Small is beautiful. Another natural tendency is to go for large-scale, mass programs. In particular, we have a tendency to template ideas that succeed in on area and transplant them to another, and we tend to take small programs that work and try to replicate them on a larger scale. Again, this is usually a mistake – often programs succeed because of specific local conditions of which we are unaware, or because their very smallness kept them below the enemy’s radar and help them flourish unmolested.

At the company-level, programs that succeed in one territory often also succeed in another, but small-scale projects rarely proceed smoothly into large programs. Keep solutions small: this makes them cheap, sustainable, low-key, and (importantly) recoverable if they fail. You can add new programs – also small, cheap, and tailored to local conditions – as the situation allows.

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