It’s dangerous to be too busy to grow and very rare that I see a client take a giant leap forward with their business.

Mostly, it’s small steps.

Marginal gains.

The last 2 days in Milan were all about that.

I was working with Adec (not to be confused with the chair manufacturer – Adec dental clinic has operated in central Milan since 1986).

On Tuesday we gathered the customer service team together and creatively deconstructed their new patient experience.

Starting at 09:00 and working through until 18:30, we looked at every single step in that patient experience, agreed marks out of 10 and discussed what would have to happen to simply move the mark 1 point forward – a 6 to a 7, a 7 to an 8 (even, in one case, a 2 to a 3).

It is unrealistic to ask “how do we get to 10” (unless you are at 9).

However, by the end of the day, we had ideas to move 1 step forwards in 6 different “places” in the patient experience.

That took us 9.5 hours of intense conversation.

The next 90-days will be about implementing those 6 small steps.

Then we will begin again.

Marginal gains – relentlessly and endlessly.

How often do you have marginal gains meetings?