In organisations especially those that work 'big', the desire for faster results leads to searching for 'quick wins'. This is a strategic error. Here's why.
It's absolutely a pet peeve of mine when the 'quick wins' becomes a euphemism for hacks to get short-term boosts to vanity metrics.
I think there are also a couple of other - more understandable - reasons people go for 'quick wins' that can be called out and which help to identify differences between similar-looking things.
Firstly, sometimes it's important to gain credibility and/or political support from senior stakeholders that may not be on top of the details. This is a grey area in which a 'sales' mentality can support attracting real investment and commitment. And there is perhaps a second, sometimes related, grey area when the focus is understandably on delivering-value-early in an MVP / design thinking style approach. The difference in these situations is that the motivation of the 'quick win' is the organisational learning rather than its direct material value. It can be very helpful to see these patterns to differentiate things that could otherwise look and feel very similar. i.e. whether a short term objective is a pragmatic stepping stone to learning and a coherent and impactful long term approach, or simply one a of a series of isolated short-term bandaids.
Glad it resonated Roger! Yes, when I was drafting that list, I could have kept going. I should have because I stopped before getting to most of the juicy incentive-based reasons - I will pick it up in the next edit of this post! Good point about the context of the goal at that point in time - a point I should have made more explicit. That's the connection where this post fits within my overall thesis.
Maybe another way to put it - there's a difference between a set of options to consider which happen to be the most concrete / certain and a set of options to consider that are more certain because there's a learning mechanism which is systematically helping opportunities be broken down into viable things to test.
Most organisations are in the former state which naturally leads to pools of options which will be considered and pools which never will. There's an equal or higher probability that your best options sit within the pool that will never be available for consideration if 'quick wins' culture is pervasive.
To be in the latter state requires discipline, design, research, cross-functional cooperation and a systematic approach across both the problem and solution spaces and beyond. But progress starts with a single step and acknowleding the limitations of 'quick wins' thinking and putting that aside and considering a broader set of opportunities is a great start.
Thanks Daniel, I love it.
It's absolutely a pet peeve of mine when the 'quick wins' becomes a euphemism for hacks to get short-term boosts to vanity metrics.
I think there are also a couple of other - more understandable - reasons people go for 'quick wins' that can be called out and which help to identify differences between similar-looking things.
Firstly, sometimes it's important to gain credibility and/or political support from senior stakeholders that may not be on top of the details. This is a grey area in which a 'sales' mentality can support attracting real investment and commitment. And there is perhaps a second, sometimes related, grey area when the focus is understandably on delivering-value-early in an MVP / design thinking style approach. The difference in these situations is that the motivation of the 'quick win' is the organisational learning rather than its direct material value. It can be very helpful to see these patterns to differentiate things that could otherwise look and feel very similar. i.e. whether a short term objective is a pragmatic stepping stone to learning and a coherent and impactful long term approach, or simply one a of a series of isolated short-term bandaids.
Glad it resonated Roger! Yes, when I was drafting that list, I could have kept going. I should have because I stopped before getting to most of the juicy incentive-based reasons - I will pick it up in the next edit of this post! Good point about the context of the goal at that point in time - a point I should have made more explicit. That's the connection where this post fits within my overall thesis.
Maybe another way to put it - there's a difference between a set of options to consider which happen to be the most concrete / certain and a set of options to consider that are more certain because there's a learning mechanism which is systematically helping opportunities be broken down into viable things to test.
Most organisations are in the former state which naturally leads to pools of options which will be considered and pools which never will. There's an equal or higher probability that your best options sit within the pool that will never be available for consideration if 'quick wins' culture is pervasive.
To be in the latter state requires discipline, design, research, cross-functional cooperation and a systematic approach across both the problem and solution spaces and beyond. But progress starts with a single step and acknowleding the limitations of 'quick wins' thinking and putting that aside and considering a broader set of opportunities is a great start.