Series of tiny steps = significant results
I participated in the Real Skills Conference from Akimbo by Seth Godin.
A worldwide online conference for people who care about the work they do.
The world tends to focus on activities that can be measured. Measured by a number, an increment, a point on a graph.
Maybe it’s time to focus on growing people in a way that can’t be calculated by a percentage or a simple score.
Maybe it’s time to focus on the skills that matter.
The conference was for two hours over Zoom with 80% participation and 20% speakers. Overall experience was great, never thought we could connect with people quickly over Zoom. I would highly recommend the conference to you
Fear of vulnerability and failures are the primary reasons why we don’t invest enough in “Real Skills”. And the way to improve our Real skills is by practising it. And consistent practice helps to make progress inch by inch through taking baby steps :)
I got hooked to Lean Philosophy very early on, especially the idea of taking small steps to continuous improvement. This pattern is visible in most of the state of the art software engineering practices — Test Driven Development, Refactoring, Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Lean startup.
What is essential to understand here is, taking the small step is not sufficient. We also need to see the impact of each small step. E.g., refactoring. After every refactoring, we need to check whether we are making progress or not. At any moment, when we find something is not working, we should revert. That is easier because each of our steps is tiny. And the same with practising continuous delivery.
And a series of small steps gives us phenomenal results. This pattern is applicable in personal life, work — wherever Continuous Improvement is relevant. That is pretty much everywhere.
And that was one of the significant learnings from the Real Skill Conference. Changes are risky, so take it in small steps.
My friend Vaidy Bala keeps referring to Atomic Habits — which is about tiny changes and remarkable results. I am still internalising it. Guess what caught my attention — tiny changes and remarkable results :)
