E48 - The Case for Incremental Change | Podcast with David Altman

But when we get through something and we look back , I make the case that it's not a light-bold moment of transformation . Rather , it's a series of many steps taken by many people that ultimately result in a big change .

Today , my guest is David Altman , the chief research innovation officer at the Center of Creative Leadership , a global non-profit organization with offices all around the world . David oversees global research partnerships and innovation and portfolio leadership solutions , with a particular focus on EDI .

With extensive leadership and research achievements , david was selected as one of the top 40 Americans for the three-year Kellogg Foundation National Leadership Program . A prolific author of many articles on leadership and change . Today , david and I chat about the case for incremental change as an effective approach to successfully managing complex changes .

I am grateful to have David chatting with me today . Well , david , thank you very much for joining me in the In a Game of Change podcast . I'm really grateful for your time .

For half my career , I was a public health professor in a couple of medical schools in the US , and then the second half of my career , I worked at the Global Non-Profit Organization Center for Creative Leadership , cclorg , and I've held various roles there , from leading research , innovation , product development to overseeing Europe , middle East Africa , to being the chief

operating officer , and now I'm overseeing our programs , products , research tools , assessments and partnerships .

But when we get through something and we look back , I make the case that it's not a light-bold moment of transformation . Rather , it's a series of many steps taken by many people that ultimately result in a big change .

So , for example , if we look at COVID since we've been dealing with that and look at the mRNA vaccine , which was an incredible innovation that vaccine was developed in 10 months , yes , and will become a platform for all kinds of other vaccines we don't have a vaccine from malaria we started in the late 1800s on that or for tuberculosis , or for typhoid fever or

for meningitis over 100 years of trying and we don't have a vaccine . So , on the one hand , you could say the mRNA vaccines for coronavirus were a transformative , a radical change . What we often forget is that scientists on the bench have been spending 30 years working on the elements that led to the mRNA vaccine .

So on the one hand , tremendous transformational change in 10 months , but as we look backwards , we see that this is 30 years of hardcore science that got us to the point where we could develop a vaccine in 10 months .

And so what you're seeing is potentially transformative , radical change . In countries like Bangladesh , countries on the coast , they're going to be flooded , yes , and one could think , wow , all of a sudden , these changes are happening quite rapidly .

But it was slow progression , over 100 years of changes with technology and with innovation and human activity , that led to this inflection point . Again , many small changes compounded produce tremendous impact .

Some people talk about first order , second order , third order change , with the first order being , you know , incremental you're still working within the same system and you're tweaking and second order changes is more about sort of changing the rules of the game . You know it's it's approaching transformative and third order changes , changing systems .

Yeah , so I accept that those are different types of change . The way that I view it is they're more interdependent , then mutually exclusive , yeah , and so you know , there's a guy , now retired , carl White , at University of Michigan , and he talked about this concept of small wins . Yes , and that's the way he described .

It is the steady application of small advantage . And so when you apply , you get small wins and you get the advantage of those small wins that over time they accumulate and create something really big .

And so you could be doing incremental change , let's say , in an organization and you're pursuing incremental change , first order change , but you're aspiring to something really big and instead of going after something directly that's really big , you are getting advantage day in and day out by these small wins and all of a sudden they come together and create something

that looks like a light bulb moment , but when you look backwards you see that it was a progression of different forms of incremental change .

Yes , versus , I'm going to bet on Twitter right now and I'm going to put my life savings into Twitter . Well , you know that

that may or may not work out . You may make money in the short term and you may lose all that money in the medium term . Yeah , this notion of compounding applies to change as well .

And so here's this small little butterfly that changes the course of climate . And and that concept was developed by Lawrence because he was interested in weather . And what he found out is small changes in the starting conditions and the assumptions that you make in weather can produce dramatic changes in what ultimately happens .

So meteorologists make assumptions with mathematical models about the flow of a hurricane or what's going to happen with a typhoon , and small changes in those assumptions have dramatic differences in how the models look .

And so that goes back to the small wins and the incremental changes potentially producing transformative impact , that the starting conditions and assumptions you make and actions that you take early on in a process , even in financial investing , can produce quite divergent outcomes down the road .

And that's where the interdependence of incremental , transformative and radical change come together . You can have radical change down the road and occasionally someone will come up with some radical idea that produces big impact , but more times than not you can look back and see that it's a bunch of small things that happened along the way .

It can dream big but start small .

