All It Takes Is 1%

I often talk about big bold goals, about making significant changes, or achieving top performance.

But how do we achieve this, do we need to make significant changes in our approach?

Whilst its true that big changes in what we do can result in big changes in outcomes and bigger results, but it’s also true that small 1% changes in what we do can also make significant improvements or the difference between succeeding or failing, losing or winning.

I don’t doubt that people will say 1% doesn’t make a big difference, but how about if everyone in your team made a 1% improvement, what impact would that have?

As leaders it’s our role to inspire our teams to make these 1% changes, and once we do that and people start to see the benefits, then they will look to make changes in other areas too, and if we can get everyone on our teams to make a 1% improvement, then this will pretty quickly add up to a big improvements.

Once our teams achieve that we can start to generate a momentum and then they look to continually for more 1% improvements.

This can add up pretty quickly until we have achieved significant improvements.

In many companies where I have worked the focus has been on the top 20%  of staff and looking to get the best out of them, I have even heard people say that 80% of the work is done by the top 20% of the people.

But if thats true, and personally I don’t believe it, then if we focus on that Top 20% then we need them to make big improvements in order for us to make an overall big improvement.

Whereas if we can get everyone to start making small changes, even 1% improvements, then these add up quickly, we build momentum and then, the skies the limit.

This is what Inspiring Leaders do, they inspire everyone to make those small one percent changes because they know that real significant, sustainable change come when everyone is contributing.

The top 20% don’t need inspiring, these are usually already very well self motivated individuals, so this is the easy path for a leader to take, a lazy route, which will yield success, but not to the same levels as when we can inspire an entire organisation.

It can all start with just a 1% improvement, because when people see that they can achieve it once, it will inspire them to try again, and with the right recognition this is how it starts, how we create a company-wide movement of continuous improvements that will yield big results.

As Confucius says Every journey begins with a single step.

Gordon Tredgold

#Leadership Principles