in a variety of fields who share a conviction that we should pay greater attention to things that bring life.

Positive deviance says that every community has “certain individuals or groups (the positive deviants), whose uncommon but successful behaviors or strategies enable them to find better solutions to a problem than their peers” (from the Positive Deviance Initiative).

The day was co-hosted by Jim Cochrane, Gary Gunderson and Arvind Singhal.

Kudos to Chris Telles and Arvind Singhal who squeezed several hours of conversation down to this great video summary! Arvind says, “My hope it that this ‘record of our communion’ can create the enabling container for more such conversations to happen.”