How do you eat an elephant?

On my first project where I was reengineering business processes for organizations, there were over 200 business processes that we evaluated, analyzed and made recommendations for streamlining the business.  That project resulted in a lot of change for the organization to adopt and there was a lot of resistance to taking on that amount of change.   During the presentation of our recommended changes, the executives’ eyes glazed over and you could see them feeling really overwhelmed.

My director sensed this and made this comment “How do you eat an elephant?” The executives all got a confused look on their faces as to how this question related to what we were discussing.  The response is “one bite at a time”.  While it is important to have a high level vision of where you are heading you need to pick one “bite” and start the process.  Once you have improved one area of the business you will have created time to take on the next “bite” and you will have built the momentum to adopting change.