The Power of Small Wins: Building Momentum in City Leadership

Incremental Progress Fuels Lasting Change

While city government leaders may have big ideas for their community, whether it is to improve public safety, revitalize an area of town, build new roads, etc., progress toward these lofty ideas are rarely immediate. Instead, creating positive change in a community takes time, usually months and/or years, which can be discouraging if there has been little progress made along the way. It is easy to lose steam during the long journey to achieve the desired outcome; however, focusing on recognizing and acknowledging smaller accomplishments, those small but important advances toward the bigger picture will help keep the team motivated and focused on achieving the larger goal. The authors of "The Progress Principle" by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer (2011) explain that while there are many things that motivate employees at work, the most powerful motivator is knowing that you are making progress toward your goals (Amabile & Kramer, 2011a). Every small accomplishment helps reinforce the idea that efforts lead to tangible results, helping to promote both motivation and employee engagement.

How Small Wins Drive Big Change: The Momentum Every City Needs

The small wins achieved by municipal departments are the unseen engines of continued growth and development. By streamlining its permitting process, a department can, complete a park renovation prior to an anticipated completion date, or increase community meeting attendance; while these may be small wins, they create a momentum of positive feedback loops which generate progress, pride, and productivity. Research has shown that celebrating incremental progress triggers the dopamine pathways in the brain associated with rewards and motivation, promoting productivity and persistent effort (Amabile & Kramer, 2011b). Researchers at Harvard Summer School also report that acknowledging progress often fosters sustained energy and assists in focusing employees on longer term objectives. In city management, this leads to increased follow-through, improved employee morale, and increased public trust when citizens perceive their municipality as steadily advancing toward collective community objectives.

The Emotional Payoff of Appreciation at Work

Appreciating employees' achievements can have a significant emotional payoff for them as they do their jobs in the public service. The emotional payoff can be greater in the public sector because most employees are motivated to help achieve the organization's mission rather than make money. Employees who see progress with their work and receive visible recognition will develop confidence in themselves and believe in the organization's goals and mission. Developing confidence and believing in an organization's goals and mission leads to a positive feedback loop of employee morale and motivation. Organizational scholar Karl E. Weick (1984) was one of the researchers to describe this type of positive feedback loop of employee morale and motivation when he wrote about "small wins" and how they break down large challenges into smaller and more manageable tasks, which builds both psychological safety and collective efficacy among employees over time.

Transforming Casual Recognition to Ongoing Leadership Practice

Recognition is going to have to be much more than an afterthought with municipal departments and private organizations if it's going to become a habit and provide the same kind of power for creating small wins. Recognizing progress in a consistent manner will help build habits of recognition, through team meetings, employee newsletters/bulletin boards, social media platforms, etc. And when every success is meaningfully connected to the company’s mission, employees start seeing their career development as a continued process of growth rather than as a sporadic occurrence. Additionally, as leaders hold reflection sessions to discuss the factors which led to each success, they can turn every single small win into a common experience which all employees can learn from.

The Product of Small Wins

Most growth isn't usually made in grand motions; it's created through a series of small successes that add up with each passing day. By converting "wicked" problems into manageable steps, organizations can create a way out of the complexity associated with those issues; and according to Termeer & Dewulf (2019) this process occurs because of achieving incremental successes. According to PwC, (2015) workforce studies have shown that when individuals can measure their success no matter how small, the level of engagement increases, the level of satisfaction rises, and ultimately the overall performance improves. Simply stated, if leaders turn recognizing small wins into a daily habit rather than an event, they will develop momentum and confidence; and over time, this confidence and momentum will develop into a pattern of recognition; and it will be through this pattern of recognition that a culture of resilience will emerge; a culture of resilience equips organizations to rise to challenges with confidence, organizations learn to face uncertainty and transformation not with fear, but with poise and purpose.

References

Amabile, T. M., & Kramer, S. J. (2011a). The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. Harvard Business Review Press.

Amabile, T. M., & Kramer, S. J. (2011b). The Power of Small Wins. Harvard Business Review, 89(5), 70–81.

Gallup. (2019). Employee Recognition: Low Cost, High Impact. Gallup Workplace Insights. Retrieved from https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236441

Termeer, C. J. A. M., & Dewulf, A. (2019). A Small Wins Framework to Overcome the Evaluation Paradox of Governing Wicked Problems. Policy & Society, 38(2), 298–314. https://doi.org/10.1080/14494035.2018.1497933

Weick, K. E. (1984). Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems. American Psychologist, 39(1), 40–49.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). (2015). Small Wins Can Yield Big Outcomes. PwC Leadership Agenda Series.