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Guest post by: Kate Marsden Become an Author

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It’s easy to get excited about the next big thing and following a huge idea that will step change your business. The whole business goes on hold while you concentrate on a new big product launch or landing your new dream client. If it comes off that can be great and it certainly can transform your business. But it is sometimes too big a gamble for many businesses to take, and if you are already finding things tough the chances are you won’t even be able to think about the next big idea.

So, concentrate instead on getting a step change by making lots of small steps. For example, if your profit is based on 3 key drivers, set a target of 1% improvement for each in the next 3 months. Work out how you will do that and get on with it, instead of taking 6 months working out a magic answer to make a big leap forward. That way you can really concentrate on one thing at a time and make sure it really makes a difference.

Try these tricks to get the ball rolling:

• Offer an incentive to your team for anyone who can get a 1% improvement in one of your key drivers. 1% is low enough as a target for people to think it’s achievable and worth some effort.
• Keep taking small steps – do one thing and move quickly onto the next. If you are taking baby steps you don’t have time to sit back and reflect for too long.
• Look at multiple things at once – go for a small step in improving costs and increasing customer numbers and reducing errors all at the same time.
• Measure results – it’s easy for the little things to get lost, so it’s important to know what has been achieved.
• Get everyone to concentrate on making small steps – if everyone did one thing every day, no matter how small, to improve your business that would probably have much more impact than one brilliant big idea a year.
• Be positive about small shifts in results – no matter how tiny, they all add up.
• Remember it’s the cumulative effect that matters – 1% improvement might not sound like a lot, but if you keep doing it, it soon builds up.

The trick with all of this is to make sure your small steps really impact on the profit drivers, whatever they may be. Otherwise you run the risk of taking little steps of busy work that do not improve your profits.

Take action NOW and work out a driver for your business that you can improve by just a small percent.

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