Episode X - Incremental Gains & Stifled Goals

Every bit of progress is to be celebrated but big-dream blockages abound last week!

Matt Scaysbrook

Jul 10, 2023

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Last week was a difficult week to love.

No major reverses to speak of, but equally no major wins either.

Maybe for most people that would be ok; and maybe I’m just not most people…?!

I learned long ago that big-bang step-change moments in business, or indeed in life, are very rare. Most of what is gained is through consistency of directed effort, not through eureka moments.

And so even I can see that there were incremental gains made last week which I should probably be more pleased about than I’m currently able to recognise!

But they still represent my Peak for last week, so let’s get into it…

The Peak

brown concrete bricks — Photo by Martin on Unsplash

Rationally I know that walls like this one don’t magically appear overnight. They are constructed brick by brick, minute by minute, hour by hour.

And building a business is no different.

From clients to team members to processes, every part of each of my businesses has been built brick by brick. Or in other words, by incremental gains.

And whilst my head knows this, my heart wants impact; it wants step-changes, big bangs, meaningful daily change.

So what I want to explore is why those incremental gains aren’t more satisfying - and whilst others might applaud my progress from the outside, why can’t I be more content with it?

An owner places every brick

In most owner-operator businesses, the owner places every brick in the wall themselves.

From the outside, observers only see the progress of the wall, but they cannot see:

The effort that it took to place each one
The weight of the responsibility of placing it correctly
The 17 other bricks you were juggling whilst you placed it

On the one hand there is satisfaction in knowing that you built it with your own two hands, but that tends to be a longer-term feeling.

In the short-term you can be dominated only by the feeling of relief; relief that the brick is placed & the wall is still intact (for now).

Building out a team does alleviate some of the individual pressure to personally place each brick, but the responsibility for accuracy still remains. And so does the juggling.

An owner is too close to the bricks to see the wall

The effort involved in placing each brick is such that it requires great focus.

You have to keep your eyes fixed on that brick to ensure that it is properly placed. Dropping it not only breaks that brick, but risks smashing other parts of the wall on its way down.

So you zero in, keep a tight grip on it & slot it as neatly & carefully as you can.

But your next action isn’t to step back & admire the progress of your wall; your next action is to move on to the next new brick.

And then the next brick.

And the next.

A few weeks back I noted that one of the superpowers of time off was my ability to zoom out. And funny how that now fits perfectly with the brick / wall analogy.

Whilst you’re in the day-to-day job of placing bricks, seeing the wall is virtually impossible. And so the incremental gains go unrecognised & uncelebrated.

Each brick is percentagely less valuable

1 to 2 = 100% increase

2 to 3 = 50% increase

3 to 4 = 33% increase

You get the picture here - each brick placed is percentagely worth less than the one before it.

So whilst incrementally you may still be adding the same number of bricks at the same frequency, you get a lower percentage return on your efforts.

Now I appreciate that we could extend this analogy further to account for the size of each brick relative to the scale of the wall to be built, but I’m not actually convinced that that is a good extension.

Very often when you place the brick, you aren’t sure how big it really is.

A new client with a huge budget might seem big, but if they only stick with you for a month or two, that huge budget becomes insignificant.

Conversely, a new client with a small budget might seem unimportant in the grand scale of the wall but if they stay with you for 10+ years & grow their budget significantly over that time, suddenly their representative brick is larger too.

So the only real way to judge each brick at the time of placement is as one brick.

And in that way, it is a law of diminishing returns - same effort to place, growing responsibility (for your bigger wall), reduced percentage return!

So what is there to learn here Matt?!

Honestly, it isn’t supposed to be disheartening, or telling you not to bother!

It’s to recognise that your heart, your emotions, will play tricks on you whilst your head, your rational mind, is doing the right things.

And to try to keep the former in check so that it doesn’t interfere with the work of the latter.

If this week’s Peak exploration resonates with you, share it with others:

The Trough

From the above it is pretty obvious that I am trying to build a wall.

Or in my particular case, a series of walls (businesses) that can provide a home (life) for me.

And last week it felt like the Universe was trying to prevent that! - there was “stuff” blocking significant progress at every turn.

It’s obvious why this would be a negative of course, so I’m more interested in why there has been so many blockers - and potentially uncovering some ways to alleviate them:

The dreaded admin

Nothing in business or life comes without admin.

I truly wish it did, but it doesn’t.

Even delegating tasks to others requires briefing them, reviewing them & signing them off.

And last week there was an unusually large accumulation of admin tasks; partly driven by the increased activity of my agency, but it has confirmed one thing:

For everything I have done to create independent working within my agency, I am still an integral part of certain activities.

I’m not overly worried about this as I have a plan to reduce my importance, so I just have to stay the course.

And in the meantime, accept that weeks like last week are going to happen.

Ideas are easy, execution is hard

Part of what makes ideas so seductive is that they often seem so simple:

Just start a newsletter…

Just get more leads…

Just be more ruthless with your time…

And coming up with those ideas is simple; executing them is hard.

It’s hard because suddenly you have to think about all of the little puzzle-pieces that need to slot into place to actually make the idea a reality!

So whilst you are seduced by the romance of The Big Idea, you are then crushed by the weight of all of the micro-tasks that accompany it.

Personally I have a lot of ideas. And as such, I end up with a lot of micro-tasks that come along with them!

And last week their collective weight bore down on me.

I don’t ever wish to have fewer ideas, but I do think I need to take a look at how I tackle them more efficiently.

Avoiding weeks like last week entirely isn’t realistic, but it should be possible to limit their frequency with better planning.

However long you think it takes, add at least 50%

I know this in my bones to be true, but honestly, do I apply that knowledge often enough?

Nope.

Call it ambition, optimism or cast-iron self-belief, but whatever it is, I failed utterly last week to recognise this.

And because I do not miss deadlines (personal mantra!), committing to doing something for someone else means I’m doing it, even if it takes away time I should have reserved for more forward-looking, foundation-building things.

This certainly raised questions about my personal prioritisation (see recent post for more on this), but I also think it is driven by my desire to make progress as quickly as possible. I see a chance to move something forward & I look for the earliest opportunity to do so, even if my plate is already full.

So a combination of better upfront assessment of effort plus improved prioritisation is needed. And potentially a stricter view of what is short-term valuable vs. long-term valuable.

As always, work to be done :)

A last request

If you have any feedback on format, content, delivery time, or indeed anything else, I’d love to hear it.

Writing is great for me, your feedback can help me make the reading greater for you.