The Power of Small Wins: 12,000 Business Diaries Surprised Us All

Erik Doyle, MBA, SPHR, CCP, Director Talent and Organizational Development at Patrick Industries, Inc.

A group of researchers asked 12,000 professionals to keep a work diary describing their activities, joys, and frustrations at work. A question the researchers sought to answer with this data was, “What one thing brings the most joy and engagement at work?” The data from the diaries pointed to an answer that most managers surveyed mistakenly ranked last: progress on meaningful work.

 Just how important was it? Here is some context:

• Nourishing Events scored 25 percent
• When employees felt respected and appreciated
•  Catalytic Events scored 43 percent
• Employees received clear goals
• Were given autonomy
• Were provided resources
• Employees felt they were making headway on their priorities
• Employees sensed incremental progress toward a goal
• Progress Events scored a whopping 76 percent

What was the most disengaging or discouraging experience? “Setbacks, stalls, or moving backward events” People want progress and hate to lose it—even in the smallest, most incidental ways. We’ve all heard of people who hate to stop for gas or restroom breaks on a long trip because they’ll lose progress on all the other cars they just passed. It makes you smile to hear these stories, but it’s a real thing, and the person is feeling real pain. Crazy, right? This makes sense when you hear travelers complain about driving through straight, plain country because they cannot visibly determine any progress—everything looks the same.

Application: People can cope with and even overcome depression, fear, anxiety, and even anger—some heavy emotional disruptors—when they are given meaningful work on which they can make visible progress. This information precipitates two recommendations and one warning:

• Recommendation #1 – Do not miss a chance to acknowledge and commend progress made by your employees. Diminishing their efforts is destructive to everything both of you care about.

• Recommendation #2 – When there is a big task to be completed over a long period, break it up into smaller, achievable goals, and then celebrate them as they come. Instead of a long walk through a desert of duty, your team will be doing short sprints to many goal lines and celebrations. There is a world of difference between these two realities.

• Warning – Some managers do not acknowledge work until ALL of it is done. This is a huge mistake especially when tasks are big and long-term. Also, leaders that keep resetting expectations, changing their minds, and reassigning priorities are an extraordinary tax on energy and morale. So much so that they ranked #1 on the list of things that employees find disengaging. If the item in this warning describes you or your organization, it's time to rethink your plan before bad things like burnout, turnover, and underperformance become your sustained reality.

If this study intrigues you and you want to learn more, check out Teresa Amabile’s TEDx Talk on “The Progress Principle”. Or get the book by the same title that Teresa wrote with Steven Kramer.