The 'quick wins' fallacy
In organisations especially those that work 'big', the desire for faster results leads to searching for 'quick wins'. This is a strategic error. Here's why.
We’ve all been there. The organisation has decided to make a change or identified a new area to invest in. Everyone’s already busy, and the organisation is committed to long-term investments. The appetite for another long-term commitment is not there. Inevitably, the phrase ‘quick wins’ begins being uttered.
Here’s what I will cover:
Why are ‘quick wins’ appealing?
What is wrong with ‘quick wins’?
What can be done differently?
Why are ‘quick wins’ appealing?
‘Quick wins’ are appealing because it seems like a way to commit to a shorter time frame. To see if the ‘Pareto’ (loose translation of 20% of the effort contributes 80% of the impact) can be achieved by identifying some small investments that will make the most impact. These are all sensible aspirations.
People reach for ‘quick wins’ for a variety of reasons:
worried about over-committing
worried prematurely about reaching a point of diminishing returns
don’t trust that the right things will be prioritised
adding to an already too-full portfolio of commitments
unable to deprioritise existing commitments
What is wrong with ‘quick wins’?
The ‘quick wins’ framing, unfortunately, tends to bias to opportunities that are more certain rather than more impactful. Uncertainty around the problem space tends to be glossed over as resolving this involves committing to activities which, whilst essential to the resolution of the uncertainty, do not lead to an inevitable outcome in their own right.
Similarly, with the solution space, there is a bias to already identified solutions rather than prioritising what problems we need to find solutions for—a subtle but critical difference. A second issue is that investments that present as being more effort may not get the appropriate consideration and opportunity to be ‘sliced’ down to an adequate effort to validate the approach rather than wholly deliver on it as conceived.
If reaching for ‘quick wins’ becomes the predominant starting point for organisations, a trap that I’ve observed many organisations fall into, they are destined to slide into a bunker of mediocrity. The reason for this is there is a whole section of opportunities that will never get adequate oxygen to be considered.
Suppose they are competing against organisations that are more disciplined in their approach to translating their strategic thinking into execution. In that case, the gaps which lead to a loss of market share can open quickly. Customer experience issues acknowledged as essential to address continue to decline because they are never met with the best options, just the ones that fit that ‘quick wins’ criteria.
What can be done differently?
To begin with, I would suggest doing away with the hunt for ‘quick wins’. This doesn’t mean investments won’t provide early returns - they can if the organisation commits to working in an evidence-guided manner.
I’d recommend investing the effort in areas such as:
Make sure the problem space is qualified.
The breadth of opportunities in the solution space is surveyed, regardless of certainty and assessed for potential impact.
Develop opportunities as hypotheses that can be tested.
Actively identifying valuable slices that can be tested to validate the hypothesis better.
Identify what we need to learn for the more uncertain but suspected high-impact investments.
Review what other commitments could be deprioritised for this.
What is your experience? Do you see the hunt for ‘quick wins’ taking place at your organisation? If so, what is the impact this has? Is it effective? Or does it lead to issues? Share your experiences in the comments.
Thanks Daniel, I love it.
It's absolutely a pet peeve of mine when the 'quick wins' becomes a euphemism for hacks to get short-term boosts to vanity metrics.
I think there are also a couple of other - more understandable - reasons people go for 'quick wins' that can be called out and which help to identify differences between similar-looking things.
Firstly, sometimes it's important to gain credibility and/or political support from senior stakeholders that may not be on top of the details. This is a grey area in which a 'sales' mentality can support attracting real investment and commitment. And there is perhaps a second, sometimes related, grey area when the focus is understandably on delivering-value-early in an MVP / design thinking style approach. The difference in these situations is that the motivation of the 'quick win' is the organisational learning rather than its direct material value. It can be very helpful to see these patterns to differentiate things that could otherwise look and feel very similar. i.e. whether a short term objective is a pragmatic stepping stone to learning and a coherent and impactful long term approach, or simply one a of a series of isolated short-term bandaids.