Creating Meaningful Business Transformation Through One Degree Of Change

It’s an era of record volatility in the business world and companies are having a difficult time dealing with it. The pandemic, the climate crisis, geo-political upheavals, and dramatic leaps in technology have all combined to ratchet up instability and its close companion, uncertainty. These challenges create the need for meaningful business transformation—before your customer base gravitates to a competitor who has moved on with the times.

In Serbia, you’ll often hear the expression, “You’re a goose in fog.” Its meaning is obvious—a goose may be able to fly, honk, eat, and do all the normal goose things. But because of the fog, it can’t do anything it should, because it can’t see where it is or where it wants to go. That’s the state I often find our clients when they call us in for our problem-solving expertise. They feel so bogged down and beaten up by their troubles that they, like the goose, are lost in a fog. They don’t know where they are and don’t know where to go, because they can’t see their way to a solution.

What they need to do is make a clear and focused outcomes-based effort, one that will immediately add some value to both its customers and the company itself. Unfortunately, at this point, man­agement isn’t even thinking at a productive level anymore. In fact, I’ve found they’ve lost sight of what the true company objectives even are, so I rarely bother to ask about them. Instead, I look for one substantial “quick fix” that will make a big difference—to implement what I call, “One Degree of Change.”

The Secret to Triggering Meaningful Business Transformation

Trying to change everything about your business at once is a mistake many entrepreneurs and CEOs make. My response to that is to imagine you’re looking at a dining table set for a fancy dinner party for some important guests, who are due in an hour. Suddenly, you think to yourself that it looks all wrong. Nothing seems positioned properly. You don’t know where to begin.

So, you overturn the table.

Everything goes flying. Dishes break, glasses shatter, and silver­ware clatters on the floor everywhere. Now, instead of addressing a simple problem, you’ve created a disaster that you may not recover from in time. That’s why sweeping transformation has to start with One Degree of Change. When you find the right first step to take, you create an instant positive you can build on. But finding that first step to take can be difficult when you’re in the thick of it. That’s where an outside perspective can be invaluable. A seasoned business expert can often walk into a troubled firm and instantly see what that firm’s management can’t.

My One Degree of Change strategy involves finding an answer to an immediate, recurring crisis, putting it into action, and creating a small win in the right direction. This builds trust within the organization and begins to shift the culture, because, suddenly, people see a ray of hope. And when there’s some sunshine after months or even years of darkness, those people want to keep that light shining brightly. That, in turn, makes them more excited about embracing more change.

Once you take that step, it’s important to continue working towards positive change every single day. That’s how you build the momentum you need to inject productive energy into the company culture, regain the trust of customers, vendors, and stakeholders, and create the meaningful business transformation that’s necessary to win long-term.

As the saying goes: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”