As Dr. Deming brilliantly pointed out, 94% of all failure is not because of the people it is because the system is not working optimally. Unless we change the system we will continue to get poor results. As Deming said, “Best efforts accomplish very little; you must change the system.”

What they haven’t done is change the system! Doing Life is a system change. When implemented in all 50 states, Doing Life will save taxpayers billions of dollars. Equally important it will positively transform countless lives.

Positive Deviant Cherie Clark has a corrections system that works. It is only in one state (New York) and her “Doing Life” program (called Shock Incarceration in New York ) has saved this one state $1.05 BILLION dollars. Shock has over 35,000 graduates. For every 100 Shock Releases the state of New York saves $3.01 million dollars that it would have otherwise expended for the care and custody of these inmates. If you would be willing to hear more on what the Positive Deviant Network is doing to fix the prison system. Click here: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

The first successful large-scale field application of PD was initiated in Vietnam in early 1991 to address the problem of childhood malnutrition. Over the following decade, the PD approach to nutrition became a national model and today reaches a population of 2.2 million inhabitants in 250 Vietnamese communities. The program has sustainably rehabilitated an estimated 50,000 malnourished children under the age of 5. Of even greater significance, their younger siblings, many of whom were not yet born at the time of the nutrition program implementation, are benefiting from the same levels of enhanced nutritional status. Simply stated, positive deviance provided a tool for radically altering the conventional wisdom regarding child nutrition and caring practices in these communities.

Insights into the Julie & Julia Movie.

Background: Julia Child

At six feet two inches tall Julia Child was outside the accepted height range of both the WACS (U.S. Women's Army Corps) and the WAVES  (U.S. Women's Navy).  The OSS (Office of Strategic Services) had no height restriction and Child began her OSS career as a typist at its headquarters in Washington, D.C.  With Julia's Smith College education (1934) and her passion, she quickly became a top-secret researcher working directly for the head of OSS...

Below is the schedule for June’s PDN event.  While the primary focus (first two days) will be on Cherie’s prison Doing Life program, we will also be covering:

• How to Drive 100,000’s of People to Your website Using Social Networking as the moving force.  Forget Google Ads; social networking on the net is 10 times as effective at 1/10^th the cost (that means it is 100 times more effective!)  Sam Sokol has this figured out.
  
• How to Craft a Grant that Succeeds
  Jan will deliver this if she is able.  If not, Marshall will deliver this under Jan’s direction.

• How to use Design of Experiments  (DOX) to Dramatically Improve Your Business.  Jerry and Kelly Agee, Keith Anderson and Marshall Thurber
  
  
• How a “theory” is Created for a Significant Paradigm Establishing Book.  The Divas and Marshall. 

• The Designer/Leader Simulation a new simulation created by Marshall Thurber.  This will be the first time this has every been played

• The Convergence Experience a second simulation by Marshall on the complexity of convergence.

• The Positive Deviant Success Landing Page the intention is for the entire globe to find you and your offering specifically.  Sam Sokol and Keith Anderson will be revealing the secrets on how this is done. 

There is an interesting article by Brian Uzzi and Shannon Dunlap in the Harvard Business Review on network science.  In their “How to Build Your Network” they brought up the Paul Revere and William Dawes example.  Both rode on horseback on the same night shouting and knocking on doors shouting. “The British are coming…the British are coming!”  People responded to Paul Revere and took immediate action; those who heard William Dawes didn’t.