6 Steps to Identifying Chapter Bright Spots—Glimmers of Shareable Success

Remember the good old days when kids came home from school waving around (or hiding) report cards? Now, imagine your child’s report card displayed a few A’s, a few B’s, and one F. All you see is the F, right? You immediately go into action mode: maybe you should hire a tutor or take away their PlayStation.

If you’re like most association professionals, you switch into this problem-solving mode quite naturally. According to best-selling authors and all-around clever guys, Dan and Chip Heath, we’re wired to focus on problems rather than strengths. This problem-solving mentality usually works well enough—with tutoring, that F can turn into a B—but, in times of change, it’s not the best mindset.

When you look around your chapters, it’s natural to see challenges and problems everywhere. You could spend all day putting out fires and getting caught up in analysis paralysis with so many “priorities.”

We’re going to suggest something different. Right now, you’d do better to focus on bright spots.

If you’ve ever met with a career coach, they probably encouraged you to leverage your strengths instead of worrying about your weaknesses. This approach applies to chapters too. But first, you must identify the secret strengths that led to their success—their chapter bright spots.

The bright spot approach comes from best-selling authors Chip and Dan Heath. Instead of only focusing on solving problems, we should look for bright spots—chapters that are achieving unusual success in one specific area. Figure out what they’re doing differently and share that practice with the other chapters.

What’s a Bright Spot?

A bright spot is something that’s going right. The Heaths describe them as “early glimmers.” Instead of taking a problem-solving approach to change, they suggest you encourage change by finding a bright spot, studying it, and cloning it.

For example, if you have a chapter or two with an unusually large percentage of early-career members, find out what that chapter is doing differently than other chapters, then figure out a way to replicate that behavior in other chapters.

The bright spot approach has been around a while. It’s also called “positive deviance analysis.” Imagine that as a chapter award: Best Positive Deviant of the Year.

Here’s an example shared by the Heaths that illustrates the bright spot approach. In the 1990s, the aid organization Save the Children sent Jerry Sternin to Vietnam to help reduce the number of malnourished children. Conventional wisdom blamed the problem on polluted water, poverty, and ignorance about nutrition and hygiene.

But, instead of focusing on the problem, Jerry looked for positive deviants (bright spots)—parents with well-nourished kids. What were they doing differently? And, whatever it was, could other parents do it too?

If those parents are receiving funds from wealthier cousins in California, they don’t qualify as a bright spot. Extraordinary resources don’t count, but exceptional behaviors and practices do.

Jerry found six families who followed consistent but rare practices. They served multiple smaller meals a day instead of two big bowls of white rice. They supplemented rice with sweet potato greens and foraged proteins like tiny shrimp and crabs.

These six families were bright spots—beacons of success who demonstrated that the supposedly “impossible” task of solving malnutrition was actually possible for everyone. Jerry and his team arranged for the bright spot mothers to teach their meal practices to families in surrounding villages.

Why Chapters Need Bright Spots More Than Ever Right Now

Chapter leaders are overwhelmed right now. In many regions, their sweet spot, in-person meetings, are not happening. They’ve had to change everything about how they operate—governance, networking, education, sponsorships, and exhibits.

They need bright spots not just as a morale boost but as a way forward. Bright spots provide a doable road map. They prove that other chapters have followed this approach and found success, so they can too.

With the ridiculous number of challenges they’re facing right now, chapter leaders need to focus their efforts on what’s been demonstrated to work elsewhere instead of trying to solve every problem coming their way. Bright spots prove that even in tough times, incremental change is doable and can make a big difference.

Unlike the usual suggestions from HQ, bright spots are ideas from fellow chapter leaders, their peers, not the mothership. If other chapters can do it, they can do it too since these bright spots don’t require extraordinary resources.

HQ’s role is to illuminate the chapter bright spot and provide the kind of support that will help chapters replicate it.

When the Bright Spot Approach Works Well

What are the right conditions for the bright spot approach?

• You see chapters dealing with too many priorities. You can tell they’re stressed and morale is sagging.
• You’ve identified a common challenge or problem.
• You know this challenge requires a change in behavior or practice. You can’t just solve it by throwing money or technology at it.
• You believe positive deviants (bright spots) exist in your chapter network.
• You think your chapter leaders are willing to address the issue.

Your association and chapters probably face the same challenge the International Interior Design Association (IIDA) wrestles with: filling the industry and association leadership pipeline. But they found a bright spot in their New England chapter.

