Corporations are awash in meaningless discourse. While words are exchanged and heads are nodded, a great deal of signal distortion is happening between sender and receiver. Because of unwritten social codes meant to keep individuals from being put on the spot, people aren’t forced to speak concretely—in fact, they’re often discouraged from doing so. These abstractions do a lot to obscure insight. Consider, for example, how the format of PowerPoint can blur or hide hard facts: Before NASA’s devastating loss of the Columbia space shuttle, engineers from Martin Marietta and Boeing buried the imminent risks to the spacecraft’s protective ceramic tiles within the complicated, nested, ten-point-font bullet points of their PowerPoint presentation.A firm grasp of reality obliterates vague assumptions and helps focus attention on what’s really working. Dealing directly with an uncomfortable truth requires stating it concretely so that there is no way to duck the challenge at hand. This is not merely a matter of being specific. It also entails portraying or dramatizing a pivotal issue in a compelling way. An example of this type of framing occurred during a positive deviance workshop devoted to finding practices to curtail the spread of HIV/AIDS in Myanmar. The group consisted of prostitutes—nearly all of whom insisted that she faithfully made her clients use condoms. The moment of truth occurred when each participant was asked to apply a condom to a banana. Varying degrees of dexterity quickly differentiated the pretenders from the practitioners. The positive deviants, once identified, began sharing the negotiation strategies they used to persuade their partners to use condoms. Soon the others in the group became adept at overcoming their partners’ objections. With the right exercises, many organizations could profit from appropriate reincarnations of the “banana test.”Step 5: Leverage social proof.The old adage “Seeing is believing” has particular potency when it comes to change. Take Alcoholics Anonymous. In the 1930s, two positive deviants stumbled onto the notion of holding weekly get-togethers to help keep themselves sober. Others joined. An inductive process of reflection and learning gave rise to the 12-step program—a protocol that was decades ahead of any intervention that had been devised by professional psychiatry. The approach is enshrined today in the worldwide success of AA and its application to many afflictions. Social proof is the lifeblood of the support group movement.Let’s turn to a far more dramatic example of the power of social proof. Envision a frightened child struggling in the grip of her mother and aunt against the assault of a barber and his straight razor. In Egypt, female genital mutilation (FGM) or female circumcision is a 4,000-year-old practice used by Christian Copts and Muslims alike to deprive women of sexual enjoyment and to ensure faithfulness. Ninety percent of Egyptian girls, usually between the ages of nine and 13, undergo the painful and sometimes dangerous procedure, often without understanding what is happening to them or why. Girls sometimes die from infection or blood loss. The practice is tightly woven into the fabric of Egyptian life and, as such, is strongly resistant to change. Traditionally, it hasn’t been seen as a problem; it’s simply “the way it is.”Could women’s advocates find families in Egyptian villages that did not circumcise their girls—and would such families be willing to talk? Eventually, advocates in one village identified a few exceptions to the norm. The first interviews—with uncircumcised women, mothers and fathers who were against the practice, and husbands who had knowingly married uncircumcised women—were held in a remote, guarded monastery to ensure anonymity. The half-dozen families that came forward provided additional contacts who were willing to give testimony. A year into the project, more than 100 families had been identified and interviewed.For victims, their mothers, and other female relatives, discussing the trauma of the practice spawned a therapeutic cycle of catharsis, forgiveness, and healing. The women gave poignant testimony: “We are butchering our girls.” “Cutting out the tongue does not deny the experience of hunger.” “Desire is in the mind, not the organs.” “I could never trust my mother again.” As the conversation progressed, a new consciousness began to form. Word spread, and communities began to more openly discuss female circumcision. Other families expressed their willingness not only to be interviewed but also to be advocates within their communities.Over time, the village experienced a contagion of spontaneous initiatives. In one case, an 18-year-old girl gathered her peers in the dusty shade of a village tamarisk tree. Together, they relived the horror of their experiences and their feelings of betrayal. All agreed to return home and beg their mothers not to subject their younger sisters to the same fate. In another case, a sheik, speaking in the mosque during prayers, asserted that circumcision was not required by Islam. Soon, mainstream village voices began to join the chorus of dissenters. An alternative possibility—rejecting the practice of FGM—was gaining legitimacy.In the past five years, tens of thousands of ordinary villagers have proven that it is possible for a woman to be uncircumcised and still be virtuous. More than 1,000 circumcisions have been averted in a few villages alone. More remarkable, the Egyptian government is initiating its first nationwide anti-FGM campaign.
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