In Praise of Incrementalism
Do The Next Right Thing ☑️
This piece was originally published in ’s , and you really ought to do yourself a favor and check out what’s happening over there. Thomas is the godfather of a evolving community that has already spun off several fascinating and successful Substack writers — and also me. We’re only halfway through the decade, get in while there’s still time.
It is entirely possible that you are dreaming far too extravagantly. This is not popular advice, and I'm sorry to be the one to bring the news. But there is a certain dysfunction of the human spirit that thrives on daydreams and intricate plans like a termite feasting on lumber. You see, those dreams of yours might be nourishing your despair.
It's not intuitive but there it is. I see it almost daily in my corner of the world, the American South. When we fixate on the Big Problem and won't settle for anything less than total victory. The Big Problem is so serious that small solutions just won't do. In fact, you'll know you're headed towards the Slough of Despond when you begin to push back reflexively against all small victories. "Well that doesn't make any difference" and "that's not going to really change anything" are the antibodies that protect the heart from hope of change. Paradoxically, we want to stay in the realm of our dreams, safe from the risks of failure and the requirements of success.
It was while watching the excellent and heartwarming series "Welcome to Wrexham," reviewed here in masterful style by a writer with real knowledge of the town and people, that I began to realize just how tempting the Big Dream really can be. In order to rebuild a dying sports franchise, and by extension reinvigorate an ailing town, two immensely wealthy people used to getting their way had to "settle," over and over again. Settle for an imperfect roster, an in-process marketing strategy, tentative and cautious local support, barely-sufficient facilities, a few disappointing rebuilding seasons.
No single one of those incremental successes produced the eventual team-promoting victory lap alone. In fact, it would be impossible to judge which were vital contributions and which could have been safely neglected. Victories accrete together until suddenly the trend becomes exponential, the tug-of-war becomes a rout. If you avoid the successes too small to measure, you'll never experience the success too big to ignore.
Now don't misunderstand this as yet another tired appeal to 10,000 Hours or meaningless exhortation to hustle or whatever. I'm simply pointing out that our natural tendency to avoid any step that doesn't immediately produce total victory should be suspect. As my pastor says often, a complicated problem that you've worked years to create won't disappear after a counseling session and a few hasty sweeping changes. You need to get ready for a war.
I'm not switching metaphors haphazardly (well, not too haphazardly). After all, your enemies love incremental solutions. They thrive on them. They live in the neglected corners of committees and the forgotten realms of process. And yes, you do have enemies. All complicated systems gain parasitic status-quo maintenance officers, often self-selected. If you see a Big Problem and want to make a serious effort, they become your enemies whether you desire it or not. They'll strangle your dreams of overnight renovation. Insist that the path forward is too intricate a thicket for any adjustment to the way things are. Lovers of the fog of war, they shun sweeping change because they know the inherent drawbacks of the Big Plan. You'll need to learn from your enemies if you want to win.
Now, I've actually read a surprising amount of military history for someone who's never earned the right to wear a uniform or fired a shot in anger. And if I've learned anything about warfare (an open question), it's that battle is an exercise in bluffing. No position is impregnable, no force distribution is overwhelming, and no operational plan is unstoppable. The stubborn survive. Victory is often a function of selecting an objective despite the enemy's efforts at deterrence, then proceeding with the attack until the true weakness of that enemy is revealed.
Your enemies want you to believe their press clippings, but you need to advance until they are forced to deploy their supposed reserves. You'll find that every complicated system there is, from banks to armies to municipal authorities, relies on fractional reserves. If you can only force the first gap in the line, you'll be surprised at just how little opposition you might meet. The key is to not get caught up in the all-or nothing bid for glory.
When you take the first step and don't quit, you're calling the bluff of every force arrayed against you. Expect opposition. But just about all you can control in your life is your own decisions, including when to quit. So just...don't. Your enemies are looking at their meagre reserves, begging and praying you don’t realize their true situation.
Make them pay for the ground they're holding.
Don't expect those around you to support you, at first. Some of them may have a lot personally invested in their hopeless attitude, and see your success as a rebuke to their inactive indifference. That's ok! Let your early moves forward galvanize them. Be the first one over the top. Others will follow once they realize that incremental wins can happen and do count.
If you need an incremental win to pursue, look no further than your nearest big system "hopelessly deadlocked" in tradition or misaligned incentives. Listen to the veterans and old hands complain. No, really listen with a humble heart. Hear their wisdom and problems, gain their experience. Then humbly suggest a few simple steps forward. They'll inevitably filter out at least one as completely impossible, not even worth trying. Somehow that solution is simultaneously too small to make a real difference but also too big to have a hope of succeeding.
Then do that exact thing.
Sometimes your status as an outsider or a newcomer is more of an asset than a liability. Sometimes you really are the only one in the situation who can see the full picture. Don't let the lack of an easy path to perfection intimidate you away from the clear next step.
It's time you learned to love the committee meetings, position papers, letters to the editor and offline conversations. Your enemy does. Lunch meetings and simple plans and rapid execution are your new playbook. If you want to destabilize what's wrong, you'll need a lot of patience for slowly doing what's right. Long live the grinders, the footsoldiers, the back-benchers and the concerned citizens.
What if you really can just do things?
A book in this line of thinking that has been helpful to me is Ken Stanley's 'Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned.' His incrementalism analogy is that of stepping stones.
For example, a crucial stepping stone in the invention of the computer was (of all things), the noble vacuum tube:
"In fact, if you were alive in 1750 with the objective of building some kind of computer, you’d never think of inventing a vacuum tube first. Even after vacuum tubes were first discovered, no one would realize their application to computation for over 100 years. The problem is that the stepping stone does not resemble the final product. Vacuum tubes on their own just don’t make people think about computers. But strangely enough, as history would have it vacuum tubes are right next to computers in the great room of all possible inventions—once you’ve got vacuum tubes you’re very close to having computers, if only you could see the connection. The problem is, who would think of that in advance? The arrangement, or structure, of this search space is completely unpredictable."
Amen. Step by step...and its corollary: Plod on...plod on...plod on.