I just read a really excellent article “To Change Effectively, Change Just One Thing ” by Peter Bregman on the Harvard Business website. The premise of the article is focusing on one thing only is the best way to drive change. His primary example is dieting. Several studies on dieting show that they all achieve about the same results. Some combination of carbs, proteins, and fat will make you lose weight, but the combination really doesn’t matter. His deal is he quit eating sugar and lost weight. Sounds simple enough. He then goes on to cite other examples in the business world that are equally effective and true.
This got me to thinking about collaboration. We all get caught up in working hard and in the same way. On the other end of the spectrum, we often try implementing new tools or processes with lots of hoopla and effort. Changing habits is really difficult. By following this simple plan of changing one thing, you can achieve a positive result collaborating with your team or partners. Here are some ideas:
- Use a wiki page for all team status reports or meetings moving forward
- Assign one note taker for all meetings and rotate so that every meeting is documented with discussion points, decisions, and next steps – no exceptions
- Don’t ask any questions through emails – use a forum or other mechanism
- Use file-based documents as a last resort or only if you have to send them out externally. Otherwise, use a sharable web document of some kind
If you do any of these things, you WILL see a positive result in productivity. The point is it doesn’t really matter as long as it is one thing and meaningful. What is the one thing you would change?
