As a leader, you’re always looking for a way to get more from your people. But with most motivational strategies, you get a burst of increased effort and performance from your staff, then it plateaus—or worse, dips. And you’re back to looking for yet another motivational tool.

The 1% Solution is a fresh approach based on solid research and real-life examples, and it can make continual performance improvement and motivation a natural part of the way your team operates. It means changing the way you judge performance improvement. Big may seem better: We want our staff to make the greatest performance gains and outstrip the competition by the biggest margins possible. But in fact small, easy-to-achieve changes are what lead to true and lasting improvement. How small? Just 1%.

You can’t ask your team to perform 100% better than your competitors. But you can ask your staff to be 1% better by making targeted, high-leverage changes to the way they do their job.

Leverage makes it possible to lift things with minimal effort—just like when you were a kid and you could lift someone bigger than you on a seesaw. In business, leverage means that if you make the right small change in the way you do something, you see outsized improvement in results.

There was a guy whose new bakery had few customers because its entrance was hidden from passing foot traffic. He put a $12 fan on a table near the door and started placing fresh baked goods in front of the fan. People stopped and followed the aroma to his counter; within a week, his sales had doubled. That’s a targeted, high-leverage change. There are probably scores of such changes your team can make in their daily work.

Getting commitment from your staff to make 1% improvements is much easier than getting their commitment to make big, sweeping changes. Who can say no to making a 1% improvement?

And once the ball’s rolling, staff become self-motivating. When they make small high-leverage changes, their performance improves quickly. A sense of accomplishment follows, and this motivates them to accomplish more. Positive feedback flows from you as their leader. And other departments become more motivated as your team’s improvements ripple through the whole organization. You get a team that is fully engaged in their work and that has a structure in place for continually improving performance—1% by 1%, day after day.

Tom Connellan’s new book The 1% Solution is packed with actionable ideas for implementing these principles. In demand as a keynote speaker by firms such as FedEx, Acura, BMW, Neiman Marcus, Canadian Tire, Marriott, Home Depot, Sobeys, and TD Canada Trust, Connellan has gained a reputation as a “tough talking and truth telling” speaker. The 1% Solution is written in that same tone and delivers page after page of tools to use right now. If you’re interested in a proven structure for leadership success, this book belongs in your library.

Guest post by New York Times bestselling author and keynote speaker Tom Connellan (www.theonepercentproject.com)