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Realizing your 2020 business resolutions: Atomic changes for massive results

I read a book recently called Atomic Habits by James Clear, which provided a framework for why it is difficult to change our bad habits and build new ones. As someone who has always believed in the importance of system design, I was intrigued and considered how we could apply the same principles to business.

Joann O'Brien
28 Jan 2020
Realizing your 2020 business resolutions: Atomic changes for massive results

Realizing your 2020 business resolutions: Atomic changes for massive results

As the end of January approaches and we get into the swing of a new year and decade, many are trying hard to get to grips with the personal goals they’ve set for the year, such as losing weight, running a marathon or learning a language. However, as many of us know, such goals can be difficult to achieve and when we do manage to achieve them, often we revert to our previous behavior.

I read a book recently called Atomic Habits by James Clear, which provided a framework for why it is difficult to change our bad habits and build new ones. It identified that the thing we should be focusing on is the ‘future identity’ such as, becoming a runner, becoming an artist etc., and the system to achieve that. This is instead of focusing on the individual goals of losing weight, learning to draw etc. While goals are an indicator of progress towards this future identity, they are not in themselves an outcome.

As someone who has always believed in the importance of system design, I was intrigued and considered how we could apply the same principles to business. Let’s take for example the ambition of a company to become more agile, or more innovative. The key indicator for agility might be the lead time from concept to cash, or for innovation, the number of new, innovative concepts that have been brought to market. However, by focusing on the system around that goal – the steps and processes in place to take to get there, we ensure that a sustained new future will exist and that our organizational behavior will not revert to course after the initiative is considered achieved.

Micro changing your future


So, for 2020 what is the future identity you see for your company? If you have decided that becoming more innovative is a future feature of your business, I would like to give one suggestion, make standards a key foundation for innovation in our business. While it may sound like a contradiction to have standards and innovation in the same sentence, I would advocate that standards not in themselves, but in how the industry adopts these standards is what leads to greater innovation. Here’s how…

The system for improvement that Clear refers to in his book is based on making “micro changes” which deliver substantial results. Many of us heard the story of how the British cycling team made their way to Olympic Gold. Here, Ian Dyer, created a system of micro changes to the preparation of the team which had a massive cumulative effect, shaving seconds off their time. He created a new system that resulted in the team winning Gold in the Olympics, such as painting the inside of the van that carried the bicycles white so that any dust particles could be seen and removed.

Similarly, in business, if we can automate and reuse as much as possible so that there is more space and energy dedicated to innovation and new value, we will set our organizations up for future success. While it won’t happen overnight, it’s the system of cumulative effect that will matter in the long run.

Therefore, I advocate as part of your New Year resolutions for your business, that you think about your systems to enable agility and innovation, build the application of best practices and standards into your business. Shave time and energy everywhere you can so that the cumulative effect will enable your business to become an agile innovative business for the future.

Standards are definitions of specifications or best practices, collaboratively built by leading industry experts. Gaining that knowledge and embedding it quickly into your business, can save tremendous time and energy, with direct benefit to your business. Along with this, similar to how vaccinations work, the more people that use them the more the population is protected. In the case of business standards, the more organizations that use them, the more collective value can be gained regarding interoperability, scalability, security etc.

So as you continue your journey into this New Year, I recommend that you first decide what type of business you want to be, innovative, agile etc. Then consider the system of design to achieve that sustained future identity by building the application of best practices and standards including APIs and data models into the routine process. Finally, monitor for improvements so that the team can see the benefits over time, helping to sustain the new behavior and create a new way of working.