The Moonshot and the Small Wins: Building Toward Something Bigger

Do you need a moonshot, or do you need to start smaller?

That was the question at Connection Lab this week, and I think the either/or framing is the problem. A big vision matters. So does knowing how you're actually going to build toward it. The interesting part is what happens between those two things.

Some of us emphasized the value of a bold destination; others questioned how to make a goal that big actionable. I brought up the original moonshot: putting people on the moon required a succession of tests, discoveries, and capabilities long before the final landing. The ambition and the incremental work were not competing approaches. They depended on each other.

Here's the thing about moonshots. Putting people on the moon was an extraordinary ambition. But getting there meant figuring out thousands of smaller things along the way. We didn't have to choose between the big idea and incremental progress. We needed both.

THE VISION AND THE WORK BELONG TOGETHER

A big vision gives people something to work toward. It can help attract support, investment, and talent. But somebody still has to figure out what needs to happen first, who owns it, and how the work gets done.

So I would start with a question: What has to be true for this bigger idea to work?

If an organization wants better data across a complicated network, it may first need shared definitions, clear ownership, trustworthy inputs, and rules for exchanging information. Those foundations are less exciting than the final dashboard. They are also what make the dashboard useful.

This is where leadership matters. It's not enough to get people excited about where we're going. We have to build the systems, skills, and capacity to get there. That's not a separate exercise from the vision. It's how we make the vision possible.

SMALL STEPS GIVE US A CHANCE TO LEARN

A participant offered a fantastic golf analogy. A hole-in-one is a lovely outcome, but most rounds of golf involve a series of shots. Each shot gives you new information about where you are, what changed, and what to do next.

The point of a small test isn't to check a box and say we're innovating. It's to find out something useful. Does this solve a real problem? Does it work for customers? Does it attract a new audience? Can the team actually use it? What needs to change before we go further?

Activity isn't progress just because we're busy. Each step should teach us something that helps us make the next decision.

And small steps do not necessarily mean one long line of tasks. Another participant challenged that idea. Complex transformations often require several workstreams moving at once. Some activities can happen in parallel; others depend on foundations being built first.

The useful question is not simply “What is the smallest thing we can do?” It is “What should happen next, what can happen together, and what must we learn before we go further?”

START WITH WORK THAT PEOPLE RECOGNIZE

AI gave us a good example of what this looks like in practice.

“Transform the business with AI” can sound expensive, vague, and threatening. A much more useful opening might be: Which workflow is making people's jobs harder than it needs to be?

One participant described an example of improving a time-consuming proposal process. Instead of asking employees to buy into an abstract transformation, the team could focus on a result they understood: making an everyday process faster and less frustrating.

And this is where I think organizations often miss the bigger opportunity. Work crosses teams. Customers don't care where marketing ends and operations begins. They care whether the whole experience works.

So the work is not merely to make one person's task faster. It is to understand the flow from beginning to end, then improve it without creating a new problem somewhere else.

THE PEOPLE HAVE TO MAKE THE CHANGE REAL

Of course, redesigning a workflow on paper doesn't mean anyone will actually work differently.

People have existing commitments. They have skills they are proud of, routines they understand, and reasonable questions about what happens when the work changes. A future that looks exciting to a leadership team may look uncertain to the people expected to build it.

We spent time on the question of capacity, and there was real disagreement. One view was that people sometimes use “I'm too busy” to protect familiar ways of working. Another concern was that organizations routinely add change work without removing anything else.

I wouldn't assume either explanation is right without looking at how the work actually happens.

What is actually on the team's plate? What work can stop, shrink, or wait? Where is time being lost? What will people need to learn? And what will they have to give up while they learn it?

A participant put a useful name to part of this: opportunity cost. Choosing to work in the future means choosing not to do something else, at least for a while. Pretending otherwise does not make that trade-off disappear.

GIVE PEOPLE A STORY THEY CAN PARTICIPATE IN

We also talked about the role of storytelling. And I don't mean a slick presentation selling everyone on the future. People need to understand why the change matters, what it means for their work, and how they're supposed to contribute.

People need to see themselves inside the story. People need to understand the possible upside of changing and the consequences of staying where they are. They also need to see a path they can actually take.

That's leadership work, not just project management. You have to listen, make the trade-offs visible, give people room to learn, and make decisions about what the organization will stop doing as well as what it will start.

Perhaps the most useful answer to “moonshot or small wins?” is simply: both.

The moonshot gives us a future worth building toward. Small wins give us evidence and confidence. Coordinated workstreams help us make progress. And people make the whole thing possible. It's not an either/or choice. It's an and.

So here's what I'd ask any leadership team pursuing a moonshot: What are we trying to make possible, and what do we need to build, change, or learn to get there?

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About Connection Lab:

Connection Lab is a recurring, open conversation for people exploring leadership, change, how work works, and what organizations can become. Stay connected with Empower Your Results for the next discussion.