Positive deviance is an approach to behavioral and social change through uncommon but successful behaviors or strategies. A positively deviant person uses this approach to find better solutions to a problem than their peers, despite facing similar challenges and having no extra resources or knowledge.

A person can be positively deviant, so can an organization, or even a department. In my work as a consultant, I look for the positive deviance in organizations along with the organization’s strengths.

Perhaps they have raving fans for customers and hence a very high customer loyalty rate. Perhaps they have unusual programs for keeping employees happy and loyal. Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, Nordstrom, Patagonia, USAA, Zappos, New Pig Corp, Cabela’s, and Garnet Hill are just a few of the companies I know and love as examples of positive deviance.

They do things differently, and most significantly, they think about things differently. Southwest Airlines (whose stock symbol is LUV) does bring love to work. They also bring an entrepreneurial spirit, a sense of urgency, and religious fervor to hiring people with a sense of humor and humanity. What most people don’t realize about Southwest is that they are a very disciplined company. They consistently focus on a clear purpose and a strategy for getting there. Their purpose is to connect people with what’s important in their lives through friendly, reliable air travel. Their culture is the soul of their enterprise.

They lean toward the positive and build capacity for more positivity. They focus on strengths over weakness, optimism over pessimism, and they are supportive rather than critical in their communication. This makes them great places to work and great companies to do business with.

They care about people and their impact on them. They care about moral goodness and social betterment. We’re social creatures and we need each other for survival. We have care-giving circuits in our brain, also known as empathy circuits that produce chemicals like oxytocin.

According to Dr. Matthew Lieberman at UCLA, we are motivated by a greater good to try harder, work faster, persevere longer, cooperate better, and control our least productive impulses. Virtuousness is expressed though optimism, hope, gratitude, wisdom, forgiveness, compassion, and resilience, all of which are associated with richer and deeper relationships.

These companies clearly know what their values are and they live them. They take the time to define, articulate and operationalize their values. They not only recognize strengths, they build on them. Leaders in these companies focus on the best of the human condition and the best in their people. Dr. Kim Cameron of the University of Michigan explains that there is a positive impact of “Virtuousness” on five key measures of organizational performance: innovation, customer loyalty, turnover, quality, and profitability.

They challenge themselves to improve by challenging their assumptions frequently. One of my favorite companies is the New Pig Corporation – they manufacture and sell the world’s best stuff for leaks, drips, and spills and create an experience that happy customers love to come back for.

Whatever they say or do as individuals or as a company is from this perspective. They always ask, “Does it add value for the customer?” Everything is done to make the customers feel special, because they are! They call it the “PIG Experience.” Answering the phone within two rings by a real person who is a friendly, informed expert is standard at New Pig. Their product development and customer insight teams are constantly monitoring nasty problems so that they can create innovative solutions to make life easier for their customers. Receiving 30 “Plant Engineering Product of the Year” awards is testimony to their skills and tenacity. They understand the fundamental guiding principle of any successful business; happy customers come back. It’s an embedded mindset.

If you have been doing the practices I’ve recommended so far, then you are on your way! Keep looking – go on a deviance hunt. Who’s doing it right? Who’s got happy customers? Who’s got great ideas? Who’s got more energy in their department? What places are doing cool things? What departments rock? Who’s getting outrageous results? Who’s engaged, passionate, and purposeful? What can you learn from them?
Perhaps people right inside your own company or people in the company down the block are doing great work – go find out.

“If you’re not getting better you cease being good.”

So looking for the positive deviance in your own system can often provide a viable solution in the best way possible. Sometimes you want to look for positive deviance outside your own system too to see what’s working for others.

My buddies over at the New Pig Corporation, a company known for its high quality and happy customers, make it fun. The PIG moniker came about because the founding partners considered themselves “Partners in Grime”. Over time employees began to refer to themselves as “Piggers”, and to their company as the “barn” or “the pig pen”, and their catalog as a “Pigalog”. No boardroom meetings for them, but you just might find “Piggers” in the “Boar Room” at 1 Pork Ave. The employees of New Pig “sowlute” each other for a job well done! When they get off the phone with you, they wish you a “Swine Day”.

Orders over certain dollar amounts earn customers piggy T-shirts, hats, crazy ‘bout clean undies, and other pork-themed surprises that customers look forward to collecting. Customers also love the “swine song” that plays when they’re put on hold; some intentionally call the company just to hear it!

And what does all this fun get them? Employee and customer loyalty, first class products and services, and top ratings in everything from research and development to staff empowerment and education. Oh, and yes, profitability.

Zappos is another company who exemplifies positive deviance. Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh wrote about it in his bestseller book, Delivering Happiness, A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose. The story is legendary.

It’s a story about a guy who starts an online shoe business in a declining economy, and less than 10 years later sells it for more than a billion dollars to Amazon. He did it with a relentless focus on improving the customer experience. It wasn’t just the customers whose experience got better, but Tony’s focus on using happiness as an organizing principle made Zappos an awesome place to work. It was hard to get a job there because they only accepted the right people.

Before a new-hire starts their job, they have to spend several weeks in the call center listening to and talking to customers, even if they are at a top management level. After they finish their paid training, they’re offered one month’s salary to leave the company – thousands of dollars to quit! * This is a positive deviant move – right?

Who does this? Tony does, because if you take the money and run it’s a cheap way for him to weed out the people that won’t fit into the culture, which is admittedly a little crazy. And, just like the “Piggers” from my earlier example, the employees at Zappos call themselves, “Zapponians”.

This includes: