Small Wins: The Progress Principle and How to Move Your Team

This post is a translation of the original Arabic article.

Continuing my series on innovation leadership... I talked in the two previous posts about how the true leader is attuned and assertive and then detailed how the assertive leader is competitive and focused on results. In this installment I talk about an important quality: using small wins.

The Progress Principle

In the classics of success literature, you often find talk of big goals, ambitious targets, and grand aspirations. This way of thinking about choosing big goals and striving to achieve them is beautiful. But even if you personally believe you can achieve the goal and overcome the difficulties, that does not necessarily reflect how those you lead feel.

When you look at things as a leader through a strategic lens, those you lead do not see what you see with the same clarity. Over the past several years, research has strongly shown that when a goal is big, people find it difficult to visualize and internalize it. It may actually discourage them and cause them to lose the energy and resolve needed to achieve it. The worst part is that these symptoms appear most strongly as you get closer to the finish line, exactly when you need the most momentum to push toward the goal.

The best leaders are those who can translate big dreams and goals into small, practical steps. Each step is a small win that collectively leads to the big goal. These small wins:

• Make decision-making easier
• Reduce the risks of failure
• Energize those you lead as they witness partial progress

The Story of the Entrepreneur Who Led Her Company Through a Crisis

A remarkable female entrepreneur leading a company in the United States wanted to grow profits by 30% over the previous year at a time when the country was suffering from economic recession.

She met with her management team and told them they needed to achieve this goal or they would be forced to lay off many employees. Of course the management team was angry and objecting because it was impossible to achieve this goal.

The entrepreneur calmly asked them to write on yellow sticky notes one idea per note that would bring them closer to the goal and achieve a small part of it. The team ended up with a hundred yellow sticky notes. She took them, placed them on a large board, and divided it into three sections: "Not Started," "In Progress," and "Done." She asked everyone to choose the easiest small goals and placed them in the "In Progress" column.

The team started working on the easy, small goals until they finished them in a short time. The results were remarkable: the team gained energy and enthusiasm to pursue the remaining goals, and the company achieved the targeted growth and even exceeded it slightly.

How to Start

First: Begin by collecting the small wins your team achieved last year along with the big goals too, and present them to everyone so the team can see how much progress was made during the year.

Second: Celebrate these wins by recognizing the people who worked hard and achieved their goals, and recognizing everyone who contributed so that everyone feels a sense of accomplishment and enthusiasm.

Third: It is important to connect small wins to big goals for two main reasons. First, no matter how strong the feeling of progress and achievement, it must feed energy toward achieving the big goals, otherwise it will backfire. Second, people naturally like to see their work produce tangible results in the end.

Fourth: The progress principle is important for detecting performance setbacks in some team members. It is appropriate to evaluate underperforming members, help those who need help, and uncover the reasons for lack of progress.

Finally: I leave you with the best thing written on the topic of small wins. The book is called "The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work", written by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer.