Do not dismiss small changes

Last month I was working with a team that was having trouble hitting the goals that we set. They were struggling but seemed convinced that the current way of doing things was the best way.

They argued that the small changes we wanted to make weren’t going to have any impact. They felt they were too small. They wanted something major, not some small daily change.

If they didn’t do something major, they didn’t see the point. They felt that anything small meant that it was too insignificant.

But small changes are the core of most continuous improvement strategies. It isn’t about working towards one or two major changes. It is about making a small change then standardizing it. Then finding another small improvement and standardizing the new process.

Sure, doing this once or twice might not bring much value. But when we develop the continuous improvement mindset and do this over and over, we gain tremendous value.

Over time we slowly build on previous changes. So, the small change yesterday allows us to make another small change today. Those combine and allow us to make even greater adjustments tomorrow.

After some discussion we finally convinced the team to try the new techniques. They were hesitant but agreed to try under the condition that if they didn’t seem to help after week or so we would go back to the current way of doing things.

We didn’t have to wait until the week was over. The change was more impactful than even we thought. They noticed an almost immediate increase in performance.

But while the team celebrated and felt the need for change was gone, we told them we still had more to do. We weren’t at the goal and needed to keep finding ways to improve.

Begrudgingly they agreed. We continued to make adjustments and measure the impact. If it improved the outcome, we standardized it and moved on to the next change.

A few changes had very small impacts on performance. Some on the team called them failures. They would compare them to the bigger adjustments we made.

But we reminded them that each tweak was not the final change. They were only one in a series of changes to help us reach our goal.

In Atomic Habits, author James Clear says it perfectly. He says, “We often dismiss small changes because they don’t seem to matter very much in the moment. If you save a little money now, you’re still not a millionaire. If you go to the gym three days in a row, you’re still out of shape. If you study Mandarin for an hour tonight, you still haven’t learned the language. We make a few changes, but the results never seem to come quickly and so we slide back into our previous routine.”

It has been a month since we started working with the team and the results are starting to come. We are seeing improvement from the minor adjustments. But we know we have to keep going and keep working. That is the only way to find better ways to do things, so we don’t slide back to the old way of underperformance.