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What Is 'Progressive Load'?

• Too much load on a new system can overwhelm or break it.
• Start small, and build capacity over time.

Josh Kaufman Explains 'Progressive Load'

It’s not a good idea to run a marathon the first time you lace up your running shoes, or attempt to lift four hundred pounds the first time you go to the gym. The most effective (and lowest-risk) strategy is to start with a small but manageable challenge, work at that level until it becomes easy, and increase the level of challenge over time as your body adapts.

The term for this strategy is Progressive Load: increasing the amount of total capacity in a system by gradually increasing demand on the system, prompting the system to Change to adapt to the new demands over time.

Progressive Load is a universal approach that works in areas well beyond fitness. Businesses are often tempted to solve problems by hiring additional employees, particularly in areas like sales and customer support, but it takes time and training for new employees to reach their maximum effectiveness. Instead of increasing capacity, hiring too fast can cause new problems instead of solving them.

Untrained salespeople have a higher risk of making promises the business can’t deliver on, and untrained customer-support staff aren’t well equipped to handle frustrated customers, communicate company policies, and make exceptions to those policies when the situation warrants it. Effective training requires instruction, communication, and oversight from managers or experienced staff, increasing demands on current staff. That investment often pays off in the medium- to long term, but at the cost of stress in the short term. Adding too much stress can lead current employees to look for other options, and the loss of key employees can result in the loss of important experience and capacity.

The most effective way to add capacity is to add small amounts in a consistent way over time, which increases capacity without adding demands that are beyond the system’s current ability to handle. Instead of hiring several new employees to a team at once, adding an additional employee a few times per year is often a better approach.

Consistent improvements Accumulate into large improvements. When in doubt, start small and build over time.

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"Little by little, one travels far."

Spanish proverb

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