Watch a 1500-metre final and count the attacks.
You’ll be surprised: the runners who win almost never attack. One surge, sometimes two, placed at the exact moment they make the difference.
The others, the ones who burst into the lead on the first lap, push again on the second and attack once more on the bend, invariably finish in the middle of the pack, cooked from trying to win everything all the time.
New roles go through exactly the same phenomenon.
It’s called busyness: the reflex of the new manager who, to prove their worth, opens ten initiatives in six weeks, announces changes in every direction and wants a win on every front.
Six months later, no initiative has been completed, the team is out of breath, and the credibility these initiatives were supposed to build has turned into polite scepticism: “he announces a lot”.
Yet first victories, the famous quick wins, are indispensable.
The whole question is how to run them like a middle-distance champion: few attacks, but the right ones, at the right time.
What is a quick win really for?
The quick win is often presented as proof of competence: showing quickly that you can deliver. That misses its real purpose.
In the first six months, nobody seriously doubts your competence; that is why you were chosen.
What everyone does doubt, however, are three things that a well-chosen quick win is precisely designed to establish:
- That you listened.
Your first victory tells the team what you took away from your first weeks.
If it fixes an irritant everyone has been complaining about for two years, the message is crystal clear: “he heard us”.
If it tackles a topic nobody was talking about, the message is just as clear, and far less flattering. - That things can change.
In many teams, fatalism is the real illness: “it’s always been this way here”.
A quick victory, even a modest one, breaks that story.
It reopens the field of possibilities, and it is this capital of hope, far more than the victory itself, that will fund your deeper transformations. - That winning with you is enjoyable.
The way you deliver and celebrate your first victory is watched as closely as the victory itself.
If the credit goes to the team, you have just recruited allies for what comes next.
If the credit flows up to you alone, you have just taught everyone not to go the extra mile for your projects.
In other words: a quick win is not a show of strength.
It is an act of communication disguised as a result.
The four quick-win traps
- The cosmetic quick win.
Repainting the break room, renaming the meetings, launching yet another survey. Visible, fast, risk-free and completely transparent… Everyone can see you chose the easy way.
A quick win that solves no real problem builds nothing. It even uses up some of your credit, because it reveals what you consider a victory. - The quick win that commits the future.
This is the opposite trap, and the most dangerous one: making a structural decision under the guise of a quick victory (reorganizing a department, changing a major tool, altering a core process…) before you have understood the terrain.
Remember the first-lap rule: you observe before you decide.
A good quick win is recognizable because it pre-empts none of your big future choices. It frees up credit; it doesn’t spend your options. - The stolen quick win.
Sometimes a project launched before you arrived comes to fruition during your first months. The temptation to take ownership of it is human: it happened on your watch.
And the effect is disastrous: the team knows exactly who did the work.
Do the opposite: celebrate that victory loudly and credit those who built it, your predecessor included if need be.
You won’t win a trophy, but something far rarer: the reputation of someone who gives credit where it is due. - Busyness, then.
Ten quick wins are not worth three times as much as three: they are worth less.
Every open initiative consumes attention, yours and the team’s, and every unfinished one tells a story of inconsistency.
In racing, they say an attack that isn’t decisive is an attack that weakens you. Set yourself a simple rule: never more than two or three first victories at the same time, and nothing new until the previous one has been delivered.
The method: find, choose, deliver, tell
- Find: listen for irritants, not ideas.
The seam of good quick wins is not in your strategic plan; it lies in the conversations of your first weeks.
One question brings it to light almost every time, to ask in each one-on-one meeting: “What has been bothering you here for a long time that nobody ever fixes?”
Write everything down. The answers that come up three times are your candidates. - Choose: four criteria, none negotiable.
A good first victory is visible (its result can be seen without having to explain it), fast (deliverable in 30 to 60 days), real (it fixes a genuine irritant, not a symbol), and reversible or neutral (it mortgages none of your big upcoming decisions).
Add a consistency filter: it must point, even modestly, in the direction of your mandate.
A victory that runs against your roadmap creates confusion about your direction. - Deliver: with the team, never in its place.
The reflex of the hurried new manager is to do it themselves: it’s faster and the result is guaranteed.
It is also the best way to miss what matters: a first victory delivered solo proves that you can do it, whereas a first victory delivered by the team proves that the team can win with you.
Hand the initiative to one or two people, give them the means and protection they need, and keep for yourself the role that is truly yours: removing obstacles. - Tell: there is no such thing as an invisible victory.
Out of modesty or reserve, many managers deliver their first victory… and say nothing about it.
It is the mirror image of busyness: in a new role, visibility is part of the job.
A message to the team naming the people behind the result, a mention at the committee with the impact figures, a word to your manager linking this victory to your mandate…
Three gestures, ten minutes, and your quick win now works for your credibility instead of sleeping in a report.
After the first victories: the moment of truth
We have to finish with the part the guides forget: quick wins have an expiry date.
Around the sixth month, their power runs out.
The organization has understood that you can deliver quickly, and it now expects something else: the deep transformations, the ones that take quarters, the ones you were really appointed for.
It’s a delicate tipping point, because quick victories are addictive: they bring immediate recognition, whereas deep initiatives offer only silent effort.
Some managers never leave this mode: they string together small victories for two years and are surprised to be criticized for a lack of vision.
In racing, you can spot them: they are the runners who win every intermediate sprint… and never the race.
Your first victories are the sprint within the sprint: they buy you the goodwill and political credit you need to run the rest of the distance.
But the race, the real one, is months 7 to 18, the time to set your own pace.
So the question to ask yourself at six months is not “What is my next quick win?”.
It is: “What have my first victories allowed me to buy, and what do I do with it now?”
Frequently asked questions about quick wins
How many quick wins should you aim for in a new role?
Two or three, delivered in the first six months, are more than enough.
And a single one, well chosen and well told, is better than five scattered ones.
The criterion isn’t the number but clarity: at the end of the sixth month, your team and your management should be able to name, without hesitating, one or two concrete things that have improved since you arrived.
What is the difference between a quick win and a strategic priority?
The time horizon and the purpose.
- A quick win is delivered in 30 to 60 days and serves to establish trust.
- A strategic priority unfolds over quarters and serves to fulfil the mandate.
The classic trap is to confuse the two: treating a deep transformation like a quick victory (it will fail from being rushed), or filling your mandate with quick victories (it will ring hollow at the first review).
The two are planned together, but they aren’t managed the same way.
What if I can’t find any possible quick win in my context?
It’s rare, but it happens: highly constrained contexts, organizations in crisis, frozen room for manoeuvre.
Two avenues:
- reduce the scale: a team irritant fixed in two weeks is a perfectly respectable quick win, even if it is invisible to the executive committee
- change register: clearing up a grey area that was poisoning everyone (roles, priorities, decision-making channels) is often the most appreciated victory of all, and it costs nothing.
If even that is impossible, the signal goes beyond quick wins: it is your real room for manoeuvre that you need to clarify with your management.
Should you announce your quick wins in advance?
To your manager, yes.
Including your targeted first victories in your roadmap (around day 60) shows that your plan is concrete.
To the team and the rest of the organization, be more careful: announcing creates an expectation, and an announced quick victory that is late becomes a very visible slow defeat.
The runners’ rule applies: you don’t warn your opponents before you attack.
You attack, and then everyone sees it.
