Are Quick Wins A Good Thing?
There’s an old time management trope where a professor stands in front of his class and fills a jar full of rocks and asks is it full. The class says yes, so the prof adds some pebbles which trickle into the gaps and asks the question again. Again the class say “it is full”, so he adds sand which fills the remaining gaps. The prof empties out the jar, separates out the three elements and then puts the sand in first, followed by the pebbles but few of the rocks fit in the top. The moral of the story is that you have to tackle life’s important things first and leave the trivialities to later.
This came to mind when I got into another “is a plastic bag ban a good idea?” debate on Twitter. Proponents say such a ban is highly symbolic and can help build momentum. I tend to believe that the benefits are rather small for such a big effort and that it may cause people to sit back and say “There! We’ve done it! We’re green!” They’ve filled their jar with sand and there’s not much space for any rocks.
That’s not to say that getting some quick wins in the bag (or jar…) is a bad thing, but it can’t be at the expense of big issues. Organisations that adopt incremental targets often find themselves in this position, expending all their energy hunting down increasingly rare small changes and running out of steam. Occasionally some of those changes will actually obstruct big changes by, say, investing too much in improving existing infrastructure when it should really be replaced with a greener alternative.
Organisations that set ambitious stretch targets, however, tend to start working out how they’re going to address the big issues much earlier and avoid this trap. They can do this alongside the smaller improvements, but make sure they are all compatible – after all, by mixing up the addition of rocks, pebbles and sand, the jar will fill up nicely.
By the way, my favourite version of the story that after the professor puts the sand in around the pebbles, he then pours in two pints of beer. He turns to the class and says “And that goes to show that no matter how full your life is, there’s always space for a couple of pints.” A lesson for everyone!