Best way to make changes in production

Hi,

For small changes like new workflow creation, adding one field, etc what would be the best way suggested.

Make a solution for each (small thing) within the production and publish.

As small changes can be made at - production customization area

but how we can mitigate risk that (once we hit publish / publish all) then any unsaved changes not to be published / affect environment ?

Or

will making a solution in Dev/ sandbox, export as managed and deploy at prod can ever affect existing configs of particular entity?

Use case:

There is a lead object with 50 custom fields, 5 scripts, ....

One custom field need to be added and one workflow.

Thanks