How the ‘Progress Principle’s’ Use of the Small Win Methodology Achieves Big Wins with Employees and Creates Initiative Sustainment.

Implementation consultants are retained by client organizations to bring a change in a business condition. After identifying gaps in capacity or capability, the consulting team will investigate the root causes of these gaps and initiate actions to address them. The scope of the initiative is designed to review four key areas of business operations: processes (throughput flow), behaviors (daily actions), systems (data flow), and tools (controls & feedback mechanisms), and then develop new or upgraded actions for daily cultural change. Behaviors, the daily actions by managers and supervisors, are some of the most challenging to initiate and sustain. This is primarily due to current attitudes and embedded habits that have become the established paradigm. Changing behaviors is what ultimately determines an improvements success or failure. “Winning the mob” as one of my colleagues would say, can become a Herculean effort. In looking at several approaches to behavioral improvement and long-term cultural change one method, the Progress Principle, stands out as one of the strongest approaches to making the project improvement sustainable.

What is the Progress Principle?

??In their 2011 book, The PROGRESS PRINCIPLE USING SMALL WINS TO IGNITE JOY, ENGAGEMENT, AND CREATIVITY AT WORK, the authors Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer use research from a cumulative 12,000 feedback diaries collected daily over the course of 37 weeks to paint a picture of how managers can win big and support their team’s work through effective progress. The driving force is that a person’s inner work life quality is the main aspect that determines their motivation and the main reason for them coming to work. The book outlines how managers can foster and enhance each team member’s inner work life.

The graphic below shows how each of the elements comes together to support the overall inner work life of the individual and its impact upon the four dimensions of work, primarily: creativity, productivity, commitment, and collegiality. These four dimensions are the key components of achieving performance output.

Starting at the bottom and working our way up, Progress (meaningful work- positive & setbacks- negative), Catalyst Factors (Seven catalysts-positive, Seven inhibitors- negative), and Nourishment Factors (Four nourishers- positive, Four toxins- negative) influence inner work life quality. Inner work quality consists of the emotions, motivations (intrinsic and extrinsic), and perceptions people have at work. Once impacted, inner work life drives a person’s attention, engagement and intention to perform work. Finally, these achieve the work output dimensions: creativity, productivity, commitment and collegiality. When inner work life is positive, these all work together to form a virtuous cycle that can be perpetuated. A virtuous cycle occurs when teams experience more progress than setbacks, and both catalysts and nourishers are being fully utilized by managers and team members. From a consulting engagement perspective, the virtuous cycle helps to achieve the necessary sustainment required to achieve organizational mission and process improvement. The consulting team works to coach, teach, and train managers and frontline supervisors on the use of these factors in order to ensure team members are fully engaged in the work output. Additionally, managers and supervisors are taught to look for the setbacks, inhibitors and toxins in order to avoid negative impacts to worker inner work life quality. When this model is utilized by the organization, old paradigms begin to change and the new behaviors start to take root. Progress is identified as the key element to overall success. A great example of this is demonstrated in how video games are designed. Most video games on the market contain progress meters or level progression elements. As players achieve milestones they earn game ‘rewards’ as part of achievement. The psychological impact of these milestones is what keeps players engaged. As managers and supervisors encourage, support and recognize daily progress a strong virtuous cycle is created similar to the video game progression. This can lead to overall engagement and contribution on the part of all team members.

Daily Tracking and Support

In the book, THE CHECKLIST MANIFESTO, the author Atul Gawande outlines the value of checklists so that the ‘stupid’ things aren’t missed during the course of critical work flows (i.e. medical surgery, passenger flight service by pilots). A checklist provides a means to ensure that the inner work life components: progress, catalysts, and nourishers aren’t missed (see below checklist). The checklist is designed as a five minute daily grading control to ensure that the positive elements were achieved and that the negative ones were mitigated. As consultants, we introduce these tools as part of the system or habit we’re attempting to establish in the client organization. This is developed and installed as a means to upgrade the environment for performance sustainment. By using this simple checklist, a manager can gauge their efforts to positively impact work progress and adjust for the next day/shift.

Throughout the research on the progress principle, feedback consistently showed that employees who achieved daily progress had a 76% chance of positive inner work life quality. Example after example taken from daily feedback diaries showed that when setbacks occurred, catalysts and nourishers were also poor. Additionally, both catalysts and nourishers were also positive when progress was achieved. The data showed that even small wins had a big impact on inner work life. Conversely, it also demonstrated that even small setbacks could create negative inner work life quicker than progress events. As managers and frontline leaders come to understand the impact that catalysts and nourishers have on positive progress and how to achieve the virtuous cycle, they’ll establish an environment and paradigm keeping them sensitive to their team’s output. Topics like emotional intelligence have become popular in our culture and work environments. However, having good emotional intelligence only goes so far, but adding the progress principle to that can add layers of perpetual value. Think of the progress principle as oxygen that feeds the heart of the organization and team. If we stop breathing and getting oxygen then we’ll die. The same is true of the work organization. If we fail to keep the progress principle going, inner work life can suffer and then the impact to the organization is catastrophic. In The Progress Principle book, one of the organizations that was part of the daily study had been an industry leader and well recognized nationally. However, the company had a management change three years earlier and didn’t support active elements of the progress principle. This resulted in loss of innovation and creativity and ultimately the bankruptcy of the company. Obviously there were other factors that occurred but, many of the daily diaries showed significant setbacks and poor inner work life. These signs cannot be ignored.

When CEOs were surveyed on what impacts employees quality of work life, progress in work was last on the list. The group took this for granted as if the CEOs were saying, “I hired the best people, now let them go do what needs to be done”. ?Yet, data from employee surveys clearly show that recognition and support for daily progress was the most critical. Daily recognition was valued more than the one-off pizza party or once a year reward. Daily progress needs to become the life blood of the organization in order for it to live and not fade out. The model above is a blueprint on how to achieve successful inner work life and foster positive creative work output for any organization willing to invest the time needed. When the progress principle becomes part of an organization’s culture it promotes support and sends a strong message to employees that management stands behind daily progress efforts and is prepared to provide the catalyst and nourishers to make it happen.

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References:

Kohls K. (2017), Addicted to Hopium, Throughput, Using DVA Models to Break the Guesswork Habit (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform)

Duhigg C. (2014), The Power of Habit, Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business (Random House)

Amabile, T & Kramer, S. (2011), The Progress Principle, Using Small Wins To Ignite Joy, Engagement, And Creativity At Work (Harvard Business School Publishing)

Gawande A. (2010), The Checklist Manifesto, How to get things right (Picador)

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