Month: January 2010

books, change, community, education, encouragement

Step 24: Stay Maladjusted

Christa Avampato

I’m maladjusted and happy about it. Last week, Charlie Judy, the author of HR Fishbowl talked about Dr. Martin Luther King’s encouragement of maladjustment. He didn’t want anyone to be happy and content with the way things are. He never wanted us to adjust and accept things just as they are. He wanted us to keep striving to make things better. Our discontent, our maladjustment, improves the condition of the world.

Jerry Sternin of the Positive Deviance Initiative had this same philosophy. He pushed us not just to think different, but to actually act different and learn as we go. With this attitude, he brought better nutrition to millions of people in Vietnam. His small, heartfelt inquiries and actions changed the course of that nation.

Toyota believes the same thing. In business school, we studied the Toyota Production System (TPS), the secret sauce that made Toyota a global brand. Developed by Sakichi Toyoda, two of the greatest beliefs in TPS are the empowerment of the individual to make improvements and the idea of continuous improvement. Nothing is ever perfect; nothing is ever 100% as it should be.

This idea might be overwhelming at first, though let’s take a moment and see if we can find the bright spot. If everything can be improved, then there is always interesting work to be done that is useful and helpful. Incremental improvement is the focus of Dr. King’s maladjustment philosophy, Jerry’s Sternin’s initiative and the TPM, so even small steps are worthwhile. We don’t need to be paralyzed by the pursuit of perfection because perfection is never going to happen. We can instead be motivated by a desire to improve.

I just began reading Whatever It Takes, the latest book about Geoffrey Canada’s triumphant organization, Harlem Children’s Zone. Canada’s work is one gigantic bright spot in the field of inner-city public education. He is someone who embodies the idea of maladjusted positive deviance. In 2009, President Obama put forward funding and support to have HCZ’s paradigm replicated all over the country. Canada’s incremental improvements to Harlem over the course of several decades will now be levered up to create lasting, positive change for children throughout the US. He’s one individual with passion and determination. His is a bright spot worth replicating in our own lives, in our own way.

Jerry Sternin, Dr. King, and Sakichi Toyoda are smiling down on us. We’re living their legacy.

change, writing

Step 23: Replicating Authenticity

Christa Avampato

In yesterday’s post I talked about positive deviance, the practice of finding bright spots in a situation, in our lives, and replicating them like mad to create further improvements. And then I promised you a personal revelation for today’s post that demonstrates where and how I’d like to use positive deviance in my own life.

Think of one area of your life that you really love, that’s going so well that you smile every time it pops into your head. What do you love about it? Be very specific on this – get down to the meat of what makes you really happy about this part of your life. Now, how can this exact same paradigm be ported over to other areas of your life?

For me, one area that’s going really well is my writing. I love the design of this new site, the new people it helps me to meet, everything I learn from the research and writing, and its tangible nature. Now for the specifics: I run the site and get to call all of the shots on content and design. Yes, I certainly take and love input, and at the end of the day I physically make all of the updates myself. I get to tell my stories and share what’s happening in my life. It’s the one part of my life where I do exactly what I want, when I want, how I want. It’s the area of my life where I am the most authentic. Brian is going to be thrilled to hear this – this is the exact work we’ve been focusing on for the past few months. I’m going to become an authenticity addict.

Now, what implications does this have for other parts of my life? I’ve been settling. Lots and lots of settling. Settling’s comfortable, it reduces stress, it lowers expectations, and reduces disappointments. It’s also boring and at the end of the day it amounts to almost nothing. And that has to change. More of my life has to be how I want it to be, not just how it is. The other areas of my life have to have as much meaning and authenticity as my writing. I have to accept that this will be difficult, scary terrain. I will have to trust myself more and follow my gut. I will have to lose my grip on comfort in order to seek and find more meaning in the other parts of my life. I will have to jump off the cliff, arms spread wide, and trust that I can fly.

I should be more frightened by this, though if I look back over my life, history is on my side:
1.) I worked very hard as a student so that I could build a better life by getting a quality education. It worked; I have reaped the great rewards of a solid career, financial stability, and the genuine curiosity that an incredible education bears. I wasn’t always sure how I’d afford this education, nor did I know precisely where it would take me. I made it up as I went along, and it all worked out better than fine.

