Whether you're looking to start a business, grow a business, propel your career forward, or achieve a personal goal like losing weight or learning a new instrument, the Staircase Model can help you succeed.
Mega companies like Coca-Cola and Disney use this model to grow into new industries and markets, and we are confident that it can help individuals personally.
The Staircase Model, also known as the Staircase Strategy, is a goal-setting technique that, when used properly, will increase productivity and help you better manage time by choosing actions — in a step-by-step manner — that are directly related to your end goals.
Let's jump right into the how's and why's.
Using the Staircase Model for Personal Growth
We all have things and areas in our lives that we want to improve. Maybe you want to achieve health and fitness, or you want to learn about investing, or you want to build skills for your career or become a smarter, better version of yourself.
Unfortunately, most people's progress is in the form of a circle.
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This vicious cycle starts with excitement and being “all in,” but unfortunately, when the “big goal” isn’t reached quickly, the action stops.
You’ll often find that you have great ideas and start out excited for one or two weeks. You even take some early steps to do something to achieve your goals. But soon, the enthusiasm ends, the project gets abandoned, and you're right where you started.
Then, there are people whose improvement path looks like this.
Instead of wasting time and daydreaming, they create a short-term project, and once they complete it, they move on to the next. A few years later, they achieved the overall growth they had envisioned.
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You get the idea!
These people are the masters of time management because every action they take is a step towards their bigger goals.
This is what the Staircase Model for Growth is all about: breaking long-term goals into more manageable short-term ones.
This allows for a more focused approach that minimizes the mental stress that comes with a lack of organization and unclear expectations. Eventually, this model encourages repetition, forming habits that increase efficiency and thus moving from one step to the next.
The staircase model for personal growth involves three key steps: sprinting, jumping, and repeating.
You start sprinting to get further along in whatever goal you want. Then when you get the opportunity to jump to the next level, you jump as high as you can.
Sprinting is about execution and hustle; what will you do to achieve your goals? On the other hand, jumping is about strategy and purpose, the why. This is when you consider what's important to you and weigh your options.
The goal is to jump high enough into another big challenge or something you care about. Something that motivates you to hustle and execute as hard and fast as possible.
Then you start sprinting again.
Examples of How to Use the Staircase Strategy
Let's say you want to achieve a common personal goal like weight loss and gaining a six-pack. Generally, you can break this big goal into three main steps: lose weight, build muscle, and keep the weight off.
Sounds simple, but not quite.
Most people set themselves up for failure by constantly focusing on the peak, which is to have a six-pack. You must break this journey into small steps and focus on achieving one step at a time.
Instead of having a staircase with only three steps toward your “big goal,” create an individualized action plan for each of the steps.
Start by breaking step 1 into its own staircase.
What should you do to lose weight? Exercising, eating healthy, reducing stress, and getting enough sleep, are some of the fundamentals for weight loss.
For each step on the staircase toward your goal of losing weight, focus on one of these actions.
- How and when you'll be exercising?
- What is the proper diet for shedding weight, and how will you stick to it?
- Create a sleep schedule to ensure you get quality sleep every night.
- What are your main stressors in life, and how will you manage stress?
As you set up the different steps, utilize the principles of SMART goal-setting to create an actionable plan.
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As you can see, there's a lot involved in achieving weight loss, and with the help of the staircase model, you have a roadmap of how you will accomplish that. You'll be motivated to do more if you consistently achieve the things on your list, adding healthy fitness habits to your routine.
Eventually, the weight loss will happen. Then you can focus on the next step, building muscle.
Once you reach the top of this staircase, you can add more steps to climb higher toward the next goal.
The beauty of the staircase model is that it allows you to look back at your accomplished goals. You'll be motivated to push further by looking at how far you've come.
Additionally, because you didn’t start with one HUGE staircase with all the different steps towards your “big goal,” the climb looked manageable. People who climb Mount Everest surely set smaller goals to reach individual peaks on their journey to the summit!
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The Staircase Model for Career Growth
You've heard of the term "climbing the corporate ladder." But certain things determine whether you spin around in circles or make consistent progress in your career.
Do you focus on one thing or juggle multiple goals and interests simultaneously?
Juggling multiple tasks is fine if the projects are easy, but it can easily lead to burnout. On the other hand, the staircase model encourages climbing one or a few stairs at a time. You'll make more progress this way than someone doing dozens of things but has yet to make actual progress in any of them.
Do you have the right tools and methods to boost your career?
Succeeding in your career not only requires commitment but constantly acquiring new tools and skills. With the staircase model, you can create small goals like reading books, taking courses, networking, and anything that helps you improve at your job. Taking a job interests test can help you make sure that your chosen career fits your personality, which will go a long way in terms of career growth.
Do you enjoy actualization or possibility?
As mentioned earlier, many people enjoy daydreaming; after all, it's a lot less work. For them, the idea of a goal always seems more exciting than reaching it. But a different kind of satisfaction comes with accomplishing even the tiniest of goals. The staircase model helps you to actualize your dreams by achieving small goals.
Using the Staircase Model to Achieve Organizational Goals
Coming up with new ideas and practices is vital for a business or organization to stay competitive in today's ever-changing business environment. But the main challenge lies during implementation; how do companies convert these ideas into sustainable practices? This challenge is amplified based on corporate culture, long-help industry practices, and the need to minimize risk.
Companies need a model that provides enough details, like a roadmap, which can be followed to implement new ideas and achieve success. So, how do the best growth companies do it? It would surprise you that most adopt the staircase model that involves taking a few steps at a time, with each bringing new capabilities and options.
The model evaluates the "why" for every major business process to determine which should be automated, redesigned, and eliminated. It does so by identifying the following:
- The most important business processes;
- Processes with no justifiable purpose in the future of the company;
- Key processes that should be improved or transformed;
- Non-core processes that need further assessment; and
- Non-value-adding processes that are still necessary and, therefore, need to be streamlined.
When you research the world's leading growth companies, they all agree that the best strategy for getting from point A to B is not usually by big moves but by a series of measured steps. Each step adds new institutional skills that prepare the company to open up and take advantage of opportunities. Each stage will make money in its own right while supporting the broader vision of where the company wants to be.
While every single step may seem of little importance, linking them together as a staircase will show sequential growth. You may not have the perfect foresight of where the company will end. But each time you climb a few stairs, you will create new capabilities and business options and carve a competitive position beyond reach. This vision may not be clear when you're at the bottom of the staircase, hence the need for companies to take it one step at a time.
The competitive business environment is changing rapidly, making it impossible to predict the future. The staircase model recognizes that the right strategy for any company depends on where it is today. With this in mind, businesses should strive to create strategic options and opportunities while allowing for future flexibility.
Take Action Today with the Staircase Strategy
Think of all the projects and ideas you've had in the past couple of months or years, and then write them down. Break your to-do list into smaller goals that you can accomplish, and this will motivate you to move forward.
Like a roadmap, the staircase model is a simulation of the future. It breaks a massive goal into small sequential milestones.
And you can use it to start working on your big dreams, personal or career.
The journey of a thousand miles toward improved productivity starts with that first step!
