The Power Of Little Victories, Part I: The Sky Is The Limit
Feeling a little tense at your desk? Stand up and stretch. Perhaps a few spinal twists while sitting will do the trick. Hit a roadblock in your project? Try a brisk walk outside, or maybe just a stroll around the office cubicles. The point is: take action, shake up your monotony, and reset. Make a change and let the momentum from that switch carry you forward. The power of slight alterations on broader performance is well documented. It can be a way to distract, a small reward, an acknowledgement, or just a breath for some space. The virtues of small changes are no less relevant for employee engagement.
Our two previous posts on employee engagement have dealt with perspectives – the view of the employee and the view of the management. Those posts have mostly focused on the problem of perception and communication. This post is Part I of two exploring quick wins as part of the solution.
So, what are quick wins, and how do they help? Quick wins contribute something of tangible value to the organisationplus contributes value for the employee engagement situation. It is a visible improvement that boosts credibility, commitment to change. Because the results are almost immediate, they can also buy time for the longer-term progress, if that is something a company is pursuing. Quick wins can also help to keep the conversation flowing between employees and management about shorter, or longer-term, solutions. They represent a sort of stakeholder buy-in on the problem – both sides committing to a solution, to working together. We like to think of them as “achievable tomorrows”. This brings an equally important question: what are quick wins not? A quick win does not have to be profound. It does not have to be expensive. It does not have to be a drawn-out policy process. But equally, quick wins are not a band-aid to put over a larger organisational problem. There must be a balance between quick wins and only doing skin-deep work.
We can summarise quick wins as an effective solution to employee engagement that doesn’t have to be expensive, time-consuming, or hard. They also don’t have to be boring. There are so many different types of quick wins, ranging from broad to specific, contextual, tangible or not. There are quick wins that seem obvious (like requesting a weekly check-in meeting with a boss) and those that are totally unique (afternoon office bubble-blowing). Quick wins might be generation specific (group yoga and an app-based reward system at the young-staffed Outdoor Voices) or focused on cultures and common practices (“Can we get a communal espresso machine?”) In fact, it might be an enjoyable exercise to brainstorm just all the possibilities there are. In a way, for quick wins, the sky is the limit.
But as you’re reaching for the sky in your brainstorming, the practical sides start kicking in. The what’s, the how’s, and the who-should’s. It is natural to start thinking about the practicalities of how to formulate and implement the most effective quick wins for your company. Just because quick wins can be fun, it doesn’t mean they aren’t serious, too. Our next post will look at a strategy of approaching quick wins, especially in balancing the employee-manager perspectives and short- and long-term outlooks.
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