2.) I have been willing to take new jobs, despite a lower salary and less stability, because I followed my heart and did the work I wanted to do. It worked; I’ve always done the work I love and I’ve gotten to achieve many of the things on my childhood dreams list.

One of the very bright spots of my life in the past few years has been my writing because I show up everyday to convey an honest, poignant story. I take off the blinders, drop my guard, and go for broke. In this part of my life I’m not trying to impress anyone, nor am I trying to be any more or any less than me. Every time I just trust myself, my life always works out better than I ever imagined it could be. It’s a bright spot worth replicating.

books, change, education, Fast Company, social change, society

Step 22: Seeing Spots

Christa Avampato

“You cannot think your way into a new way of acting, you have to act your way into a new way of thinking.” ~ Jerry Sternin, Founder of The Positive Deviance Initiative

In this month’s issue of Fast Company, there is an excerpt from Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The book goes on sale February 16th, and this excerpt provides insights into how to find the bright spots, as small and few as they may be, that lead to radical, large-scale, successful change when replicated. The Heaths take a cue from Jerry Sternin, a professor of nutrition at Tufts University, who, along with his wife, Monique (also a professor at Tufts), gave so much to so many around the world. The Professors Sternin founded the movement of positive deviance and advocated for its use around the world.

There is some societal belief that when someone is exceptional, they’re weird. We think that the exceptional do things that no one else can do when really they just do things that no one is doing. William Kamkwamba in Malawi, whom I wrote about earlier this week, illustrates this point perfectly. If we studied them closely, we would find that a couple of key things that they do are different from the majority, and those few differences can be replicated so that the exception becomes the new norm. Jerry and Monique Sternin believed that if we can find the bright spots, we’ll get more understanding of a situation and greater progress than we ever thought possible.

All day today I’ve been looking for bright spots in specific areas of my life. I’m keeping track of them in my little black book. This idea of positive deviance has had me grinning ear to ear all day. Tomorrow, I’ll be back here to talk about some of these recent discoveries. I hope you’ll join me.

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

career

Step 21: A Multi-career Life

Christa Avampato

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” One of the most common questions that adults ask children. I always had trouble with this one. “Can I be an astronaut and a playwright?” “Can I be a paleontologist and broker world peace?” Adults always seemed to want a single answer from me and I couldn’t deliver that so I was labeled as someone who was very talented and just hadn’t made up my mind yet. Actually I did make up my mind – I wanted to do a lot of incredible things with my life.

Now I’m a product developer who writes, teaches yoga, spends a lot of time with social media, and has a passion for improving public education systems. I’m not giving anyone a single answer on what I’m going to be when I grow up. I’m multi-dimensional. I’m not apologizing for it and I’m not accepting a label as someone who hasn’t made up her mind. I made up my mind a long time ago to be me and explore everything that interests me.

Historically, the multi-career lifestyle has loads of successful examples: Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Mary Pickford, Frederick Olmstead. In modern times, we have legions of entrepreneurs, artists, scientists, and designers who have simultaneous careers, leading to multiple income streams. Many own their own businesses, teach, write, consult, and run nonprofit organizations. So why shouldn’t you think of yourself this way, too? Why must your day job be the sole definition of your professional life?

The good old days of a 9-5, Monday to Friday work life as a separate entities from our personal lives are rapidly fading from view. That doesn’t mean that the good new days won’t be just as fulfilling. In actuality, I think they’ll be more fulfilling. Institute for the Future, an organization that tracks long-term societal trends, predicts that by the end of the next decade most people will have multiple careers. You don’t have to choose one interest or passion over another. You can be a political activist-jewelry designer-accountant. The only thing you have to do is find your passion and go for it!

entrepreneurship, Examiner

Examiner.com: My interview with Jerri Chou, Co-founder of All Day Buffet

Christa Avampato

Meet Jerri Chou, Co-founder of All Day Buffet, an organization whose mission is “to change the world through creativity and business. We incubate, advise, and invest into for-profit/for-good companies.”

Under the All Day Buffet umbrella, you’ll find some kickin’ business initiatives like The Feast Conference, an innovation event that will get your creative juices flowing like the Mississippi, By/Association, a mechanism to introduce remarkable people to one another, and their latest creation TBD, a free email newsletter that delivers one world-shaking idea and one collective action to improve our future. It’s this latest venture that sparked my recent conversation with Jerri.

