When in a car, you down shift to get more power, ultimately you want to speed up faster, but to get more power you need to burn more gas and put more pressure on the engine.

You upshift, on the other hand, to have a better ride. It’s quieter, you get better gas mileage and it’s much easier on the engine. You can maintain a higher velocity, longer and easier.

To get a visceral feel of this, think of riding a bicycle. Downshifting is going to an easier gear. This allows you to put more power out to go faster or climb the hill. But once you get up to speed, it’s a lot of work to pump your legs so fast, so you go to a higher gear, this would be an upshift.

Downshifting in Business

Why? For greater effectiveness.
So what? Tends to consume more resources. Burns time, energy, attention and patience (your aggravation reserve) faster.
When? You must downshift in the midst of significant change and uncertainty.
Your Focus? Relevance and Importance. What are you trying to accomplish really? What is THE priority?

Delegation Downshifting

When you're going after a new opportunity or have to make significant changes.
Example Verbs: Mock up, Design, Draft, Outline, Research

Process Downshifting

When you need to start again or create something new.
Example Verbs: Redesign, Eliminate, Create, Reformulate, Start, Redefine

Personal Productivity Downshifting

When you need to begin a new method or add something to your workflow.
- Revamping your task manager
- Getting a new ritual or habit
- Finding someone to help you out…hint hint.
Example Verbs: Restart, Redesign, Ignite, Initiate, Hire

Upshifting

Why? You want greater efficiency, ROI, streamlining, less aggravation, ease of doing business or leveraging your available resources.
So what? Tends to use resources efficiently. Saves time, energy, attention and patience (your aggravation reserve).
When? You must upshift when things are stable enough to make improvements.
Your Focus? ROI, organization and efficiency. How smooth are things running? What can work even better?

Delegation Upshifting

When you need something taken care of better or quicker.
Example Verbs: Refine, Simplify, Speed up, Consolidate, Organize

Process Upshifting

When you want to reduce the cost, increase the ROI or speed up a process.
Example Verbs: Reduce, Fix, Tighten, Simplify, Streamline

Personal Productivity Upshifting

When you want to reduce or eliminate your time on a task or chunk several tasks together.
Example Verbs: Improve, Upgrade,

What happens when you choose the wrong shift?

If you need to downshift, but you upshift...

Have you heard the aphorism of "pennywise but pound foolish" in your work?. It's a britishism, then penny would be the equivalent of our penny, but their pound would be our dollar. So it's being efficient on things that give you penny efficiencies but losing out on the things that bring dollar results - the stuff that matters to you, your employees and your firm.

Or think of the car or bicycle. When you’re in too high a gear when starting off, you can’t get off the line well. Sometimes the car stalls. For the bike you just slowly creep forward…it takes forever to get up to speed.

Here are some examples...

You have 3 different well-established service classes but you're adding a new one. They’re all sufficiently different that they require different sales processes. You decide to optimize your sales funnel for the unproven product class before you’ve made any sales.

Penny "Wise" - Attempting to optimize a “valuable” process - sales.
Pound Foolish - Codified and standardized a myth - you have an inefficient process with no proof.
Result - Time forever lost, diverted attention and wasted energy.

You go out to buy the best, fastest desktop so you’ll be much more efficient in your administrative work. But, you need to be spending time on the phone, in front of the clients or on the whiteboard specing out new solutions for the 2 new clients.

Penny "Wise" - Using the best technology available.
Pound Foolish - Not spending the time on the most valuable things.
Result - Get an efficiently useless tool.

A new opportunity has dropped in your lap. But it’s using a technology no one on your team has even heard of. You pick the smartest, highest IQ, person on the team and give them crash training. But, they’ve not shown any interest or aptitude in this field.

Penny "Wise" - Getting smart people to do important stuff.
Pound Foolish - Thinking training can replace experience, ability and “want to” for something important.
Result - Your team is underpowered. Anything requiring this skill is done in a slow and clunky fashion. The competition passes you by like you were standing still.

If you need to upshift, but you downshift...

With the car you’re cruising along quite well in fourth gear, but now you’re on the highway and there’s no one around. It’s time for fifth gear…but you accidentally downshift to third. What happens? You engine sounds like it’s about to explode, the car bucks, roars and slows down.

You can do the same thing in your business when you need to tweak a process that’s working well, but you decide to swap it out for a newer process. This is called "reinventing the wheel."

A few examples…

Your accounting process has been working for 18 months, but a change in tax laws means there are a few extra steps you need to take. You decide to get new accounting software.

Rush of the New - New technology rocks!
Miss the Wheel - You can refine your process to mitigate the extra steps.
Result - Absolute havoc as every process connected with your accounting software has to be reworked and rechecked.

An important client needs a capability for a short term project. You don’t currently provide that capability. You decide to build it from the ground up.

Rush of the New - We’re building something new!
Miss the Wheel - Finding an off the shelf solution and integrating it.
Result - All your time and attention goes to the building initiative stalling out work on your important client’s project.

You hire someone new for a small side of the business that may or may not grow in the next 18 months. You have 3 people with some experience and one person who’s got a hobby in the area, though outside their current role.

Rush of the New - New people are awesome!
Miss the Wheel - Training people who are already available and capable.
Result - Growing resentment over the new person because they’re not doing what they were hired to do.

What do you need to do next? Go towards first gear or towards fifth?

Are You Making the Wrong Adjustments?