I’ve been reading, actually rereading, James Clear’s Atomic Habits. There’s a lot to unpack there for individuals and for organizations as well. How habits and routines are established, how you can stack them to build your capabilities, and how to extinguish ones that don’t serve you.

He writes about how many improvement efforts are like ice melting. You raise the temperature from zero to one degree. Nothing appears to be happening. You raise the temperature another degree. Still nothing. You have to repeat this investment of energy a total of 32 times. On the final effort, the temperature of the ice rises from 32 to 33 degrees at which points the ice melts completely.

Why I am I telling you something you already know? Because often we try establishing a new habit or a process in our business and we are successful for the first trial or even the first few trials. And then we don’t see results and we doubt the efficacy of the new habit and stop practicing it. So before abandoning a new improvement initiative, whether personal or business, make sure nothing it actually happening.

If you’ve experienced this, let me first congratulate you taking the first steps. Going from zero to one is the most difficult step. It involves researching methods, preparing materials, consulting with experts or experienced people and overcoming inertia etc. I suggest you measure the crap out of everything. Measure your activity, at-bats so-to-speak, the temperature of the room the ice is in, even the temperature of the ice itself. Analyze your at-bats and see which ones work better than others and what makes them better. We refer to this process as “more like this, less like that.”

Call To Action

Select an initiative, either personal or business and begin working on improving your capabilities. If you would like help with this process, give us a call.

I hope you found something to apply to your business in this MBR. Let me know either way.

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