To read the full interview with Jerri, please click here.

education, innovation, invention, product development

Step 20: Design USA

Christa Avampato

Over the weekend I went to the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum to see Design USA, an exhibit honoring the winners of the National Design Awards for the last 10 years. I love the mix of simple and complex innovations, the great variety of industries represented, and the many pains their innovations look to remedy. What they all had in common was a very basic insight into human behavior and emotion. Many of them tapped needs that we think about every day.

I’ve been thinking about building products for most of my life. When I was very young, I was obsessed with clean water. I was always very concerned that eventually we would run out of it. I have always loved libraries and librarians, and fondly remember the librarian at my elementary school, Mr. Compenino. He was a very kind, very large man. He was teaching us about nutrition one day and shared his weight loss story. In order to lose a lot of weight quickly, he went on a 30-day fast when he drank only water. I couldn’t imagine this. How does someone go for 30 days without eating, and live to tell about it? Mr. Compenino told us that people can survive for a long time without food, though only a few days without water. My fear of not having enough clean water was cemented in my mind in that moment.

On the nightly news, I would see parts of the world like Ethiopia that were plagued by drought and others like islands in the Caribbean that experienced frequent flooding. I began to think about a way to take water from places that had too much and give it to places that didn’t have enough. Then everything could be happily in balance and everyone could have exactly the amount of water they needed. I imagined a giant underground system of pipes that every city in the world could just turn off and on depending upon how much water they needed. Wouldn’t it be great if I could build that?

It’s this invention that got me interested in science and in engineering. I originally was admitted to Penn as an engineering student, and when my phsyics and calculus professors told me I didn’t have any aptitude for the field, I believed them. I became a history and economics major, a decision that of course I’m happy I made, though there is always a part of me that wonders what would have happened to my life if I had graduated from Penn as an engineer.

My way of compensating for this thought is by being a product developer. I take simple, basic needs and think of products and services that help to serve that need. I’m doing exactly what I did in that elementary school library. It’s a very logical basis for a career. People who care about innovation and invention want to be helpful. It’s the greatest aspect of design – once you are deeply involved in it, you begin to see how profound an impact you can have in the world.

guest blogger, Haiti, yoga

Yogoer.com: The Power of Intentions

Christa Avampato

Every time I practice yoga, I set an intention before I begin the asanas. Sometimes it’s for a friend or family member who needs help. Sometimes it’s for a cause I believe in or an organization doing good work. For the past week I’ve been dedicating my practice to the people of Haiti.

To read my full post on Yogoer.com, click here.

Africa, children, education, innovation, technology

Step 19: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

Christa Avampato

“If the first people to experiment with great inventions such as radios, generators, or airplanes had been afraid of being arrested, we’d never be enjoying those things today. ‘Let them come arrest me,’ I’d say. ‘It would be an honor.'” ~ William Kamkwamba, author of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

I just finished The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba. William elegantly tells the story of how he constructed a windmill in his village in Malawi to provide his family with electricity in order to save them from suffering another famine. With Bryan Mealer, a former Associated Press correspondent, he elegantly explains how the will of one boy can change an entire community, even an entire nation.

Rather than give a recap of his remarkable feat, I want to emphasize the great lesson that William has for all of us: tell the naysayers in your life to “shut it”. (Those are my words, not his.) How many times do we develop an idea only to have it crushed by someone else’s criticism? William faced this many times, from his family, friends, and community members. He refused to doubt himself. He refused to give in to negative energy. He just kept right on building his windmill, despite all of the criticism and mocking. In the process, he inspired millions of people all over the world. Read the book – you’ll be inspired by his energy, curiosity, and determination.

The next time someone even hints that you can’t do something you want to do, I want you to tell them the following:
“A kid in Malawi with one year of elementary school education built a windmill to help prevent his family from starving. He built it by following diagrams in a beat-up, out-of-date science textbook from a local library miles away from his home and using salvaged items from a scrap yard, all while everyone in his life told him he was mad. He couldn’t read English well so all he could do was follow the pictures. So, do I think I can do (fill in the blank)? Yes. Yes, I do. If William Kamkwamba can build a windmill, despite every roadblock imaginable, then I can certainly bring all of my ideas to life.”

