Organizations and products that are great today were not born great. They evolved into greatness over time via experimentation and improvement.

Juvenile product company executives and new parents have one thing in common—being buried in an avalanche of information and advice. God bless the Internet but we all know it can create as much confusion as enlightenment. Well, you’ll be happy to know that in this post I’m going to lead you out of the morass of management “musts.” Yes, Virginia, there is a simple overriding key to business success.

In my post, Do You Think Like a Leader?, I briefly described the concept of “embracing evolution.”  Of all the leadership mindset components I outlined in that article, that’s the one that can have the biggest and quickest positive impact on your business life. In fact, even if you forget every other nugget of business advice you’ve ever heard, creating a culture of continuous evolution alone can have a powerful effect on your ability to drive your business forward.

You see, you are a human being. And all the other people in your company are human beings. Unfortunately, human beings aren’t perfect—even the best of them. Even you and me. People make mistakes. They sometimes make bad decisions—especially when they don’t have the information they need, which is often the case. But most human beings inherently want to be perfect—all the time. And, because they do, they get angry when they make mistakes, which leads to muddled thinking, which can lead to more mistakes. And because they don’t like to admit they’re not perfect, they sometimes feel the need to find someone to blame—which leads to poor morale. Or they get criticized by their bosses who also thinks everyone should always be perfect and they start hating their jobs. Not a pretty picture.

The cure for this potential downward spiral is simple. Create an Evolutionary Success™ (ES) culture in your company. Establish the fact that it’s continual progress you’re looking for not perfection. Perfection should be pursued but will never be totally achieved. However, adopting an ES philosophy also means never being satisfied with maintaining the status quo. It’s imperative that you continuously find ways to improve.

In practice, companies that embrace the Evolutionary Success™ approach usually evolve in increments on a consistent time schedule—most often an annual one. The ultimate “destination” is your company’s vision of perfect mission execution. You never actually get there but you keep getting closer every year. The evolution process involves, (1) thoroughly understanding true “current reality” inside and outside your business, (2) establishing goals for the desired “next level” of company performance, (3) creating and implementing strategies and projects that get you there, and then repeating the cycle again and again over time.

This way of thinking and operating has a number of positive benefits. 

1.    It makes work more interesting and rewarding.
People leave companies because their job isn’t interesting or challenging. An ES culture is exciting and stimulating. People inherently like to feel they’re learning and improving. And, to make continual progress you need to have a way to measure progress objectively. These measurements also serve a motivational purpose since they provide your staff with feedback as to how well they are doing. That’s why golfers, tennis players, and bowlers keep score. It makes the game more fun.

2.    It encourages and endorses employee development.
Since an ES company has a learning culture, employees are not expected to know everything on day 1. This can remove a lot of stress from your organization. But they are expected to know more on days 2, 3, 4 and so on. It appropriately puts a healthy focus on developing your people over time—or more accurately them developing themselves with your support. It’s no surprise that even the best professional athletes talk about striving to get better at their sport day by day.     
 

3.    It makes it okay and even necessary to take intelligent risks.
An ES company is a continual “work in progress.” It has an atmosphere that encourages constant experimentation to find out what works and what doesn’t as a way to improve and grow. This doesn’t mean it’s OK to be reckless. On the contrary, ES thinking teaches you to take chances in a way that minimizes the cost of failure. This is done through small scale tests and simulations before full-scale implementation—whether you’re developing a new product, a new process or a new business model.

4.    It converts failures into learning experiences.
If your employees are afraid to fail, they won’t be able to be innovative and they won’t admit when something’s not working and change course. You obviously need to avoid failures that are due to sloppiness or lack of discipline. Those are never acceptable. But in an ES environment, “good failures” create important knowledge that can be leveraged in the future. Recognizing that trying things that may fail in a low cost way is the way to learn, is the essence of successful entrepreneurship and high speed product development.
 

5.    It builds confidence in your ability to create your future.
We all know people who are constantly finding reasons for their lack of success. They are convinced the world is against them. People with a victim mentality create a toxic environment and drag down everyone around them. An ES mindset, on the other hand, builds on itself. Believing you can have control over your future leads to breakthrough successes which lead in turn to increased confidence and further improvement.

6.    It pushes you to achieve things you never thought possible.
Human nature causes us to create constraints that are not based on reality. We’ve all heard how running the mile in less than 4 minutes was considered physically impossible until Roger Bannister did it for the first time in human history in 1954. 46 days later his record was broken and hundreds have run sub 4 minute miles since. An ES attitude makes continuous improvement mandatory and breaks down any artificial constraints.

7.    It keeps you ahead of your competition.
A great white shark that stops moving will die from asphyxiation. A company that stops improving will be eaten up by superior competitors. Fortunately for you, not all your competitors are going to read this blog post.

Next Steps

At your next staff meeting, explore to what extent you have an Evolutionary Success™ culture in your company. Are your employees taking intelligent risks or are they playing it safe through fear of failure or criticism? Is it understood by all that you need to achieve improved performance in all key areas every year? Are you helping your employees develop by providing encouragement, training and support?

As always, if you’d like more detailed information or customized guidance regarding implementing ES practices or about other management issues, set up a Skype session with me by contacting Kyle Schaller at kschaller@jpma.org or sign up on the JPMA website. Your first session is free and subsequent sessions only cost you a $150 charity donation.