The power of small wins

progress principle: meaningful progress is the single most important factor that can boost emotions, perceptions and motivation.

people are most likely to be creative and more productive if they experience a send of progress. Everyday progress even a small win can make all the difference in how they feel and perform. The power of progress is fundamental o human nature. making consistent meaningful progress is what drives humans to be their creative best.

Progress principle holds clear implications on where to focus your efforts. Knowing what serves to catalyze and nourish progress—and what does the opposite—turns out to be the key to effectively managing people and their work.

A central driver of creative, productive performance was the quality of a person's inner work life. How happy the workers feel to work, how motivated they are by an intrinsic interest in their work, how they view their organisations, management, team, their work combines to push them to higher levels of achievement or drag them down.

People are more creative when their inner work lives are positive and in this positive state, they are more committed to their work. The state f their inner work life varies daily and affects their work.

Two other factors affect a person's inner life daily. "Catalysts" - actions that directly support their work and "nourishers" - events like the show of respect and encouraging words. 

The opposites of the above are "inhibitors" - actions that do not support their work or hinder the work and "toxins" - discouraging and undermining events.

While catalysts and inhibitors are directed towards the work, nourishers and toxins are directed towards the individual self.

Motivations were also affected. On progress days an individual is more intrinsically motivated and on setback days individuals were less intrinsically motivated as well as less extrinsically motivated. 

perceptions also differed. On progress days people perceived more challenge in their work, saw their teams as more cooperative, whereas on setback days people found less challenge in their work, felt they had less freedom in carrying out their work had insufficient resources. They also felt their teams were less supportive.

Minor milestones

Progress normally means long term goals and it feels great to achieve them but they are relatively rare.

but even small wins can boost the inner work life tremendously. Even ordinary incremental progress increases people's engagement in work and happiness during the workday and has a major impact on people's feelings about work and the team. these small events are critical to the overall performance of the organisations.

The flip side small setbacks can have an extreme effect on inner work life. These negative events can have a more powerful impact than positive events and hence it is especially important to minimise these small setbacks.

Managers must make sure that people know how their work is contributing and avoid actions that negate its value. 

How can managers ensure that people are committed, motivated and happy?

They can use catalysts and nourishers on a day to day basis.

Catalysts support their work. It includes having a clear goal, autonomy, provides sufficient resource and time, helping with their work, learning from their success and failures and sharing experiences. 

Inhibitors include failing to support their work, interfering with their work. 

Catalysts have an immediate impact - people get an immediate boost to their emotions and their perceptions about their organisation.

Nourishers are acts of interpersonal support, respects, recognition and encouragement.

Toxins include disrespect, discouragement, disregard for their emotions and interpersonal conflict.

Tools for catalysts and nourishers.

Establish a positive climate, one event at a time and set behavioural norms for the team. During a setback analyse the problem without recriminations and develop a plan to repair the damage. Develop a coordinated action plan. 

Be in tune with the teams' daily progress and activities of the team. 

target the support according to the recent events in the team and project. Daily anticipate the type of intervention - catalyst or removal of inhibitor; nourisher or an antidote to a toxin. 

Establish yourself as a resource for team members rather than a micromanager. Be sure to check in rather than check up on them. 

Micromanagers fail to allow autonomy to team members, manage every move of the team members rather than give them autonomy, asking team frequently about their work without offering support, affix blame to team members when problems arise and tend to hoard information to use as a secret weapon.

Checklist for managers.

The purpose of the checklist is to manage meaningful progress one day at a time.

The progress loop.

Inner work life drives performance. 

A good performance which depends on upong consistent progress enhances inner work life. this has potential self-reinforcing benefits

1.  By supporting people's and their daily progress in meaningful work you not only improve the inner work life of people but also organisations longterm performance.

2. mangers need not fret about knowing the psyches of people. they should show basic respect and focus upon supporting the work itself.

 

The Power of Small Wins by Teresa Amabile and Steven J. Kramer

HBR May 2011