So by starting small we're not saying your dreams should not be big and so that's the , that's the misconception sometimes saying I'm not going to take this job because that's below what I want , and for me surely this job is below , but at least it's going to maybe create a mindset for you around showing up to work , learning a new thing and then learning about

yourself as well in the process .

Yes , for a high achiever to say , well , I want to solve the greatest problems in humanity , yeah , and so if you break it down and if you do that , it's just there's , what do you do ? What's the next step that you take ? Sort of like Lao Tzu , the Chinese philosopher , said , the journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step .

Yeah , so you want to go long and go big and have a huge impact in the world ? Well , you got to take the first step . If you just sit there and dream , where you try to catapult yourself all the way to the larger goal , you won't make it .

What's the problem that we're trying to solve ? What ideas for change might we introduce to address that problem ? And how are we going to know whether a change or whether an improvement is occurring ?

And so these are a bunch of people applied scientists that that look at innovation and look at rapid cycle testing and adopt a test and learn mindset and , based on testing , experimenting , trying something out , learning from it , taking that learning , reapplying it , doing more tests .

This is kind of out of Silicon Valley Early fail , often to succeed sooner , kind of mentality . So I think you know , if people your listeners are looking for sort of evidence based approaches to support some of what we're talking about , they should go and just Google improvement science .

There's all kinds of stuff on there which brings a methodology to some of the concepts we're talking about .

So some behavioral economists at University of Chicago wrote a book called Nudge and these folks won the Nobel Prize for part of their work . So basically they're arguing that small features in our environment can produce big impact on our behavior . One story they talked about you want to know how to increase the intake of vegetables and leafy greens .

You don't encourage people or urge people to eat more salad . You , when they , if you're going into a rest , let's say a buffet , put the salad up in front . So the minute people walk in the door , there's the salad staring at them .

They're more apt to take salad if it's right there , it's available , it's a nudge , it's a prompt , and so those are the kinds of big impacts that seemingly small actions influence .

When we talk about incremental change in the workplace , does that require a different mindset or leadership mindset , because it's a long game , not a short game .

So you're a new CEO coming in and you have this audacious goal you want to take the organization to new heights . You've got to create a culture and an environment where people are confident in their own and in the collective abilities to go down that path .

And simply putting something out there as bold as can be , without creating the conditions where people feel that they can be successful , it's likely not going to work . People , we as humans , have all kinds of cognitive biases . At least 180 are documented and one relative to change , is the status quo bias .

, their human agency again , individually and collectively , toward that larger goal .

I often somebody taught me this maybe 20 years ago and I was a junior leader and they said , if you want your team to move from A to B or cross a bridge , explain the other side is slightly better than this .

Explain that don't be so sure that the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know , but also show them the first steps , which means I need to behave in such a way to actually show them the first steps , a bit of a guidance in there , and that will go a long way when it comes to change .

But these obviously are not so positive side to incremental change , because there's a timeline in there and potentially there will be more cost . What's your take on that ?

So is there a cost to potentially going slower ? Yeah , perhaps . Is there a cost to biting off more than you can chew ? Highly likely there's a cost to that . So if you can rally people around changes that they deem meaningful and create energy , then you get a potential oversized impact . Today the world is overtaken by chat GPT Out of the blue , it seems .

In the last three , four , five months it's taken the world by storm and it seems to have just come out of . People knew about artificial intelligence , but now all of a sudden , people are saying this is like the best thing in a century . It's the most innovative . Where'd that come from ?

Did that come from just 350 people who work at the company that developed ? No , 350 people right now . Wow , no , I mean .

It comes from decades and decades of work in AI and in machine learning and hands down , small steps , everyday , incremental changes and a bold idea and a vision that some people didn't have , but hard work in the trenches , day in and day out , to create something that was transformational . But they didn't figure it out in 90 days .

David , believe it or not , I gave it all the things that I actually know working and it's giving me a plan . So there you go . I still have my coach . I love him . I want to shift gear and talk about the advantages of incremental change and especially when it comes to sustaining the change and corrective action as we progress .

So if you can adopt that individually , but also in teams and organizations , then you go down a path and every day is action . You're trying things , you're learning . Some things are not working as you planned and so you take what you learned and you redo it and it's that test and lesson learned mindset .

And so on the one hand that's incremental , but imagine a culture where everybody's doing that day in and day out . That that's how you operate in this team or in this organization . So you are feeling this notion a model is notion of progress principle . You are doing meaningful work . You're making progress every day .

Okay , some days you make a little bit more than others . Maybe in a week you look back and said , wow , I learned a lot , but I don't see how this is leading us to this audacious goal that we're trying to achieve and then all of a sudden it comes together .

