Moving along with OST in Indonesia (longish)

Sat Dec 11 17:55:42 PST 2010

Hello All

Further to my being in West Sumatra in May of this year to give a keynote
address at an international conference on ‘The Health Care Revolution in
Indonesia’ …at which I suggested that OST is a very effective means by which
to enable communities to communicate their perceived needs for health care
services. See:

http://openspaceworld.ning.com/forum/topics/sewing-seeds-for-ost

The organizer of the conference was Prof Dr Elfindri (like many people in
Indonesia he has only one name) who was one of my PhD students when I was an
academic nutritionist in a medical school in Australia in the early 90s.
While his background is in economics he wished to better understand the
relationship between the nutritional status of communities and their
productivity.

In the course of his studies I passed on to him the concept of Positive
Deviance (PD). He used this approach in the field work for his PhD thesis
and subsequently in further studies. So successful did this prove that he
published widely on the approach and also set up his own publishing company
to produce books on the topic.

Elfindri is now a well respected and well connected person in Sumatra and
beyond in Indonesia.

He invited me back late last month to present, jointly, a series of
seminar/workshops on OST and PD in several cities around this island, all to
audiences comprising mainly staff and students of private universities. My
role was to cover matters to do with OST, his on PD. We both also introduced
our respective perspectives on ‘soft skills’ or ‘people skills’

Here are brief points about these elements of our presentations: ‘Experiential'
OST, PD, roles of Dania Pratiwi.

1. ‘Hands on’ experience with OST

In only one of the four sessions was there opportunity to provide this,
given limitations of time and space. Nonetheless I touched on OST as a means
of communicating with communities and its potential significance for health
care practitioners wherever possible.

In the first of the presentations, scheduled for a morning only, in Padang,
while 500 participants were expected 1300 materialised. No possibility! In
two others the time was even more limited and so no prospect either.

In the one where there was an opportunity (a full day event in Pekanbaru, in
Riau province), the time allocated was two hours only. And with an audience
of some 250 - in a theatre with fixed seats that did not swivel - there was
no possibility of having a circle! This audience comprised staff and
students of nursing, midwifery and health education.

Very briefly – the OST experience happened and happened well. I had
mentioned in a talk in the morning that it would take place, immediately
after lunch, and what the potential value to them could be.

And had shown John Engle’s lovely
video<http://openspaceworld.ning.com/video/john-engles-short-sweet>at
the Mennonite Health Assembly Open Space. (Also to the 1300 strong
audience earlier). John, even while you and your family are in a precarious
situation in Haiti your influence is percolating nicely in Indonesia.

In introducing the ‘hands on’ I:

. suggested to the audience that they imagine that they were in a circle!

. walked up and back up the centre isle of the theatre, in lieu of the
circle, making eye contact with as many of the audience as possible.

. spoke to the principles and associated ideas which Dania – see below – had
produced beautifully and which were on display on the front of the stage.

. indicated that the theme was ‘How may health care practitioners improve
the nutritional status of children?’

. also indicated that there was time only for one breakout session of about
75 minutes.

. invited everyone to come down to the front where there were paper and
pens, and write what they thought was important to explore.

. encouraged those who had a topic to offer to come to the front again to
announce it.

Whoosh! Immediately I had finished saying these things about 15 people from
all parts of the audience ran (no leaped!) down, picked up their paper and
began to scribe furiously.  And then came forward to announce – through a
hand held microphone – their topics. Having done this they pinned their
papers to a board.

What to do next? With only about 75 minutes for the break out session and
about 15 topics I suggested that we pick five of them, randomly, to become
the agenda items. These were then typed up by Dania and projected onto a
large screen.

Once this was done I invited the proponents of each to come down the front
and allocated them a number from 1 to 5. I then asked them to follow me up
the centre isle, where I ‘deposited’ them - each holding a piece of paper
with their number on it- about 10 metres apart.

When all were in position I invited everyone to go to join with the person
whose topic attracted them, find a place to gather and get on with it!

(As an aside I would add that, while this was happening, I felt a totally
unexpected attack of diarrhea coming on. The food in Sumatra – similar for
every meal of the day – is very spicy, normally no problem for me.  Having
finally said ‘go to it’ I had to dash and only just made it!).

On my return, much relieved, to the hall I found that all the groups were
sitting on the floor between the stage and the first row of seats, and were
thoroughly engaged.When the time was up I asked them to hand in their
reports. At least one of these was ‘voluminous’ in that the scribe had
recorded several pages of notes.

And then invited anyone to come down to the microphone to express their
experience of being a participant. As this was all done in Bahasa Indonesian
I did not follow the details. What I did gather were three comments:

. Until this experience I had always thought that only the most intelligent
members of a class were capable of coming up with ideas on a topic such as
the one we addressed. Now I know that anyone may do so.

. When my colleagues and I do research we usually look at the negative side
of issues. I can now see that looking for positive aspects would be very
valuable.

.  I have never before imagined myself coming forward to talk to an audience
this large. Today I have done it.

Who knows what the principals of this private university made of their
observations of this event? (The three of us had to leave immediately after
to appear in a live local TV program). In my experience the chances of
receiving direct feedback are not great. Nonetheless I always invoke my own
primary measure of success: It happened!  Being invited back would be
another indication of impact.
2. Positive Deviance Referring to my post: ‘OST and PD (Positive Deviance)’
11 Nov 2010 and the comments on this:

While PD and OST are highly complementary they are different approaches. PD,
in my understanding, provides a powerful framework for conceptualizing what
is ‘working’ well, what to look out for and how to use insights and
knowledge of why some people do better than others in seemingly similar
situations.

Implementing such knowledge in particular contexts requires a different
skill set from facilitating OST forums. Joelle Lyons Everett, in Seattle,
does both and says that her background in OST serves her well for her work
as a coach of PD in addressing MRSA infections in hospitals. I suspect that
Henry Lipmanowicz and Lisa Kimball would say the same, *nes pas?
*

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3. Roles of Dania Pratiwi

Dania, a recent graduate from the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, was
the ‘logisitics’ person on this enterprise. See
http://conversare.net/?p=448for more information on how this came
about and to gain a sense of who she
is.

She was the most personable and capable person imaginable to do this. She
took everything in her stride, mainly translating what I was saying but
plenty more, as an integral member of ‘The Three Amigos’.

Something which I learned during our several most enjoyable days together
was that Dania’s one and only experience of OST to date was at the Second
World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for
Peace<http://www.imamsetrabbins.org/en/congresses/detail/1/10/7>in
Seville, Spain in March 2006. This was as a 19 year old member of an
organization called ‘Children of Abraham.’

There she met Harrison who facilitated an OST session. And also, for the
first time in her life as a Muslim, Rabbis. “I met a lot of Great Imams and
Rabbis there and learned a lot of things from them. I learned that we can
always turn our enemies into friends. I also learned that we may be
different, but inside we are brothers.”

This experience prompted Dania to join the OSlistserv, which is how she came
to offer her assistance when she saw that I would be working in Indonesia in
May of this year.

As you may surmise doing this work with Elfindri and Dania was likely to be
eye-opening for many people, and certainly was truly wonderful experiencing
for us. The portents are that there will be follow-ups next year.

Go well

Alan
Hong Kong

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