A mindset centered around "business as usual" (BAU) and incrementalism often involves maintaining existing procedures and making only minor adjustments to processes or products.
While this approach may offer stability and minimize risk in the short term, these severely impede innovation in an organization making them miss obvious shifts in consumer preferences and larger industry transformations. The org becomes a "slow follower" vs. a "fast-follower", forget being a "leader" in its industry.
Short-Term Impacts:
Complacency:
BAU fosters an environment where complacency becomes the norm. Teams may become too comfortable with current processes, reducing the urgency or perceived need for significant change.
Such a mindset underestimates the status quo bias, where the preference for familiarity can overshadow potential benefits from change.
Reduced Competitive Edge:
Incrementalism may lead to improvements, but these are often marginal and do not significantly differentiate a business in a competitive market.
This approach typically focuses on optimizing existing capabilities rather than exploring new opportunities, which can result in missed market potential and the inability to capitalize on emerging trends.
Innovation Stagnation:
A focus on minor adjustments means that transformative ideas are often sidelined. Innovation requires risk-taking and a departure from established norms, which are not conducive to a BAU mindset.
This leads to a gradual decline in innovation efficacy, as the organization is not structured to support bold, experimental ventures that could lead to breakthroughs.
Long-Term Impacts:
Organizational Inertia:
Over time, the twins of a BAU mindset and incremental approach embeds an organizational culture resistant to change. This inertia becomes a significant barrier to adapting to new market conditions or technological advances.
System 2 thinking, which involves deliberate, logical reasoning, suggests that overcoming this inertia requires significant cognitive effort and organizational restructuring, which organizations steeped in BAU find challenging to implement.
Lack of Resilience:
Organizations that stick to incremental changes are often ill-prepared for disruptive events or shifts in the industry landscape. Their systems, processes, and mindsets are not agile enough to pivot quickly in response to changes.
The long-term sustainability of the business is at risk as it relies on existing knowledge and methods without seeking to innovate or rethink foundational business assumptions.
Embracing a transformational approach requires breaking free from the BAU and incremental mindset. This involves adopting a culture that values risk-taking, supports innovative thinking, and encourages challenging the status quo.
