Before creating the 2,000 percent solution process
(devising ways to accomplish 20 times more with the same
time, money, resources, and effort), I noticed that most of
the world's best solutions to important problems were put
into use by a few people more than 400 years before broad
adoption. Consider the mortar in Roman roads. Visit Italy
and you see roads that are still in use after more than
1,500 years. Watch the new concrete highways near your
home, and they will soon be crumbling from ice damage,
leaving endless potholes. True, the Romans didn't have
large semis carrying heavy loads on their roads. But the
Romans were clearly ahead of their time when it came to
making roads built to last.
The Romans knew that ice is the enemy of roads. Water needs
cracks to get into before it freezes and causes damage. The
Romans drew from the pumice that had spewed out of Mount
Etna to create finely ground, glass-based powder. When
mixed into their mortar, the material became ice resistant.
By contrast, the local contractor building your concrete
highway wins the bid based on the lowest price. In that
environment, contractors are unlikely to insist that better
roads be built. The contractor usually puts coarse material
(like sand and finer bits of gravel) into the concrete.
Water finds it easy to penetrate, freeze, and expand, thus
destroying the concrete containing these coarse materials.
Some contractor then gets to rebuild the road and make a
second profit, and a third, and so on. You and I pay the
bills through higher gasoline taxes. We also have to align
our cars more frequently.
Recently, some governments have grown wiser. They specify
that the concrete has to use fine-grained material like fly
ash from coal-fired plants. Fly ash is very cheap, even
less costly than sand, so look for your roads to last
longer in the future. How long will these roads last? We
won't know for decades, but it's a nice prospect to
consider.
If a solution that obvious has been overlooked for so long,
we wondered "What else are we missing?" It turns out that
there's a huge backlog of great ideas we can use to make
exponential progress in overcoming important problems.
Let's consider the ways to make such exponential progress
in more detail.
Here's a reminder of what a 2,000 percent solution is: Any
method of producing a 20 times increase in the usual
results with the same amount of time and effort, or
producing the same results with zero-to-four percent of the
current time and resources . . . or some equally effective
combination of both approaches. The road example may have
the potential to fit that description; you may be able to
build some roads that last 21 times as long for less money
and effort.
Here's what else we learned about making large
improvements. Most people apply the 2,000 percent solution
process to one improvement opportunity at a time. The three
most popular choices for creating such solutions have been:
1. Speeding up a sluggish process that's filled with
unnecessary delays
2. Accelerating a slow rate of making cost reductions
3. Eliminating errors in an ineffective process
By themselves, such improvements provide remarkable
benefits for stakeholders (those who are affected by the
organization's or the individual's efforts) and delight
those who develop the solutions. We congratulate all who
have accomplished such fine results.
Relatively few, however, take the poetic road "less
traveled by" to seek first expanding usage by 21 times, but
that road makes "all the difference." Why is that more
desirable road usually avoided? I think it has something to
do with low self-esteem. New 2,000 percent solution
creators often tell me during the early stages of their
investigations that they lack confidence they will succeed.
Unless they cannot find a real mess in an existing activity
that seems easy to fix, these new solution creators are
unlikely to want to tackle expanding usage. Paradoxically,
such expansions usually also deliver astonishingly better
ways to speed up sluggish processes, accelerate cost
reductions, develop better offerings, and eliminate errors.
This opportunity to greatly expand usage seems to be one of
those rare cases where you can have your cake and eat it
too!
When both usage and delivery effectiveness improve,
stakeholders can gain 20 times more benefits than from
either improvement alone. When that combination happens,
these two complementary 2,000 percent solutions acquire the
power of 20 or more individual 2,000 percent solutions.
That's what I mean by a 2,000 percent squared solution. You
can also think of this concept as developing a 40,000
percent solution, or a 400 times increase in benefits.
Copyright 2007 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved
----------------------------------------------------
Donald Mitchell is chairman of Mitchell and Company, a
strategy and financial consulting firm in Weston, MA. He is
coauthor of six books including The 2,000 Percent Squared
Solution, The 2,000 Percent Solution, and The 2,000 Percent
Solution Workbook. You can find free tips for accomplishing
20 times more by registering at:
====> http://www.2000percentsolution.com .
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