The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work

This book is a must-read for anyone working. You don't have to be the manager or executive or leader or boss to use the tools from this book and make your day to day work life, better.

"But the big news from our research is that most people’s inner work lives shift a great deal over time as a function of the events they experience—not as a function of their personalities."

In business, it is common to hear people say "we want to celebrate the small wins". What they mean is that they want to take a moment and celebrate the progress. Conversely, I often need to help a client that does not "feel that progress is being made". I have noticed that in successful teams the volume of communication is an order of magnitude higher than struggling teams. There can be a million reasons to not share. You may not feel that you have a significant amount of 'done' items or you are waiting for something else to be ready first. In horror movies, they use silence to build fear. Why? Because it is natural. The same is true in business, if your team is quiet and if you are quiet with your clients, customers, users, then they will fear that nothing is being done. This works internally and externally which makes things easier for the manager, just communicate status, effort, thoughts. In the book, the authors give many examples of how you can communicate the small wins, the small steps forward, or even dealing with a small backward step.

Using small moments to focus and enjoy the progress your team is making will go a long way to improving team dynamics.

Here is the link to the book on Amazon.