Small acts, big consequences

“Stacking tiny improvements over time will equal significant change over time.”  

That’s an easy to digest statement, easy to understand, and also easy to discount.  So easy in fact, that it is often followed with no small changes and people go and do what they’ve always done. Why is that?  

Firstly, habit does play a part, we are habitual animals after all. We will often default back to the habits we had before hand, because that’s what the environment supports. However, when simple changes make things easier for people to achieve what they want, it makes no sense that this would not stick - one of the fundamental laws of behaviour is “if you want a behaviour to happen, make it the easiest thing to do.” So, what else? 

From experience of running courses for 20 years, which result in a small improvement delivered in the workplace, the level of stickiness is measured almost entirely by one factor, which is the leadership behaviour of the receiving team.  

If the leaders in the receiving team show an interest in the improvements, more will follow. If they ask, that’s great, what else could you do with that? More will follow. If they ask, how could we scale that to achieve more with it? More will follow.