Getting Unstuck: Making Incremental Changes for Big Results – a Conversation with Jeff and Kirsten
Today on Getting Unstuck
The New Year fast approaches and that means ‘tis the season of “New Year’s resolutions.” It’s not surprising that we take on these goals. Most of us want something greater for ourselves – maybe even a different version of ourselves. So, not surprisingly, most resolutions deal with health-related goals. But wanting and making changes are two different enterprises. The sad fact is that most our best intentions fail. U.S.News & World Reports, Forbes, and Psychology Today all report that we give up on upwards of 80% of our goals as early as February 1! (I know, right?)
So why does this happen? In some cases. we take on too many goals. In other cases, we’re not specific enough – we don’t give ourselves an actual target, or we’re not clear why we want the change to begin with. Those are all valid arguments, but we think there’s another reason: the goals we set for ourselves are simply too big a reach, taken way too fast. As reported in Psychology Today, the big reach can easily create psychological distress for ourselves and make us feel overwhelmed. Going back to our cave-dwelling days, most of us are genetically geared for no change because change means uncertainty, and it triggers that part of the flight, fight and fear center of our brain. Move away from the cave entrance and the warming fire, and you can run into a sabertooth tiger. (Hmmm, today’s “man caves” are aptly named.)
An article that I read in Forbes a couple of years back is relevant here because it speaks to the issue of the size and pace of change.
“The successful entrepreneur is the person who makes an idea happen, even if there are lot of unexpected problems, and even if it's not a very good idea in the first place. But they don't do it with one roll of the dice. The most successful entrepreneurs we know are extremely risk averse. They don't do it by taking large bets.”
Instead, the successful entrepreneurs succeed by taking a series of small steps and by reflecting on their progress. Their routine is “Act. Learn. Build. Repeat.” So, in this episode of Getting Unstuck, we’re going to talk about making incremental changes and how by doing so we can increase the likelihood of achieving big results. And we’re going to start in a very unusual place: the skies over Europe during World War II.
Listen for
• How the wing design of a World War II single-engine fighter plane dramatic demonstrates how small changes can lead to big results.
The P-51 Mustang, arguably one of the top three single-engine fighter planes to see service during World War II. (And if you’re an aviation enthusiastic like me, the Mustang is also one of the most beautiful aircraft ever designed.)
If you look at any airplane or bird wing from the side – it’s cross section – you’ll notice that the top of the wing is curved. This curvature is referred to as “camber,” and it’s important because it’s one of the key elements that contributes to lift and flight.
As shown in this drawing of the P-51’s wing design, so called the “Laminar Airfoil,” engineers repositioned the camber, moving the thickest part of the wing from the front, or leading edge of the wing, to the middle. The impact was a significant reduction of drag – the physical force of slowing down any moving object – and a significant increase in the plane’s speed and range.
Here, we can dramatically see the curvature of the wing and where the thickest part of the wing is now away from the leading edge and more towards the wing’s center.
• Why using the term “disruptive” to characterize an innovation meeting may actually be counter productive whereas using “evolutionary” may be safer.
• Why characterizing innovation as “thinking inside the box” may reduce the anxiety of those involved in the change.
• How incremental innovations can yield big results.
In this video, we see an example of how an incremental change – conducting part of a meeting in silence – can have dramatic results. Note, we’re not talking here about eliminating meetings, which would be a radical change, we’re simply illustrating how we might change one aspect of the typical meeting. The silent portion of a meeting is also a good example of the Systematic Inventive Thinking principle of “subtraction,“ which is the elimination of a key element from an existing situation.