Same village. Same resources. Same rice. Same everything. Different Results.
In a Vietnamese village, most kids were malnourished.
But a few weren’t.
The difference? A handful of mothers were quietly adding crab meat, shrimp, and sweet potatoes to their kids’ rice bowls while working in the fields. Small additions. Barely noticeable. But the results were anything but small.
A researcher named Jerry Sternin studied this and named the concept Bright Spots. Chip and Dan Heath later built on it in their book Switch. Instead of asking what’s broken and how do we fix it, we should ask what’s already working. Sometimes the harder question is the one you’ve been avoiding altogether.
Most leaders do the opposite of this. They walk into a struggling team and immediately start hunting for problems. They build improvement plans for things that may be harder to improve than it appears. They hold accountability meetings. They focus all their energy on what’s wrong.
And in doing so they walk right past the thing that’s already working.
I’ve done it. I have spent weeks trying to fix what was broken while completely ignoring the person in the corner quietly doing it right every single day.
The best leaders I know ask a different question. Not what’s wrong here. But what’s working here that we should be protecting and building on.
What if you were to try it this week? What if you walked into your next team meeting and asked one question?
What’s working right now that we should be doing more of?
You might be surprised what surfaces.
That’s your crab meat.
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Want more like this? Start with Chapter One of my book.
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