Your team member keeps chasing short-term wins. How do you steer them towards the strategic roadmap?

Within my organization, I have discovered that openly acknowledging team members' contributions to immediate objectives proves beneficial in directing them towards our long-term strategic vision.  I begin by congratulating them on their achievements and encouraging trust and transparency. Next, I tactfully shift the discourse towards how these accomplishments align with our broader goals.  This approach not only promotes a change of viewpoint but also strengthens their involvement in our overarching objective, quietly redirecting their attention from instant satisfaction to lasting influence.  Maintaining this balance is critical for sustaining motivation and alignment with our strategic objectives.

Over the yrs, as a product leader, I’ve learned the importance of steering team efforts towards our strategic roadmap. Yet, recognizing short-term wins can also boost morale and align with our long-term goals. Here’s how to balance both: - Acknowledge Small Wins: Celebrate short-term achievements. E.g.: "Great job on the quick feature deployment, team! It's a stepping stone to our larger vision." - Connect to Big Picture: Reinforce how short-term wins contribute to long-term objectives. E.g.: “This user feedback loop is crucial for our annual engagement strategy.” - Encourage Strategic Thinking: Prompt team to consider broader impacts. E.g.: “How does this sprint align with our quarterly goals?” #Leadership #Strategy #TeamSuccess

✨Acknowledge and recognize their short-term wins, validating their efforts and motivation. ✨Connect the dots show how their short-term achievements align with and support the long-term strategic roadmap. ✨Refocus their energy: guide them to prioritize tasks that drive progress towards strategic objective. ✨Encourage a balanced approach: celebrate short-term successes while keeping the strategic roadmap top of mind.

Wins are wins. I think that in many projects, chasing short-term wins or low hanging fruit is pretty normal. You'd definitely want to show appreciation for the hard work toward the win. Then you should give the team member a walkthrough of the big picture (strategic roadmap). If they want to stay focusing (for now) on the quick wins, show them which of these will add immediate value to the overall product vision and strategy. Later on, inspire the team member to use their acumen achieving the quick wins to more complex components. Give them the resources and support that they need to complete the harder tasks, and let them fly. Once they've completed, do a retrospective with the team member, see how they can improve next time.

In my organization, we prioritize understanding the product vision in order to synchronize individual efforts with our strategic strategy. I frequently convene meetings in which I analyze and explain the specific contributions of each function to our long-term objectives. This technique enables team members to gain a broader perspective, seeing the impact of their current contributions on future achievements. The goal is to establish a storyline in which each team member plays a crucial role in our overall accomplishments, diminishing the appeal of immediate benefits that do not align with our larger goals.

Communicating vision through stories is something I always fall back to. Teams remember stories more often; telling a vision as a story is something you must learn as a product leader. To help/aid in communicating visions, I strongly recommend building narratives. You can also extend narratives to commitments and tasks (the famous NCTs framework).

It's a very important part of the PM day-to-day job. With a clear vision, everyone over the company/team have the key to move in the right direction. It's also very important to communicate the "why" behind each decision, the most common mistake made by manager is to believe that people understand what is at stake without explaining it to them. If you want to learn more about that, you should read the "Clarify mission and priorities" part of Extreme ownership book.

My firsthand experience managing a software development company has shown me how crucial it is to align team members with our strategic plan by setting clear and specific objectives. I frequently emphasize the significance of setting SMART goals, which involves aligning our everyday work with our overarching vision. This strategy has facilitated a shift in focus from temporary victories to lasting accomplishments, promoting a more profound understanding of how immediate endeavors contribute to long-term prosperity. The purpose is to demonstrate how today's actions affect tomorrow's objectives, promoting more strategic and deliberate participation from each team member.

-Set clear, measurable objectives that align with the strategic roadmap. - Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) that track progress towards long-term goals. - Tie short-term tasks and projects to these objectives, ensuring everyone understands how their work contributes to the bigger picture.

Again, that important :) Setting clear / realistic / concise objectives is very important to keep your team (and you) motivated and aligned with the vision. A roadmap can help you for that, for an obvious reason. If you need some help to find objectives, you can ask yourself: what is the most important pain point for our customer right now? And don't forget to update your roadmap / objectives list, this is pretty important to keep people accountable and motivated.

Based on my own experience, it has been essential to offer team members extensive tools in order to direct their attention away from immediate benefits and towards our long-term strategic objectives. Through providing access to sophisticated analytics and ongoing learning opportunities, we enable our workers to comprehend the wider influence of their work.  This strategy enhances not just their ability to contribute to long-term goals but also promotes a culture where strategic thinking is the standard.  We prepare them for success in a way that aligns with our company's vision—a strategy that has proven beneficial in maintaining our strategic direction.

Track progress regularly to ensure alignment with strategic objectives. Use data to connect short-term wins to long-term goals. Adjust course if necessary to refocus on strategic priorities. Keep the team focused on achieving strategic objectives.

Monitoring progress is a very effective way to keep people accountable. And if you want to have a good team, and, motivated people, go for it! Plus the monitoring can have various forms, the most simple and quick one is, with no doubt, the daily (only if you keep it quick obv). You can also create a list of milestone and update a % of progess in function of the number of tasks done, for example. This is a key part of keeping you and other motivated, nobody likes to do sport without seeing progress. Well, it's the same here :) no one likes to do tasks without knowing where they're going and where they stand! And what's more, it gets people involved.

Encourage reflection - but more importantly also self-reflect. Once you believe in your organization's goals and their roadmap, you can also start making others believe in them. So here's a critical question: do you believe in what you sell?

Keep in mind that if you treat people like adults, involve them, trust them and empower them to take responsibility (for both success and failure), then you're well on your way to creating a nice dynamic throughout your team. Of course, some people won't be in this mood and will be more in nine-to-five mode. It's up to you to see if they belong in your team :) It's not necessarily a problem, your role is also to help those who want to evolve, but that's another discussion :p

Chasing short-term wins isn’t inherently wrong; it can be necessary depending on the organization’s current phase. However, when thinking about the long-term is feasible, guiding the team towards strategic needle-moving work is crucial. First, ensure you yourself are clear about the long-term vision and have identified the strategic tasks. Regularly mention them and the overarching vision to your team member during one-on-ones, brainstorming sessions, and casual conversations. Reiterating this vision consistently will get it embeded in their mindset, and they will naturally consider them while they plan for the next. This approach will steer them towards the strategic roadmap without being authoritative or condescending.