The 1% Mirage
Disclaimer : I am a big proponent of concept of continuous incremental improvements.I owe whatever little success I have to it. Hence I vehemently criticize any miss selling of it.
Its DeJa Vu time. There is some idea that is becoming popular. More and more people like it. It gives you warm fuzzy feeling, provides feel good. I don’t agree with it, actually I consider it harmful. Alas after suppressing the urge for quiet some time, I can’t stop myself from publicly expressing my disagreement. I am referring to this equation
I have encountered this atleast 7 or 8 times in those many months. I have seen some very senior leaders working at companies big & small speak about this to emphasize importance of small improvements. The premise behind this is well known. “If you improve 1% everyday, in a year you will be 37 times better than where you will be if you don’t improve at all”. Leave aside what disaster that awaits you if actually become 1% worse everyday.
Kind of cute isnt it?. Simple equation that makes a very big point. Should get your teams fired up to become better everyday right? Has it? Ever wondered why not? If it was so simple, 5 years since this premise was popularized atleast 100 organizations should have become 38 times better? They haven’t. Why not? I think that is because this premise is both theoretically and practically flawed.
Lets take the theoretical aspect first. If we assume generally that people/organizations can improve 1% a day, then there must be some extraordinary people/organization that are capable of improving 2% a day? How will that look like?
A 1300 times improvement? I am sure everybody would call this absurd. And I agree this is absurd. My point is the equation 1 and equation 2 only differ in degree of absurdness. Both are absurd, its just the scale that makes us look at 2% equation and say “This is Crap” while 1% equation fills us with warmth, fuzziness and hope. Make no mistake 1% equation is absurd.
The theoretical part of absurdness is at multiple levels. First the uniformity of improvement is a problem. Then magnitude of that improvement is another problem. The uniformity of improvement at its basic level suffers from the fact that, we are talking about uniform daily improvement in outcomes. This assumes that equal amount of effort is required to moving from 100 to 101 vs from 200 to 202. Both are 1% improvements. As any sane person will realize every additional percent improvement starts becoming more and more difficult & hence needs more inputs ( effort, physical resources, financial resources). Given that there are real practical limits to how much inputs can be increased ( you can’t work more than 24 hours a day, you can’t double your investments rapidly…) this uniformity of improvement never happens, never will.
Do note even if we say instead of 1% improvement, we make 1 unit improvement every day, it is hard to do that over a reasonably long period of time like say 6 months. Just to show this graphically . If we plot your improvement on Y Axis & Days on X Axis here is how improvement curve looks like
Does anyone seriously believe that one can improve their performance either as individual or as a team or as an organization like the curve depicted here?
I consider such oversimplifications extremely harmful. Since nobody realizes the promised benefits, they blame the concept of small continuous incremental improvements for lack of results.
Lets look at how graph of small incremental improvements typically looks like
What this graph shows is how small incremental improvements materialize. Everyday you try to improve and improve ever so slightly. You keep doing it for days at a stretch. At same time your mind is hard at work to achieve a breakthrough. With both practice as well as that “Aaha” moment of breakthrough you have days/stretches of sudden improvements. Then for long periods of time you have to put in effort just to sustain this level. Then till the next breakthrough, so on and so forth
1% uniform daily improvement is a mirage. It will be believed & promoted by those who never actually, practically worked on making such improvements. In reality, in practice this has never happened, will never happen because it is not theoretically or practically possible. Only thing you can guarantee in the world of continuous improvement is consistent efforts. You can not guarantee uniform outcomes, which this equation promises. Stop believing in such absurdities. Put your head down . With hard work & relentless focus you will achieve something that appears miraculous. Then you can build an equation around that miracle & sell the snake oil.