To learn more about Williams and his continuing journey, visit his blog: http://williamkamkwamba.typepad.com/. You can also learn about his project, Moving Windmills, by visiting http://movingwindmills.org/ Follow William on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/wkamkwamba

For more information on Bryan Mealer, visit http://www.bryanmealer.com/

books, education

Book Buddy: Letter 3

Christa Avampato

I received my second letter from Dwight, my 3rd grade book buddy. He and I connected through Learning Leaders, a nonprofit education organization that pairs local elementary school students with business professionals. Dwight and I are reading Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White and then sending several letters to one another to share how we feel about the book.

Here’s Dwight’s latest letter to me and my reply to him:

“December 21, 2009

What I think of Charlotte’s plan is wonderful. Me, too, I like how she chose interesting words, too, because they are good. Me, too, I will wonder if Wilbur will continue putting words into his head. Charlotte has good words, too.

Your book buddy,
Dwight”

“January 18, 2010

Dear Dwight,

Happy New Year! I hope you had a great holiday. I went to visit my family and friends in Florida and really enjoyed spending time with them. I finished up Charlotte’s Web while I was there What did you think of the ending of the book? Were you surprised by it?

I really liked the scenes at the fair, though I was hoping all of that food would make Templeton, the rat, a nicer friend. I bet he would enjoy living at the farm a lot more if he was a little bit nicer. At least he agreed to help Charlotte find the final word for her web. What did you think of the events at the fair?

Losing someone we love it difficult, so I really related with how sad Wilbur was to lose his friend, Charlotte. I was very impressed with his sense of responsibility to care for Charlotte’s children; his actions showed how much he cared about Charlotte and how appreciative he was for her efforts to help him. I was a little bit worried that all of Charlotte’s children will leave. I felt relieved when Joy, Aranea, and Nellie decided to live at the farm. I am sure Wilbur was relieved, too!

Your book buddy,
Christa”

Life

Step 18: Bookshelves and the Downside of Gratitude

Christa Avampato

A set of bookshelves was the last piece of furniture I needed to replace. I bought a perfect set of them about a year ago and lost them in the fire in September. I took myself to Crate and Barrel this afternoon and bought the exact same set I had in a darker stain to match my new bed. To make room for this new set, I needed to clean out a corner that’s been filled with boxes for 4 months. About half way through the cleaning, I started to cry. I was reminded of the last time I cleaned and made room for bookshelves, which then caused me to think about how they looked just after the fire. Covered in a film of dark gray soot, holding books that could never be cleaned and electronics that couldn’t be salvaged.

The delivery of these bookshelves is another reminder of starting over, and starting over begins by losing something we care about. I still haven’t been able to hang up any pictures; I’ve tried but when I do I start to tear up and put them down. Everything still seems so impermanent to me, and I still have some anxiety about wasting even a moment of time, which then leads me to question how I’m spending my time at all, causing me undue stress and worry.

I am immensely grateful that I made it out of the fire unscathed. I feel lucky to have insurance that took care of me financially. My friend, Cindy, gave me the legal know-how to negotiate with my former landlord. In a practical sense, the fire was a blip on the radar screen of my life. In reality, it changed everything. It changed me. The double-edged sword of getting another chance is that I can’t stop considering and re-considering and re-considering again what would be the best use of my time. It’s enough to drive anyone mad.

So what can I do? How do I keep from going mad? I just keep going. This afternoon I sat for a minute in my own tears after clearing space for these new bookshelves. And then I just grabbed a tissue, grabbed my Swiffer, and pushed it around the floor to pick up the dust and lint where my boxes have been piled up for 4 months. In the middle of the dust I found a tiny pink metal object. It was my niece, Lorelei’s, hairclip. She must have dropped it when she was here visiting in October. I smiled as I spun it in my fingers.

That hairclip reminded me that no matter what I do with the remainder of my life, the best part is that I get to be with my family and my friends. I get to keep writing and working with my community. I get to evolve and grow and try new things that I never would have had a chance to try had I not gotten out of the fire. I’ll get to fall in love again. And that’s the upside of gratitude and starting over – even though I lost so much, I realize I have a lot of reasons to begin again.