In an 11-month series of interactive seminars, the chapter’s Emerging Leaders Network (ELN) prepares young designers for association and industry leadership roles. The program is free for designers, even non-members. In exchange for training their young designers, employers pay for the designer’s membership. Now, the chapter has many ELN graduates serving on their committees.

What did this chapter do differently? Instead of working alone, they partnered with local firms to solve a mutual challenge—filling the leadership pipeline. IIDA now provides grants to chapters who want to start up a similar program.

By sharing bright spots, chapters see that improvement is possible. The change is happening right now. And, most importantly, it’s happening without the need for extraordinary resources. A bright spot isn’t one of those ideas from a big budget chapter—you know the ones that cause a mass outbreak of eye rolls. Bright spots are doable by any chapter.

How to Identify Chapter Bright Spots

Every chapter wants more early-career members, right? Well, imagine one of your chapters has an amazingly large percentage of young professional members. What are they doing to attract and retain them?

Here are six steps to identifying a chapter bright spot and figuring out how it happens so you can help other chapters replicate that success.

Identify the Problem

Think about a common chapter challenge—a problem you think can be solved by a change in practices or behavior, not by throwing money at it. In our Vietnamese story from the last post, aid worker Jerry was up against a seemingly intractable problem: child malnutrition.

Gather the Data

Jerry recorded the height and weight of all the kids in the village, so he could see who’s malnourished and who’s not.

For our early-career challenge, membership data would reveal bright spots—as long as you and/or the chapters collect career stage data. You could also use one or more of these methods to gather data from chapters.

• Send out pulse surveys or polls.
• Ask in your chapter leader online community.
• Take a poll at virtual chapter leader meetings.
• Ask in monthly or quarterly reports.
• Ask on award or grant applications.
• Call or email non-responsive chapters.

Chapters can help your identification efforts by revealing their own bright spot behavior. The Grant Professionals Association encourages chapters to submit their success stories via an online form.

The American College of Physicians collects success stories on their chapter awards nomination form. The form requests information about initial goals, results, lessons learned, cost, and advice on how others can replicate the program.

The Association for Computing Machinery – Women in Computing holds a monthly Facebook contest to find out what their student chapters have accomplished. The best post submitted by a chapter wins a $50 prize.

Study the Data to Find Bright Spots

Jerry identified several families in the village who had healthy kids. Look at your data to find the chapters who are performing better than others in the area of concern. You’re not looking for perfect, just the best of the bunch.

You could also look for exceptions to the norm. When does your particular problem NOT happen? When do chapters NOT do whatever it is most chapters do.

Or, put aside the data and imagine your problem has been solved—it’s a miracle! How would you know a chapter has solved it? What would be a sign that things have changed? Look for chapters exhibiting that first small signal.

Understand the “Normal Way” of Doing Something

Jerry knew that most families served large bowls of rice twice a day to their kids. Were the families with healthy kids doing that too or were they doing something different?

You need to know what most chapters are doing so you can tell when something unusual is going on. In our example, you would have a sense of the typical programs, membership groups, and events offered by chapters to early-career members, as well as the typical marketing, governance, volunteering, recruitment, and retention practices.

Study the Bright Spot – See What They’re Doing Differently

In Jerry’s village, the families with healthy kids were serving four small meals a day and supplementing them with foraged greens and protein, like tiny shrimp and crabs. Study your bright spot chapters. What are they doing differently? What’s allowing them to outperform? What ordinary resources are they tapping into that others are not leveraging?

“The best way to get this information is by asking the bright spot chapters to walk you through what they do. For example, ask them to describe step-by-step what they do to attract the attention of early-career members, onboard them, encourage them to participate, and keep their interest and loyalty. You might have to talk to a few members with different perspectives to spot the unusual behavior or practice that seems normal for them.”

The National Association for Catering & Events (NACE) recently went through this bright spot identification process to see what their Maine chapter was doing differently. Because members were losing their livelihoods during the pandemic lockdowns, the chapter wanted to ensure their members (and non-members) received necessary resources from the state.

They first launched an industry awareness campaign (Postpone, Don’t Cancel), started virtual fundraising, and consulted with the local Chamber of Commerce about retaining a lobbyist. The next step is creating templates and guides to help other chapters replicate these bright spot practices.

Make Sure None of the Bright Spot Practices are Exceptional in Some Way

Bright spot practices or behavior can’t require extraordinary money or resources. The bright spot families in Vietnam had the same resources as other families. They weren’t receiving extra food or money from rich relatives elsewhere.

The success of the Maine NACE chapter isn’t due to a bigger budget or more experienced leadership. In fact, they’re a new chapter.