One Change for the New Year

Why the list produces nothing

A January list of fourteen improvements feels like planning and functions as avoidance.

Nothing on it is anybody's specific responsibility, nothing has a date, and every item can be deferred in favour of another item on the same list.

By March it is a document nobody opens, and the year proceeds exactly as it would have without it.

One change, with a date and a name attached, is a smaller ambition and a larger outcome.

What a real commitment has

• One thing, not several.
• A date it is finished by.
• A named person.
• A description of done.
• Somebody else who knows.

The fourth is the one people leave out. Improve our follow-up has no finishing line, and every enquiry receives a reply within four working hours by the end of March is a thing that is either true or not.

Choose it from evidence, not ambition

Which is what the last three weeks were for.

The reviews in December produce candidates: the thing that broke under load, the page that works and needs more like it, the price that has not moved, the form that lost enquiries, the supplier with no alternative.

Choose from that list rather than from a general sense of what a business ought to improve.

Each of those is evidenced, specific, and already understood, which removes the first month of any project.

The best candidates are usually the ones you already know about and have never scheduled.

Nothing on the list requires research to begin.

A worked example

A business that had produced a January list every year for four years produced one change instead.

The change was that every enquiry would receive a reply the same working day, and the date was the end of February.

The named person was the owner, and done meant that a month of enquiries could be checked and all would show a same-day reply.

They achieved it in February and checked it in March.

Enquiries converting to jobs rose noticeably, which they had not predicted.

Their previous four lists had contained that item every year without it ever being done.

Prefer a habit to a project

Which is the choice that lasts.

A project finishes and its benefit stops accumulating, and a habit compounds for as long as it continues.

Photograph every job, reply the same day, ask every satisfied customer for a review, write down one answer a month.

Each of those is small, unglamorous, and worth more over four years than any redesign.

That is also what the four-year retrospective almost always concludes, which is a reason to trust it rather than to relearn it.

Choose the habit if there is one available.

Make it visible to somebody

Which is the mechanism that makes it happen.

Tell one other person what the change is and when it is done by.

A partner, a member of staff, an accountant, or a peer in another business.

The point is not accountability in any formal sense; it is that a commitment somebody else knows about is harder to quietly abandon in February.

Ask them to ask you about it once, in March.

That single question is more effective than any system.

Then genuinely stop there

Which is the hard part.

The temptation is to add a second change because the first feels too modest for a year.

A year is long and attention is not, and a business that completes one change every year for four years has changed substantially.

Keep the other candidates on a list marked for later rather than for now, which is a different document with no dates on it.

Revisit that list when the first change is finished, not before.

One at a time, finished, is the entire method.

Write it in one sentence

Which is the test of whether it is specific enough.

By this date, this person will have made this true, and here is how we will check.

If it does not fit in that sentence, it is not one change and it will not happen.

Put the sentence somewhere you will see it in February rather than in a document.

The wall, the top of a notebook, or a recurring calendar entry all work better than a file.

Put a date in for checking it

Which is the step that distinguishes a commitment from an intention that felt serious in December.

Set a calendar entry for a fortnight after the completion date, saying check whether this happened and how you will know.

Without it, the change either happens or quietly does not, and by June nobody remembers what was decided or whether it was done.

The check should take five minutes and produce a yes or a no rather than a discussion, which is exactly why the definition of done had to be specific.

A no is useful information too, since it usually shows the change was larger than one thing or that nobody had the time it needed.

Then start the next one

Which is what turns a single change into a method.

When the check comes back yes, go to the list of candidates you kept aside and pick the next one, with a new date and a named person.

That produces perhaps three or four completed changes in a year rather than fourteen attempted ones, which is a considerably better result.

It also means the list gets shorter over time rather than being rewritten every January with the same items on it.

A candidate that survives four years of not being chosen is telling you something too, and can be deleted.

The counter-case

Some businesses can do more.

A larger team with somebody able to own each item can genuinely run several changes at once, and restricting to one wastes capacity.

Some years also demand more, particularly where something is actually broken.

And a list has value as a record of what you have noticed, provided nobody mistakes it for a plan.

Choose one change from December's evidence, give it a date and a person, define what done means, and tell somebody.

What to do

1. Look at December's findings.
2. Pick one.
3. Prefer a habit.
4. Give it a date.
5. Name the person.
6. Define done.
7. Tell one other person.

Step six is what separates this from a resolution, since improve our follow-up has no finishing line and a same-day reply to every enquiry is either true in March or it is not.

A prior version of this is at one thing to fix in January.

Frequently asked questions

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