Small-Grand-Grandiose
What happens when starting without knowing the answer?
Uncertainty, complexity, and rapid change characterize the current environment. The shift from delivering-services-as-products to creating meaningful impact happens by learning from the future as it emerges.
In genuine complexity, discovery through doing becomes the most pragmatic strategy.
Three Movements of Discovery
Small
It starts with experiments. Small teams take on concrete challenges, test possibilities, discover what actually works. This isn't caution - it's wisdom. Complex change reveals itself through action, not analysis.
What surprises emerge? What failures teach something unexpected? What succeeds for reasons nobody anticipated?
Within weeks, evidence accumulates. The business case builds from what's proven in reality, not projected in presentations. Stakeholders see results. Investment decisions rest on learning, not assumptions. The path forward becomes visible through doing.
Grand
Now there's evidence of what works. Implementation scales the solutions that emerged from within, proven through experimentation. But before organizational systems, structures, or processes change, stakeholders assess readiness together.
These are approaches that grew from reality, refined by learning, owned by teams. The decision to scale rests on shared understanding of impact and investment.
Implementation becomes continuation of discovery. What works at small scale adapts as it grows. The business case evolves with evidence.
Grandiose
The new approaches integrate into how the organization works. They become culture. More importantly, the capability to navigate complexity through discovery becomes embedded.
What started as experiments becomes new excellence. The way it was discovered becomes how the organization approaches future unknowns with disciplined exploration.
This is evolution that continues.
Built on proven frameworks for complexity and change leadership
Rooted in how people explore the unknown together
How Discovery Unfolds
A financial services team knew they needed to evolve from product sales to partnership relationships. They didn't know how. Through Small-Grand-Grandiose, they started with customer research and small co-creation experiments. What they discovered changed not just their approach, but their identity. The partnerships they now create emerged from what they learned by doing.
An insurance provider needed to redefine their entire service model. Instead of designing the new model in strategy sessions, they experimented their way forward. Small tests revealed what resonated. Those insights scaled into new ways of working. The transformation took form through discovery, not through implementation of a predetermined plan.
A service organization pursuing excellence beyond their current 8.5 used system transitions as learning laboratories. They experimented with what 9+ could mean for them specifically. The excellence they achieved came from understanding their unique context through exploration, not from importing external standards.
Each journey looks different. The pattern is the same: start without the answer, learn through doing, let solutions emerge, scale what works, integrate what you've become.
Where This Fits
Small-Grand-Grandiose bridges Service Evolution and Change Leadership.
It's how vision becomes reality when the path forward requires discovery. The experimentation phase after clarifying what's being moved toward. The structured space for learning what actually works.