Evolution or Revolution?

What’s the best way to improve your business?

Where should you put your development time and effort to get the greatest return?

There are two lines of thought:

#1: Revolution

Focus on the big strategic levers and the radical steps.  Making bold moves is the most important thing you can do.  Don’t worry about the small things, small things will only give you small gains.  Worry about the large investment decisions and focus on what is really important:

• Where should you place that new multi-million pound distribution centre?
• Who should be your strategic outsourcing supplier?
• Which core IT system should you be using?

You won’t get big improvements unless you make big moves.  Faint heart never won fair lady.

#2: Evolution

The big steps are few and far between and when you take them they are inherently risky.  If you really want to improve then focus on continuous improvement and evolutionary change.

• What could you do to help your employees fix their own problems?
• How do you create a learning culture?
• Why couldn’t you invest in a portfolio of incremental projects?

Don’t spend a penny on a major investment until you have optimised the system you have.

An uphill struggle

Let me give you an analogy.  Imagine you have to find the highest point on the surface of the earth.

You have given a lookup table (maybe even an app, this is the 21st century) that tells you the height above sea level for every point on the globe.  All you have to do is type in the coordinates.

There is however a catch.  You have limited resources and can only make a thousand guesses.  What is the best strategy?

Strategy 1: Big steps

You know that the Himalayas are in Asia, and that is to the East and just above the middle so make some strategic guesses in that area.

• Latitude 34.29, Longitude 70.76 — 502 meters above sea level
• Latitude 48.45, Longitude 116.81 — 619 meters above sea level
• Latitude 49.27, Longitude 77.26 — 868 meters above sea level

This strategy might land you on a snow-capped peak.  Then again, about 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water, you could well end up in the Caspian sea.

Strategy 2: Small steps

Start at the North Pole and move 1 mile in each direction.  Find the highest point and the repeat from there.  This is the “hill climbing strategy”.   It will find the local optimum, but given that you only have a thousand moves then that point will only be at the top of a snowdrift, or worse still, sitting on the back of a polar bear.

Neither strategy is a great strategy

I cannot guarantee that either method will get you to the top of Mount Everest.

The best bet is to combine the two approaches.  First make a few big bets then, once you have found somewhere promising, start climbing.  That way if your big moves land you in the foothills of the Alps you stand a chance of getting a long way up Mont Blanc.

So, evolution or revolution?

The answer is both.  But there is a catch…

It is far easier to make a small move than a big one.  Big bets take lots of resources and history is littered with large strategic projects that got nowhere.

If you can only be good at one approach I’d jump for evolution.  Sooner or later it will get you somewhere, and it is so much more fun than writing all those investment proposals.

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