We’ve all heard the saying that entrepreneurs should focus on working on the business instead of in the business. I’d like to add that in a similar manner entrepreneurs should think about incremental vs instrumental changes. What I’ve found is that a company can only handle so much change in a period of time, say 6 – 12 months, before the change is viewed as leadership testing new theories without enough thought to providing some semblance of rhythm or continuity.
I’d encourage entrepreneurs to always be bringing new ideas to their company, but pay close attention to which changes are incremental vs which ones are instrumental. Like many things, it probably falls into an 80/20 paradigm where 80% of the time should be spent on incremental improvements and 20% of the time should be spent on major, instrumental changes. Each company is different, with its own respective threshold, and it is tough to find the right balance. Through it all, never stop bringing about change.
David Cummings on Startups 