It's sort of like I'm not a chef , but you know , it's known that an ingredient or two , a spice or two can make a mediocre dish into something that is a five star meal , and so it's these small things that come together in unique ways that create motivation , create momentum and ultimately lead to a higher likelihood of success .

There's no guarantee of anything in life , but by only going big all the time and we see this in sports , we've written about that as well it's not just the people that can score a goal that create the impact .

In football , you need the enforcers , you need defensive people , you need people working together in small ways , and a small , little change , a change in the past , a change in the formation , which on the surface seems small , can produce the elusive goal that you're going for to win the game .

I haven't seen any gold medal holder that did this in a month or two , and my background is in martial arts , so I understand that fully and that's why I love it , because you know , for 30 years it's been validation after validation for me that the consistency is what takes me or carries me over , and I think you put that really in a wise way .

You call this momentum , and that's really important . I spend 25 minutes at the gym every day , Every day . I don't do two hours every three days , and I find that far more useful for me to keep that momentum and it's actually manageable as well . But one foot in the front of the other , and that's what I do at work now .

I start first with first line and then somehow it flows , and I just love this model . Now , rather than the big chunk I want to ask you about how can we harness technology you talked about GBT to help us with incremental change .

So there are plenty . You know meditation apps I sometimes use those . So , you know , I think it's less about technology and more about okay , here are the changes that I'm trying to make . What support do I need ? Where are there impediments or barriers to what I'm trying to accomplish ?

What do I know about myself in terms of prompts to motivate me and then say , okay , well , are there some technology ? Is there technology that can help me in areas where I need help or I need reinforcement ? So I'd start with self-awareness before I would start with the bells and whistles of technology .

And then one step what are meaningful goals ? What can I do in the next 10 minutes , in the next 30 minutes , in the next hour , in the next day , this week ? That are steps , baby steps toward or in support

of or consistent with my values , my purpose , my mission . And how am I doing against those more meaningful goals , those micro , what progress did I make where ? Where I didn't make progress , why was the goal off ? That I get distracted , that I not use available resources , whatever it is .

And so you're constantly , you're pursuing something big , you're taking those steps , you're testing your steps , you're learning from what you're doing and you're changing . And this is you know , if you do this , if you make that a habit , then it becomes unconscious competence . It's just part of how you operate , but it takes a while to get to that point .

And then , if you're a leader , you're paying attention to the people that you're working with , because leadership is a social process . It's not about someone at the top of the organization dictating what others do . It's around how you enter . So how engaged are people , how motivated are they ? Do they see that progress is being made ? Are they learning ?

Do we have a learning culture , etc . And so learning and the application of learning is so key , because no one all the time has a plan that works as designed , and so if you're learning from what's happening , great , and that's how I think you can measure incremental change . And then you've got the usual KPIs , the key performance indicators .

How are we doing financially , out , you know , are we selling ? Are we developing product , whatever it is ? But go earlier in that causal chain to look at the human elements that then result in products , services and other business outcomes .

So it really makes it easier for the change management group and the project management to manage , whereas I've seen big changes where we just get them together and we give them the whole process and we realize that later the adoption probably was about 10% , and so these are also some of the benefits that we can get in measuring the success of the incremental

change . We are coming to the end of the podcast and I'm totally enjoying this . I want to ask you a question that I usually ask my guests what would be your advice to the change of practice community ? Our practice nowadays , especially over the last 10 years , is sort of taking a center stage and its importance .

However , dealing with the people side of change is always tricky and we need all the tools that is available to us to actually help businesses manage their change . From where you sit and your experience and your knowledge , what would your advice be to somebody like me when I go about practicing my profession ?

You know , adopt this growth mindset . Nothing ventured , nothing gained . If you can break challenges in those smaller components , as we've talked , and grow from them , learn from them and have that mindset , then you'll be able to run that marathon or that ultra marathon . Third , take baby steps . We've talked a lot about that . Occasionally you have to sprint .

Occasionally you have to jog , sometimes you have to walk slowly , sometimes you have to crawl , sometimes you have to sleep and stop and rest and reflect , and so it's all about movement and those baby steps . And then , finally , you know what is in my mind a lot is small , is beautiful , doable and impactful .

So you know , you have these higher aspirations and you want to make the world a better place , or you want to grow your business , or you want to have an even more wonderful family . Small is beautiful , doable and impactful .

And day in and day out , small changes that you make and small changes that you help others make as a leader can produce the oversized impact consistent with the larger aspirational goals that you have .

But until next time , stay well and stay safe .