Creating Transformative Change Through Small Actions

This post originally appeared in my weekly newsletter, BL&T (Borrowed, Learned, & Thought). Subscribe

Borrowed

"As former Stanford professor and educator Henry B. Eyring has written, “My experience has taught me this about how people and organizations improve: the best place to look is for small changes we could make in the things we do often. There is power in steadiness and repetition.”

From "Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less" by Greg McKeown [Book]

Learned

I’ve been happy to see a recent initiative at Barrel get off the ground—conducting courtesy customer journey audits to help our clients get ahead of the Black Friday & Cyber Monday (BFCM) sales period. This initiative symbolizes exciting progress for our team.

The Audit: We review each client's customer journey to identify opportunities to maximize conversions and sales during the BFCM surge. Then, we ensure everything is in place for growing customer retention and LTV once the dust settles.

While small, this initiative represents another step in our focus on becoming a more strategic partner to our clients—guiding them to achieve the best outcomes.

You could argue this has always been our goal, but in recent years, we’ve taken specific actions to set ourselves up for future success.

In Hope Is Not A Method by Gordon R. Sullivan, there's a concept called "thin threads," emphasizing the notion that organizational transformation doesn’t happen overnight.

A thin thread is a small, strategic action that weaves together with others to form a broader pattern of change in an organization. These actions build momentum, gradually leading to significant shifts over time. Each thread demonstrates success and helps bridge gaps.
From my experience, a thin thread must be achievable, supported by leadership, and connected to other processes to create a positive impact.

Our BFCM audits are one of these thin threads. There was a time when clients didn’t take us up on similar offers, or we weren’t confident we could add real value. It's been rewarding to see our clients not only embracing these audits but also praising the results.

Looking back, here are some other thin threads that brought us to where we are today:

Established regular leadership client check-ins to gather feedback and align on business objectives
Committed to Weekly internal reviews of every client engagement to discuss progress, identify potential future challenges, and make decisions
Narrowed our preferred e-commerce stack to strengthen our recommendations, partner collaboration, and platform knowledge
Setup a cadence for platform demos and workshops with key tech partners to deepen our expertise
Prioritized engagement in relevant industry events to build relationships and gather new insights
Brought on subject matter expert contractors to collaborate with our team on client projects
Invested in sharing insights and ideas during new business to demonstrate expertise and add value
Introduced new offerings and engagement structures to make partnering with Barrel more seamless and turnkey, unconstrained by hours