CHAPTER   10

The Importance of the Little Victory

O NE OF MY earliest memories involves finding a parking spot. I know this was not a matter of great substance, but it was a little victory and it set up a lifetime of learning to appreciate the value of little victories. After finding the parking spot, I took one of those quarter rides outside a supermarket, and it was amazing fun. The parking spot had nothing to do with the ride, but it forever cemented a relationship between little victories and the potential for huge opportunities they offer.

You see, big victories mean nothing unless we stop to recognize the little victories that got us there along the way. It is all the little victories that add up to the whole, and sometimes that whole takes us to unexpected places with unexpected victories. Don’t get where I’m going with this? Let’s use a car trip as an example.

If your big goal is to get to Bashanville, USA, and you are in Seguraville, USA, which is 150 miles away, most people would plot the most direct path to get there because getting there is the big victory. But when you actually get on the highway for the big trip to Bashanville, you discover that there has been some construction work and you have to get off the main road and onto a side road. You may be tempted to look at this as a setback from your big victory of arriving at Bashanville. But when you look at it creatively, this is anything but a setback because off this side road, you stop and have an unexpected amazing burger at a roadside joint. This is a little victory that makes the big goal worthwhile. No matter what, the little victories along the way have the potential to be more interesting, more meaningful, and more rewarding than the big victory in the end. Sometimes you arrive at your final destination and sometimes you don’t, but that doesn’t take away the value of the little victories along the way.

Businesses and careers are no different.

Creatively, a little victory is a benchmark that you can use to allow more and more little victories to occur even if those victories take you to unexpected places. Here’s what I mean: Perhaps your dream is to open a cupcake bakery on Main Street, and so you get excited about the idea. That is a little victory. You test your cupcake recipe on selected trusted associates who tell you it is the best cupcake ever. That is a little victory. Then you decide to incorporate your cupcake business by registering as an LLC. That is a little victory. When you are waiting to file the LLC, you meet someone in the waiting room who tells you he has a friend who is a chef and she would love your cupcakes. That is a little victory. You meet this chef friend, and she decides to buy your full supply of cupcakes. That too is a little victory.

At this point you may say, “Nir, that takes us away from our dream of opening a cupcake bakery on Main Street. We cannot veer away from our dream! That is the big victory; that is the main goal. If the chef buys all our cupcakes, the dream of opening up a cupcake bakery on Main Street is shattered.” Well, that is true only if you look at it from the analytical mindset. The analytical mindset will accept nothing but the total fulfillment of the predetermined and very specific result (in this case opening a brick-and-mortar Main Street retail cupcake establishment).

But when you look at little victories from a Creator Mindset, the definition of your goals takes on a far more fluid and interesting aspect. Something very profound begins to occur. You begin to recognize that little victories can and will be a series of tangential yet connected occurrences that are just as important as the fulfillment of the predetermined result, which in this case was opening a brick-and-mortar cupcake shop on Main Street. I would argue that the creative occurrence of the little victories is far more important than the predetermined result—far more important.

Why?

When we look at things creatively, we allow ourselves to open up to the reality of what the little victories may be telling us. Perhaps opening a brick-and-mortar store on Main Street wasn’t really the end goal after all, and allowing creativity to shape your destiny just might lead to a better product or service. You can see this in a career path or a company’s path. When we look at little victories creatively, we do not limit our potential to what we have predetermined as the only measure of success. We instead lift all barriers and limitations so that success can become boundless.

I am not suggesting that we abandon a predetermined result. After all, we can always open a brick-and-mortar cupcake shop on Main Street at some point later. There are plenty of businesses and careers that follow a completely linear path. A occurs, then B, followed by C and then D, and so on. That’s okay, but far more careers and companies take a different route. What I am suggesting is that it’s okay for the path—for the little victories—to jump around out of order. Embracing the disorder and finding meaning in it is a little victory of creativity.

The truth is that most people would get discouraged at the first sign of a problem or even a perceived problem, of a detour or a nonlinear path to the predetermined result they hold so dear. But that’s all right because sometimes a detour can become more richly rewarding than the predetermined result.

Remember our roadside burger example? There was once an entrepreneur whose main goal—his big victory—was to sell as many ice cream machines as humanly possible to as many people as possible. But soon his business was faltering. He needed to get creative. Should he find a different machine to sell? Should he find a new market? He kept thinking of short-term analytical solutions that would put a Band-Aid on the problem. But one day while he was delivering a bunch of ice cream machines to a southern California restaurant, he stumbled upon the best burger he’d ever had—with a line of people out the door who seemed to agree. He decided then and there to listen to what the little victory was telling him: Maybe his job was not to keep selling ice cream machines. Maybe, just maybe, it was telling him to get into the restaurant business with the goal of making the best burgers possible. That is creativity. His little victories ended up being a much bigger victory than selling ice cream machines. His name was Ray Croc, and his restaurant is now what we all know as McDonald’s.¹

Although this may not be the most traditional story of little victories adding up, it proves an important point: your goals can and probably will change as a result of your little victories along the way. Ray Croc allowed his little victories to guide him toward a new goal—perhaps one more worthy than the original goal—by listening intently to what those little victories were telling him and where they were helping to steer his ship.

Many companies and folks chugging along in their careers miss clear opportunities because they are blinded by the main target. They fail to smell the flowers along the way—the same flowers that could have a greater bearing on their success than the original goal!

If you have come up short of your target, now is the time to start thinking creatively about the problem. If you are a company, try looking at your product or service. Maybe it’s better burgers. Maybe it’s a free month of service for new clients. Maybe it’s a no-contract option for customers. For your career, try looking at your most recent victories and see if they are pointing you in a direction different from your main goal. What if your goal is to run the finance department and be a chief financial officer but your most recent little victories come easier to you in project management or planning? Perhaps it’s time to reassess your main goals and let the little victories guide you to a new main goal.

The analytical outlook is focused on only one main target, but The Creator Mindset shakes things up and makes you focus on all the individual little victories along the way. Sometimes we don’t make it to our target, and that’s okay. If you feel that you don’t have any little victories along the way, you are not looking hard enough. Looking—and I mean really looking—for the little victories allows you to define success on your own terms and in your own meaningful way. At the end of the day, a shift in your mentality away from the big win and to sustained, manageable, and repeatable little victories will allow a culture of creativity to manifest in everything that you do.

Also, it will give you options to grow as little victories become the canary in the coal mine, an early indication of where you should be paying more attention and steering your company or career.

Little victories are easy to achieve and easy to create if you start modestly. When we hold one big victory as the only possible goal, we lose the opportunity to hear what all the little victories along the way have to say, and their influence on where we end up could be profound.