On a crisp spring weekend coming out of the pandemic, I played with the Edinburgh University Jazz Orchestra again for the first time in 27 years. We sold out one of the biggest night clubs of the city. Playing there was a massive thrill. Being with old friends and making new ones was everything.

But I remember the mid 1990s when the orchestra started out, when selling half the tickets in a small venue was a massive achievement.

Most great ideas, like great bands, start life in small venues, unnoticed by most. They grow into something that brings people along for the ride.

But most leaders have a tendency to want to play the stadium gigs from day one, without the hard graft that comes from working with small groups on the small things that, tomorrow, will make the biggest difference.

I was inspired by my friend Hugh Macleod’s cartoon last week, that gives us today’s headline:

In his accompanying newsletter, Hugh picks up on why many initiatives to ‘change culture’ in organisations fail: because the initiatives come from the top, with all the baggage and bias that goes along with that.

Big headlines. Big speeches. Launches. Initiatives.

Hand on heart, few of the big initiatives I’ve seen launched over the years have lasted any length of time.

One reason for their ultimate failure is the involvement of the Finance Director in the early days. If someone already thinks their idea is going to be successful and ‘big’, then it makes sense to involve the Finance Director to make sure there’s enough money in the tank to make the idea happen. But the assumption of importance and therefore success is a massive fault line already.

Secondly, Finance Directors tend to be analytical, and see their role as the ‘enforcer of truth’. They hold the purse strings, and want to make sure that there’s sufficient evidence of the idea being a good investment. Without proof that the idea will be successful, it’s a no-go. But no novel idea has proof it’ll work - that’s the point of being novel!

Finally, ‘big launches’ are rarely designed to bring people along - they exist to inform people of what’s already been decided and built.

The novel ideas that lasted longest and made the biggest impact all started out in small venues, with small groups of people who might describe themselves as ‘not really having any influence’ (me included).

TeachMeet. Started by a dozen friends in an Edinburgh pub. Today thousands of teachers a week attend events for teachers, by teachers, with refreshments and humour rather than PowerPoints and insipid coffee. It even has its own Wikipedia page and a PhD into why it works so well.

Leading from the Middle, our middle leadership program that’s seen over 700 people grow their confidence and competence at leading their teams, started life as a proposal document that failed to win a public tender because it was 10 times too cheap (I kid you not). So when we worked it up into a quick prototype at first we just wanted 20 people to show up. We ended up with 160.

The Finance Director has a key role to play in novel ideas at this early stage, or at least a few steps down the line, but it is not to enforce truths based on what others have done in slightly different scenarios. Instead, they need to help identify what would have to be true for the idea to succeed, all without changing the idea itself. That way, they can identify the costs (and maybe revenues) that will be needed at points further down the line.

But it’s not their job - or anyone’s job - to demand evidence that a novel idea itself is a good one or not. You only find that out by trying it with small groups in small venues with small stakes.

What’s the smallest thing you’re doing today that you could devote double the time to? Because you could end up making the biggest thing anyone could have dreamed of by doing just that.