Positives in Failure
Alright— we failed. So, what happens next? That answer will determine whether your team falls back or uses this moment…
20.06.2026
Small Steps, Lasting Impact
Medina Leadership Consulting
Business Coach & Mentor
Strategizing and making difficult decisions with the purpose of improving overall performance is a position you will find yourself in frequently. Sometimes it means reinventing a structure because the current one has gone stale. Other times it is identifying a key issue and responding with a transformative remedy. One thing is certain: change is needed. As a leader, you want that change to be impactful, but more importantly, you want it to produce sustainable results. For that to happen, incremental steps need to be executed. These are the small steps that will have a lasting impact.
You want to begin this process by sharing and being transparent with your team about the desired result. It’s important that you relay this message by focusing on the why — the purpose behind the change. By doing this, you’re establishing a dynamic where teams are empowered to be a part of the change. This type of environment helps employees feel valued and directly involved in the outcome. Just as leaders must demonstrate ownership to earn trust, sharing ownership with our teams during times of change reinforces mutual trust and keeps communication open. When people feel heard, concerns surface early — and solutions tend to be more practical and effective as a result.
The IKEA Effect, as discussed by Julia Dhar, highlights the idea that people place a higher value on things they have helped create. When employees are actively involved in shaping new processes, contributing ideas, and helping design solutions, they become more emotionally invested in the outcome. Instead of seeing change as something imposed on them, they view it as something they helped build — which naturally increases their commitment and willingness to support it. Collaboration at this level drives perspective, improves decision-making, and encourages innovation, all of which are essential during times of change.
Now that you have your team’s buy-in, the next step is to channel that engagement into structured action by breaking the organizational change into smaller, manageable steps through careful planning and prioritization. By involving employees in identifying priorities and sequencing tasks, you reinforce their sense of ownership while ensuring the most critical areas are addressed first. Segmenting the change also creates opportunities for early wins — short-term, visible successes that demonstrate progress and validate that the effort is working. As momentum builds from these early successes, it becomes easier to sustain engagement. Teams are more motivated to keep putting in effort because they can connect their actions to positive outcomes. Over time, these small victories build both the organizational confidence and the capability needed to tackle the more complex parts of the change ahead.
The final step is simple but easy to overlook: recognize and celebrate each of the small wins. Acknowledging these incremental achievements show teams that their efforts matter and that their contributions are seen and valued. Having spent extensive time in high-pressure sales leadership, there’s a saying I always thought I created: “You win some, but you lose a lot. In between all those L’s (losses), you need to celebrate each win.” It started as a personal reminder not to focus only on failures, but to find balance and stay positive. But peeling it back a layer, I realized this kind of recognition hits differently when it happens among peers, on work they personally owned. It turns small wins into powerful motivators—sustaining energy, building confidence, and shaping a culture of continued progress.
Execute these steps and notice how you’re setting up your teams to succeed during organizational change. Keep it simple. Small steps, lasting impact.
Medina Leadership Consulting partners with organizations to develop confident, accountable leaders through our methodology: The Leadership Pact.
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