Dr. Charles Owubah leads Action Against Hunger USA’s executive team in providing leadership and strategic direction.
Leaders often want to be trailblazers. While there are obvious potential benefits to being the first, history shows that a breakthrough idea isn’t enough to guarantee success, particularly over the long term. (Have you ever flown Wright Brothers Airlines?)
That’s why leaders need to better balance the focus between innovation and incrementalism, which I believe can help transform organizations and the world.
On Innovation And Incrementalism
Let me be clear: I wholeheartedly support innovation. In fact, I chose to work for an organization that’s defined by it. Yet, sometimes the greatest impact doesn’t come from a revolutionary idea itself. It comes from the power of relentless incrementalism, the gradual accumulation of small, consistent changes that, over time, result in substantial and lasting change. In other words, exploration may be how you discover what works, but persistence is how you make the most of what does.
Let me give you an example. Thirty years ago, there was no cure for malnutrition, which is a medical condition that can leave the body unable to process food. Since then, scientists in our organization developed the world’s first therapeutic milk formula to treat severely malnourished children. An undeniable breakthrough, it meant that malnourished children who were brought to a hospital for treatment found hope in a new standard of care.
While groundbreaking, there was a disconnect: Hundreds of millions of people don’t have access to doctors, let alone hospitals. So we adapted the formula into a ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF), a nutrient-dense paste that can be eaten directly from the packet on an outpatient basis.
Then, along with other partners, we had to prove its value. We showed that community health workers could diagnose malnutrition within villages and that when a complete course of RUTF is administered at home, up to 90% of children make a full recovery. This is now the cost-effective standard of care in 70 countries, saving millions of lives each year.
This exemplifies that while the initial innovation was essential, the arguably greater impact came from scaling a proven solution, making improvements and scaling more. And while revolutionary breakthroughs often demand significant resources and risk, incremental progress allows leaders to harness the power of being second.
Relentless Incrementalism, Or The Power Of Being Second
The most defining question may not be whether you’re a first mover, fast follower, laggard or something in between, but whether your work can scale, adapt and endure. That’s why we all would do well to remember the power of being second, adopting what works whether or not we invented it. After all, coffee existed before Starbucks, IHG isn’t the world’s first hotel group and Target didn’t invent the idea of a store. But all have found admirable success.
This is especially important for nonprofits, where deeply entrenched social challenges often require long-term solutions. Relentless incrementalism asks us to make steady progress without expecting to achieve radical change overnight. Let’s take climate-smart agriculture as an example. Farmers are often conservative—they have to be. Yet, traditional farming techniques leave them more vulnerable to a changing climate. Seemingly small changes, like switching to drip irrigation, can have an outsized impact. When introducing new approaches, you need to prove your idea will work. That’s one reason we start with demonstration projects and then enlist a small group to pilot new approaches. Sometimes it takes a season or two of increased yields and incomes for other farmers to adopt the new crops or techniques. Relentless incrementalism demands patience.
Incremental changes like these can have extraordinary cumulative impact, particularly when centered on informed, data-driven decisions. How can more leaders cultivate this approach?
Putting It Into Practice
To harness the power of relentless incrementalism effectively, consider these practical steps:
• Create a learning culture. Encourage open dialogue. Routinely hold after-action or post-mortem sessions to analyze what worked and what can be improved. Go further and hold “pre-mortem” meetings to explore opportunities to refine your approach. This also can mean adapting ideas and programs to fit various cultural, economic and geographical settings.
• Redefine success. Shift your focus from novelty for novelty’s sake to one that values continuous improvement and effectiveness. Encourage your team to set attainable goals. Recognize progress and celebrate small wins, even if they don’t yield immediate breakthroughs. Reward efforts to scale proven solutions. Remember that even modest gains compound over time.
• Build strategic partnerships. Collaboration can help minimize the perils of prioritizing the first move and short-changing the second. To enhance and scale ideas, form alliances with organizations that have complementary skills or resources or that can help you better account for important factors like gender or culture. This can broaden your influence and increase effectiveness without needing to start from the ground up.
Perhaps the most powerful formula is purposeful innovation combined with relentless incrementalism, which can create a positive ripple effect in our organizations and the communities we serve.
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