Goal Core · Short term goals · Module
Quick wins
Results chosen deliberately because they will be seen — unambiguous, attributable to the effort, and early. Selecting them is a communication decision as much as an operational one.
The idea
How it works
Sustained effort depends on people seeing that effort produce something. Where nothing lands for a year, support withdraws quietly, long before anyone says so.
The risk is the mirror image. Quick wins chosen only because they are easy produce activity that looks like progress and is not, and they can crowd out the slower work that the goal actually depends on. The selection criteria are what keep the two apart.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
List what could land early
Anything that could be finished and seen within a few months, without borrowing from the main effort.
- 02
Filter for attribution
A win nobody connects to the effort builds nothing. It has to be visibly caused by the work.
- 03
Check it serves the goal
If the win would have happened anyway, or points somewhere else, it is a distraction with good optics.
- 04
Plan how it becomes visible
An unannounced win is not a win for this purpose. Decide who sees it and how.
One level in
The components of quick wins
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Selection criteria
The written test each candidate has to pass: early, unambiguous, attributable, and serving the goal.
Learn
If the only available quick wins point away from the goal, that is itself a finding — usually that the goal is further off than the plan assumes.
The other modules in short term goals
Quarterly objectives
A small number of specific, demanding commitments set for a quarter and reviewed at its end — few enough that they can all be named from memory.
LearnMilestones
Dated checkpoints inside longer work, each one a moment where progress becomes visible and a decision to continue is genuinely available.
LearnLeading indicators
Measures that move before the outcome does, and therefore give you time. Distinguishing them from lagging measures is what makes a short review useful rather than merely early.
Learn