We often think big, make bold plans of dramatic turnarounds and transformations, only to find a few weeks later little has changed. Good intentions have been swept away in the busyness of life, and stuff we ‘just need to get out of the way first’.
This doesn’t mean those good intentions are wrong, unrealistic or overly ambitious, it might simply be time to seek a new approach. In professional and private life, transformation and change, those courageous goals may be better served by purposeful small steps.
Thinking Small and Big
When thinking about making real progress, small steps crop up too often to ignore. They sit at the core of agile, habit formation, coaching and even trail running. On challenging terrain those small steps are quicker, less risky and make it easier to change direction. They are the foundation for agility and sustainable pace. Long, high risk, high impact strides are for predictable situations, when you know the route, can see where you are going, and what competitors are doing.
Across these diverse domains small steps yield similar benefits:
Start promptly - Requiring less upfront planning, small steps start quickly. This also applies to restarting after a break or set-back.
Rapid learning and feedback - Each step is potential progress and an experiment, quickly revealing whether refinement and adjustment is needed, or simply providing reassurance that you’re on the right track.
Reduced Risk - A small step requires a smaller investment, be it budget, time, risk or in personal development factors like vulnerability, reputation and energy. A single step in the wrong direction is unlikely to be a big loss, encouraging experimentation and resilience.
Increased Motivation - Small steps are easier to start, and once you build momentum, hard to stop. Bite sized chunks, they tend to be less prone to procrastination and avoidance.
Tangible, Measurable Progress - Progress is small, but visible and accumulates rapidly, timely and frequent checkpoints enable tracking and forecasting, making it easier to know where you are and make smart decisions.
Easier to change direction - With less invested, and improved progress tracking, it can be easier to respond and change direction.
Sustainable Pace - Manageable steps often require less effort and strain, meaning they are more likely to bring benefits in the long term, compared to bursts of intense activity. Small steps can be interspersed with other commitments, maintaining pace.
Energy when you need it - A subtle advantage of continued small steps, and sustainable pace in general, is that it reserves some capacity. Occasional bursts of greater effort remain an available option. If you’re already overstretched, stretching even further is unlikely to end well.
What kind of Steps?
Small Steps can be anything meaningful and useful in the chosen direction or towards a goal.
The nature of steps depends on what you set out to achieve, steps in habit formation or transitioning to a new role are significantly different to steps towards an organisational digital transformation, but the principles are remarkably similar.
Steps may be experimental, aimed at learning or testing. They may be delivery and performance based and they may be repetitious; practising, perfecting, strengthening.
For example, small steps towards confident public speaking could include contributing to larger meetings, or practising conversations without ‘um’ and ‘er’. Small steps towards a more senior role might be reducing tactical tasks, making time to think strategically or regular engagement with a coach.
At a greater scale, consider a digital transformation, many methods take the approach that the organisation should change significantly to employ a new operating model in order to realise its benefits. This implies a lead time, and a drop in capability while mastering the new system, in short, a big step. It's also a big step that risks throwing away what’s unique and valuable to the organisation. Small steps towards transformation might include experimentation with changes and rapid sharing and adoption of what works well. This softens the drop in capability, maintains pace and preserves what’s valuable.
Everything counts in large amounts
Small steps have enabled teams to reach new heights of performance, a fine example comes from the GB Olympic cycling team, which harnessed the theory of marginal gains, pioneered in Rugby by Sir Clive Woodward. The idea here was to find small things that would make a difference on and off the track, small steps towards improved performance. That included literally finding small things, by painting mobile workshop floors white to show up dropped bolts. It included larger things, like ferrying athletes preferred mattresses to each hotel, supporting rest and recovery.
Moving from sport to business, the notion of Kaizen, continuous improvement involving all people at all levels of an organisation is centred on identification and implementation of small steps towards widely shared and well understood goals.
Across IT and manufacturing, kanban has small steps at it’s heart. Breaking work into small self contained units which are steps towards creation of a larger product or service. Small steps in kanban encourage flow of work and provide data for inspection, tracking and forecasting.
Taking multiple small steps to achieve something bigger is beneficial in theory, but it’s not just any step, what we’re looking for here is purposeful steps to take us in a chosen direction.
SMARTER Steps
The smart acronym is a ubiquitous checklist for goal setting. Coined by George T. Doran in the eighties (Doran 1981), It arrives with a somewhat tarnished reputation, in part because many of us were introduced to it in a stuffy office with poorly printed ring-bound handouts and constantly overheating projector. The more pertinent reason is that, at some point in our careers, as part of performance management theatre, we are likely to have had some dubious SMART objectives inflicted upon us, with little opportunity to discuss or co-create.
