When you have a daunting mountain to climb, it is often best to break it into molehills. Large change management problems are best broken down into smaller ones with concrete achievable goals. Otherwise it can be so overwhelming that solutions seem unattainable – therefore, people often avoid tackling them or come up with single, grand programs that fail.
Breaking such problems down into a series of more modest steps, all on the path to the ultimate goal, reduces fear, clarifies direction, and increases the probability of early successful outcomes – boosting support for further action.
It is critical for teams and individuals working on complex problems to achieve small wins regularly. Because setbacks are so common in truly important problems, people become disheartened unless they can point to some meaningful advance most days, even if that advance is seemingly minor, and even if it involves nothing more than extracting insights from the day’s failures.
This strategy propels long-term goal achievement. In his book, “Good Boss, Bad Boss”, Stanford University professor Bob Sutton argues that “big, hairy, audacious, goals” are not only daunting, but they are usually too obvious and too broad to provide useful guidance for day-to-day work. Similarly, author Peter Sims emphasizes the importance of incremental goal-setting in “Little Bets”.
One last remark: If you want something to grow, don’t forget to pour champagne on it.
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