I’m a huge fan of kaizen. I believe in it so strongly that I once contemplated getting a tattoo of the kanji on my arm. I’ve written about it as well.
I know the power of instilling these habits. I know how much it can compound if you keep at it.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Yet, I’m growing impatient. And a little indigestion is setting in.
To keep the enthusiasm, I try to celebrate the small wins. But those just don’t seem good enough. Heck, the wins don’t feel like wins anymore.
- That memo that has moved one place up only to be sent back because there’s a minor typo.
- That memo that was finally approved but is to be held until some other approval is granted; a non-approval.
- We tried something, and it didn’t work. We didn’t fail; we just found one other way that won’t work. So… one step closer to it working? Not so sure.
The higher-ups are not looking at small wins. They don’t care that you made another step in the seemingly right direction. They only see that the bigger goal has not reached.
I see others sell their little progress as big deals. Perhaps they truly see it that way and not just pulling the wool over people’s eyes.
To me, it’s not so much small wins as it’s little failures.
Perhaps I’ve set my goals too ambitiously. Or maybe I was too optimistic about the rate at which my small steps would have gotten me there.
But I also have big goals to achieve. Maybe small steps aren’t going to cut it. After all, you can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.