In situations of extreme stress, where assumptions are exploded and the most carefully planned budgets and projections prove ineffective, problems appear so large they can seem insurmountable.
According to organisational theorist Karl E. Weick’s seminal January 1988 paper, Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems, a problem’s size “often precludes innovative action” because the limits of our own rationality are exceeded. In other words, the problem appears so large it seems impossible to solve, with the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated negative impacts one such example.
In the face of such complexity, the transformative power of small wins comes to the fore.
As explored by Weick, achieving a series of small wins in an organisation can lead to more effective, transformative structural shifts in how a business operates compared to tackling large problems as a single task. In targeting small problems so that small wins can be earned, scope is also created for greater creativity and learning within an organisation.
To understand why small wins are a powerful tool of positive change, its critical to understand first how problems affect those trying to solve them and how disconnected small wins are capable of affecting change across broad spectrum in an organsiation.
Complex problems stifle innovation and trigger negative behaviour
A fundamental starting point for Weick is the “state of excitement or energy expenditure linked to an emotion” a specific event or problem is being assessed, particularly those that cannot be easily ignored.
This state of excitement or stimulation is critical because when a problem arises, especially important ones, a person’s stimulation level normally rises. Second, the higher a person’s stimulation level, the more it negatively affects a person’s ability to solve a difficult problem and to assess that problem’s significance.
Specifically, the negative effects of a high stimulation level – caused by a pressing problem – affects a person’s behaviour in three ways:
- Increased reliance on tried and tested – People who try to cope with problems revert to more dominant, first-learned actions
- Context matters less – Patterns of responding recently learned are the first to disappear, which typically are those fine-tuned to the current environment
- Ignore a problem’s unique nature – People treat new events similar to old ones, leading to clues of change being missed
In short, when a person is faced by a difficult problem and is highly stimulated due to the complexity of the problem itself, it is far more difficult to “learn a novel response, to brainstorm, to concentrate, to resist old categories, to perform complex responses, to delegate, and to resist information” that supports their own positions or biases.
In these situations, where the odds of success seem long, “the prospect of a small win has immediacy, tangibility, controllability that could reverse these effects”.
The power of small wins as a transformative effect
A small win is a “concrete, complete, implemented outcomes of moderate importance. One small win may seem unimportant” yet through solving a series of small but significant tasks, a pattern arises that can attract allies, deter opponents, and lower resistance to subsequent proposals.
In short, small wins are controllable opportunities that produce visible results.
While a small win likely takes place in isolation from another, each win sets in motion events that lead to another small win because they make the solution to another solvable problem more visible. This creates a positive momentum, though imperceptible from a high-level view, that moves a business towards a desire state.
To use the metaphor of a 2000-piece puzzle, when the puzzle is assessed as one unsolved task, it is daunting and disorientating. However, if each piece is viewed as a small victory – beginning with the corners – a momentum is created that leads to the puzzle being gradually constructed even though each piece does not necessarily connect with another.
Each piece in the right place changes the context of the next being placed, even if unconnected, and provides information that facilitates learning and adaptation. That is how small wins can create a transformative effect in an organisation. ed state
As Weick notes, “small wins are like miniature experiments that test implicit theories about resistance and opportunity and uncover both resources and barriers that were invisible before the situation” arose.
Additionally, the psychological effect upon those achieving the win is transformative in itself.
The psychology of small wins amid rapid change
The benefits of small wins upon a person’s mind Weick classed into four categories:
- Cognitive limitations
- Affective limitations
- Stress
- Enactment of environments
Cognitive limitations are important because smaller wins “suffer from less distortion” due to heuristics, where a person can self-learn. Small problems are seen more clearly due to their size, which increases the chances of a specific solution being invented to solve it.
Affective limitations refer to our innate preference for small change over large, making learning, perception and motivation easier, with small wins easier to comprehend and process than large ones
Stress is a by-product of problem solving and related to the amount of uncertainty generated by a particular problem. The greater and more complex the problem, the more stress it generates. Small wins narrow the gap between ability and demand to a point where a person can foresee a scenario where capability exceeds demand, thereby removing uncertainty.
Lastly, enactment of environments is where small wins build order into an environment characterised by chaos, reducing agitation and improving performance. In this respect, small wins allow people to impose meaning and control on a problem. This promotes “certainty”, a state of mind that aids problem solving, removes disorientation and leads to a culture where problems are opportunities to learn from.
Small wins in action
At Letsema, we have utilised the power of small wins to advance fundamental change within organisations. An example is where we assisted a large client that operates in the energy and chemical sectors as it underwent a change in both operating model and organisational culture.
These changes required employees to shift their mindset, and to become familiar with the new ways of working within a changed stakeholder landscape. To break down these immense undertakings into manageable pieces, a sequence of culture-building team workshops were held to develop a shared understanding of the road ahead, to break down barriers across teams, to foster more open and constructive conversations, and to equip every team member with further EQ capabilities.
On this long journey, we were able to create small wins and victories that while unlinked, created a self-perpetuating momentum towards its target state. These changes were encapsulated in one particularly moment when an insightful piece of work, developed by a regional junior team member, was applied in a presentation presented at Exco level. This was purely because the organisation’s different teams had increased collaboration and recognised each other’s good work.
It may appear trite, but place yourself in the shoes of that junior regional manager: From working in a silo, unaware of the big organisational picture and lacking visibility in the organisation’s upper echelons to receiving an email from a colleague congratulating you on your work which was included in a presentation to Exco. Such a moment sparks pride, recognition and appreciation, creating a precedent for others in his position and sparking kindling of a new culture that had not existed before.
Creating organisational positivity through small wins
In times such as these, large problems seem intractable, dilemmas are constant and solutions in short supply. Transforming an organisation to tackle these grave challenges is a highly complex and challenging task, especially if viewed as a single exercise.
This is why the pursuit of small wins, and in series, is an important inflection point for organisational leaders and actors. It offers an alternative, piece-meal approach to problem solving that negates the detrimental effects of large problems upon a person’s behaviour, and with it, their ability to confront the problem itself.
It may seem twee, but as Weick’s work implies, small wins offer people and organisations in distress a fresh mindset to start again, over and over, in increasingly positive ways.
The cost is small, and the profit of a single small win unremarkable, but if you take up each and every gain from every single small win, that is the difference between an organisation unable to fully grasp the challenges before it, and one that is making positive progress, in the right direction, every day.
To cope with crisis, when every choice seems a dilemma, to win big, you must win small.
To learn how Letsema can help your organisation harness the power of small wins, email consulting@letsema.co.za or connect with us and our teams on LinkedIn.
