How To Implement Effective Change

This brilliant blog post by Peter Bregman suggests that if you want to make effective change focus on only one thing. Peter lost 18 pounds in one month by focusing on just one change (cutting out sugar from his diet.) And he talks of various situations where better results were achieved by focusing on just one thing.

Obviously, for this idea to work, it becomes very important to spend time upfront understanding which factors will have the greatest impact. It's like the Pareto principle which states that 80% of results come from 20% of inputs. So figuring out what is the one thing that works becomes even more important.

Peter's idea carries great importance for 360-degree feedback. We've seen some of our clients measure so many dimensions (0r competencies.) Some of them have over 10 competencies with around 100 items (questions.) The problem with this approach is that it seems to suggest that each of those dimensions carries equal importance or weight in terms of impacting job performance. In reality, only one or two competencies are probably much more important than all of the other competencies. Perhaps a case must be made that consulting firms (which usually help design the survey instruments in conjunction with top management) must spend more time culling out all unnecessary competencies and focusing on the one competency that will make a difference to the organization.