I’m a practical guy. Take my personal uniform. If you’ve seen me, you likely know I always wear the same thing: a white button-down and jeans. Every. Day. It eliminates choice from one area of my life, so I can focus my creative energy and attention on other more pressing concerns — like helping clients envision and actualize their futures.
Unlike the consistency of my uniform, “the future” is far more difficult to predict. And for many who do try to imagine the future, preparing for it is a whole other challenge.
We tend to overestimate the amount of time it takes for change to happen. The current pace of change is moving faster than we’re processing — and we aren’t prepared. Companies are faced with some hard questions: How can we make sense of the big transformations that are emerging? How can we teach people to be comfortable with change and embrace it? Planning for an elusive future is made more difficult by an emphasis on short-term wins. Just look at the outsized emphasis on quarterly profits by large organizations.
In my attempt to promote a change mindset to my clients, I lean on these guiding principles:
The future is coming faster than we think or are prepared for (creative destruction is accelerating)
The obvious is obvious until it’s wrong (or isn’t)
The outlier is more significant than the norm
There is always a way to test the possibilities of the future to get you one step ahead
As a Pragmatic Futurist, I subscribe to an alternative operating approach than what most companies or individuals embrace: the theory of “marginal gains” or one-degree decisions. These are small, incremental actions that, when made repeatedly over time, yield big results. This is the inverse of much of our usual thinking and operating. We think big results must stem from big decisions. But in reality, we are the sum of our parts, the sum of our days, the sum of our choices. It’s never one and done, in life or business.
The accumulation of these micro-actions doesn’t sacrifice your long-term vision. Some people erroneously see this approach as either/or: Go big and make dramatic decisions that work toward a big goal, OR go lean and make small tweaks to maintain the status quo and improve ever-so-slightly on the same trajectory. One-degree decisions, however, compound over time, consistently working toward that lofty pie-in-the-sky goal. You’re thinking big, even as you act small.
Fortunately, this incremental approach bears less risk than dramatically changing course (which is tempting to do). Instead, one-degree decisions keep you on the path to your big vision while delivering short-term, incremental wins. They allow you to think the unthinkable and actualize it one tiny step at a time (without setting off any revolutionary alarm bells).
Companies and industries don’t fail overnight. It’s a slow, incremental nosedive, sometimes so subtle you wouldn’t even know it’s happening. Committing to this strategy means you abandon perfection and instead focus on never-ending improvement, non-stop experimentation. One-degree decisions serve up test-and-learn opportunities that give you the chance to constantly assess the viability of your irrational vision over time. They also ensure you’re not boxing yourself into a corner of dead-end constants and instead prepare you for big change before it becomes urgent. Small, incremental changes are far less scary than hitting the breaks and making a sharp turn.
How to Make One-Degree Decisions
Step 1: Analyze the gaps
Assess the distance between where you are right now and where you want to go, then identify what it will take to get there. What would your business require to make that journey? What’s missing? What’s standing in your way?
Filling gaps may be a solo venture, but most likely it involves other team members and resources. This may include tapping experts in data science or artificial intelligence, or perhaps it involves forming new partnerships or increasing your competency in a certain skill.
Be thorough, but don’t overthink it. Keep this process simple: Understand your current state, identify your end state, and determine what it will take to successfully bridge the two.
Step 2: Make one-degree decisions
Your gap analysis tells you what you need to test and guides your decision-making. For each gap, think about what small, one-degree decision you can make today that will build up over time.
Here’s your one-degree decision-making process:
Make a list of the decisions you know are coming, as well as the big gaps you have to fill.
Ask yourself:
Does this get us closer to the big vision? Yes or no? Not sure?
Will this help us prove or disprove our hypothesis?
Will we learn something from this that will be helpful in closing the gaps?
Will this lead us to another one-degree decision?
Is this decision being made because of a constant (those artificial constraints)? Are we doing this because we always do this?
Which decision will generate the greatest impact with the least amount of detection?
Prioritize your decisions.
Map the bigger decisions you’ll make this year and identify if they put you on a path to your big vision. Push yourself to stay on that trajectory by balancing the decisions you know you have to make with the choices you need to proactively implement to start filling those gaps. Think about hiring, software acquisitions, new office locations — everything from the minutiae to the big stuff. And think beyond “when”: When something can happen is critical, but how and who are equally valid questions.
Consider this criteria when prioritizing your one-degree opportunities:
Authority: Do I have the authority or need the authority to make this decision?
Cost and effort: Do I have the budget, resources, and time to successfully implement this decision? Is it worth it?
Perceived impact to the vision: Big? Small? TBD?
Proximity to Future State: Start with more accessible opportunities that are closer to your existing state, then build and evolve from there. Aiming too far down the line before you’ve filled the gaps can result in a disheartening setback.
Step 3: Believe
It’s normal to question yourself and your decisions during this process. Have faith in the decisions you’ve made and continue to make — not because you’re infallible, but because even “wrong” decisions can teach you what not to do and inform your next one-degree choices.
With each new decision, reflect on the outcome, analyze the data, collect feedback, implement these results, and repeat. Plus, since they’re small, incremental decisions, only yield small blows. Try to stay the course, but don’t get so stuck in your ways that you can’t adapt to take advantage of new factors. Flexibility will serve you well.
Take pride in your vision and embrace a sense of ownership in the future you’re imagining and actualizing — for your industry, your company, and yourself.