If this is your experience I’d encourage you to look again - when crafted in your own interest, or to serve mutual interest, it’s a useful way to check and review key points and discuss whats needed, which might go beyond the elements of SMART, to create successful goals.
Here’s how I think about SMART, it not the official version, its an amalgam of variants. I find the addition of ‘E’ and ‘R’ helps guide the conversation and uncover helpful factors.
Specific - What, Who, Why? It means a clear picture of what's needed, enabling a fast start and avoiding doubt and deliberation. “Don’t be afraid to get very detailed.” is sound advice from the University of California Guide.
Measurable - It’s important to have a measure of success, to know how far you are and when you are done. In may be qualitative, quantitative or both. Measures and visualisation of progress often help motivation, and can facilitate discussion with others.
Achievable (and challenging) - One of the trickiest to get right, too easy to achieve and the goal may not be interesting, to hard it may be too daunting. Just the right level stretch if required here, including a more open approach. It’s crucial that these are by the definition of the person working on the objective.
Relevant (to your direction) - and not just tangentially, relevant is where the value of the step or goal is expressed, and it’s contribution to the overall aim. Implicit is consideration of opportunity cost, the decision to prioritise this goal above others.
Time bound & Timely - Time bound means a defined start and stop, or number of hours, daily or weekly. It’s particularly important for small steps, to keep them…small.
Timely means the exercise or it’s results are worth while now, and implies that, compared to other options, it is one of the best things to do now.
Engaging - To increase chances of success the step should be as engaging as possible, this could be aspects of the objective itself or the method of working towards it. This is where co-creating, being honest and tailoring to yourself matters
Reflected - (or retrospected if you are of an agile persuasion). When setting the goal space should be allocated for reflection, as an integral part of it, whether they are a success, failure or somewhere in the middle. The outcome of the goal itself and it’s contribution to the overall direction should be considered. Equally important is the approach, which informs how future initiatives will be tackled and develops the skill of setting and achieving objectives.
When SMART is not so smart
Of course, like most approaches, the suitability SMART varies according to the situation and type of goal, it is sometimes useful, and sometimes a nuisance. It does not have a scientific origin and does not consider all the wide ranging aspects of goal formation. I find it’s best used for key points and considerations, especially when introducing the notion of goal setting.
Taking SMART too literally can take the joy and challenge out of an activity, there is a tendency to be too specific across all points, and highly detailed goals are not necessarily more effective than open goals, especially when learning something new.
SMART is also open to interpretation, one paper identified 55 possible terms (Wade 2009) with significant differences, for example, the original version used 'assignable' as opposed to 'achievable', which also hints at the original intent of SMART. There are numerous interpretations of each of those terms, along with multiple permutations and combinations, therefore it’s important to discuss which version you’re using and be aligned with others in the conversation.
Closing Thoughts
Small steps can be the key to achieving challenging goals, they offer a quick start, tangible progress, rapid feedback and cause for celebration.
Small steps should be purposeful and guide you in the direction you want to go, this may be towards a specific goal or the first steps in a journey of discovery. This leads to different categories of step, including small continuous improvements (cumulative steps) and the breaking down of larger work into small pieces (consecutive steps).
Various methods, including SMART can be used to create these small steps and to add rigour to larger goals. It can be used as a quick scan in proportion to the size of the step or goal and can help it become more robust. Similarly when reflecting on progress, SMART can help identify strengths and areas which warrant attention.
The effort and detail of step planning should be proportional - spending ages planning a small step can defeat the purpose, essentially making it a long step.
Smart small steps encourage initiatives, experiments, activities. The act of attempting these is smart in itself, developing traits and foundations for future initiatives, don’t overlook increasing fitness and progress towards goals by focusing only on end-state outcomes.
The knack, as often, is doing ‘just enough’, to know where you are eventually heading and deciding just enough steps to make a start whilst avoiding the temptation to plan every step to completion. Circumstances and ourselves will undoubtedly change along the way, opportunities and challenges will arise, small steps offer the agility to sense, respond and go again.
References
Doran, G.T. (1981) There's a SMART Way to Write Management's Goals and Objectives. Journal of Management Review, 70, 35-36.
Wade, D. T. (2009). Goal setting in rehabilitation: An overview of what, why and how. Clinical Rehabilitation, 23(4), 291–295. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269215509103551
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