The good of small things

Small habits don't require significant change, but can make a disproportionate impact on the performance of organisations

Everyday in the newspaper, you read about yet another company undertaking a large restructuring. This is done in the pursuit of higher performance. But even after such transformations, CEOs and employees remain dissatisfied with performances. Productivity of organisations has not risen fast. Employee engagement remains low. Leaders continue to fail, just as they did earlier. In fact, statistics say 70 per cent of transformations fail to deliver results. And they are disruptive (sometimes even traumatic) for organisations and employees. Yet, every CEO tends to launch at least one such transformation, in pursuit of high performance. But is there another, better and more effective way to create a high-performing organisation?

In life, we look to sustain our health, happiness and productivity with a lot of good habits - small things we do every day that help us. The same applies to companies. In looking at large restructuring as a solution to performance challenges, quite often we overlook the small things that can really change the trajectory of a company. They are small habits that don't require significant change but can make a disproportionate impact on performance. We call it the Good of Small Things.

Here are a few such small things that companies have tried:

• Change how reviews are run

One of the important rituals in any organisation is the business review. Every company has them, and most conduct them poorly. They are a very strong signal of the culture and priorities of a company. The questions you ask, the topics you spend time on and the issues you raise make a huge impact on how the organisation works.

Most business reviews focus on understanding results and identifying who to hold to account in case results are not achieved, rather than designing for success. This creates many undesirable outcomes - people spend more time thinking about how to sandbag their targets and defend the results rather than plan ahead. No one jumps in to help anyone who is sinking in a review.

What if you changed how reviews are run? What if we first asked questions like - which customer did you meet and what can we do to serve them better? Who asked for help, and how could others have helped her? One of our clients changed reviews to shift focus from people who missed their targets to people who failed to collaborate - failure was not for missing the goal, but for not asking for help, or not helping…! This dramatically changed the behaviour of the whole organisation to really find solutions and to actively collaborate to win together in the market.

• Communicate to peers before and after you in the value chain

One of the biggest challenges in any organisation is communication. So many internal issues can get addressed with good communication. Many organisations have tons of emails, newsletters, webcasts, etc. to communicate with employees. But what gets lost is real, effective, day-to-day communication that makes real work happen.

In one organisation, people would send emails to one another, copying many others, to communicate what was going on. But emails get lost in the clutter. Imagine a manager getting more than a 100 emails a day without any clarity on which ones are important and which aren't. In another, all communication would move up the hierarchy till someone resolved the issue, and then move down again into another vertical - a very inefficient way to collaborate, cluttering top management agenda with operational issues.

What if you brought about one small change in how you communicate? Every day or week, whichever is appropriate, pick up the phone or walk across to peer into the functions before and after you in the value chain and explain to them your function's goals, priorities and constraints. Or, on a regular basis, ask people from a function to attend another function's internal meetings, even as an observer. That's it! What is important is to do it before you have an issue and to do this with peers, rather than only with superiors - horizontal communication. This doesn't even take much time.

Companies that have tried this small step have found that they managed to address and overcome most of the operational issues that come in the way of out-performance, and managed to clear up the calendar of leaders to focus on more important things.

• Stop whenever you add things

In many companies, you find a proliferation of all kinds of things - too many meetings, too many MIS (management information system), too many reviews, too many billboards, etc. Every time there is an initiative more things get added, leading to the overwhelming proliferation. All this leads to confusion and complexity in business, which has a real cost in time and productivity.

What if you made a simple rule - every time you add something, stop something! If you want a new MIS report, stop some other previous format. If you want a new initiative, stop some other. If you want a new banner, take off some other. Not only does it help to keep things clear and uncomplicated, it also helps to ensure leaders are clear about what they want from their troops, leading to more clarity and productivity.

These are just a few of the many small things that companies can do to dramatically change the way things work in the organisation. And there are many more ideas that may be relevant for different companies. Often these can replace the need for large transformations. The companies that have tried them have found significant benefits. It is time for others to try The Good of Small Things to drive high performance.

Vikram Bhalla
Senior partner & director, The Boston Consulting Group