All significant achievements start small… They start with a simple idea, the first plan and the first minor step, yielding a great result. This article will showcase why taking one step at a time can benefit your projects, change management processes, and help you achieve your goals.
Easier buy-in from stakeholders
Cognitive resistance (a.k.a. resistance to change) is the factor that hinders the implementation of changes or completion of project tasks. Stakeholders are often reluctant to put additional effort into driving the change if it won’t have a direct and visible benefit.
Making one step at a time when delivering a project or implementing a change will allow you to get an easier buy-in from stakeholders and reduce a negative factor of cognitive resistance, as small steps don’t require significant effort and generate visible results within a short amount of time.
Ease of initiating the change
Significant projects are often complex, sometimes way too complex, that it’s hard to decide what to start from. Taking one step at a time allows you to quickly initiate even the most difficult changes, activities and tasks.
Decomposition and incremental & iterative approaches allow for easier initiation of changes and make the process or task completion more manageable.
Increased focus
Massive initiatives and changes have multiple steps and tasks, often diluting the focus when implemented in parallel.
Taking one step at a time and following a sequence ensures that all relevant stakeholders stay focused on the result of the iteration. It maximises the probability of reaching the planned intermediate goal, contributing to the overall project goal.
Visible results in a shorter time
Massive endeavours or changes require an extensive amount of time for implementation; the resource and time allocation, in most cases, is proportional to the project’s complexity.
Small steps and iterations help complete and validate tasks faster. It’s extremely useful in product development, service development in dynamic markets, or cases when stakeholders tend to be pessimistic about the implemented changes.
Increased motivation
Implementing big projects or resolving complex tasks require persistence and focus on the results, and it’s often hard to stay motivated and follow the plan when the desired result is months or years away.
The one small step is an approach that helps to increase the motivation among stakeholders as the consequence of achieving visible results in a shorter time. The more small steps are completed — the more small battles are won, which contribute to the overall victory and success of the project.
Ability to pivot
In a highly dynamic geopolitical context, market conditions and competitive environment, predictable delivery rarely makes sense. However, taking one step at a time does, as this approach provides a built-in capability to pivot.
Whenever you consider that the next step won’t bring the desired results — you can always change the direction to achieve better results. The plan can be adjusted as it’s enacted step by step.
Endnote
One step at a time is a simple yet brilliant strategy for initiating complex projects, extensive changes or big transformations. This technique generates visible results within short periods of time, and it helps a manager to take thoughtful and efficient decisions and build confidence and trust within the stakeholder group.
