War Story - Minimum Viable Progress: A Lesson on the importance of early wins in transformation

It was February last year, and we were in the kick-off meeting for a transformation initiative we were leading for a financial services organisation. As part of the session, we asked a simple question: what would success look like at the end of the programme?

One of the senior leaders wrote, “Finishing what we start 🙂”.

The response resonated across the room. Not because it reflected cynicism, but because it captured a shared aspiration. Everyone understood that meaningful transformation is defined less by intent and more by execution. That idea became an anchor for the work that followed.

We structured the programme using a familiar and effective approach: define, discover, design, deliver. The ambition was deliberately broad, spanning organisational design, process improvement, and the practical application of AI and automation in day-to-day operations.

After four weeks of discovery, we had identified around 130 improvement opportunities across the business. This put the programme on strong footing, but it was also a point where momentum could easily have been lost. The scale of opportunity was clear, while tangible delivery still lay ahead.

At that stage, we made a deliberate decision to focus on progress rather than perfection.

Alongside the wider transformation, a working group was asked to select a small number of initiatives that could be delivered within one month. The constraint was intentional. These were not chosen because they represented the largest financial upside, but because they addressed real pain points and could be completed quickly.

We referred to this as minimum viable progress.

Within the month, all of the selected initiatives were delivered. One of them introduced AI into engineering and coding practices, generating a meaningful capacity saving for the team. More importantly, it demonstrated that AI could be applied pragmatically and responsibly, creating value in the flow of everyday work rather than remaining an abstract future capability.

The impact went beyond the individual initiatives. Early delivery changed the dynamic of the programme. Teams moved from discussing change to making it happen. Confidence grew, collaboration strengthened, and there was a growing belief that this transformation would be different because it was already producing results.

There is strong evidence that achievement and recognition are powerful motivators at work. By enabling teams to choose what to deliver, co-design the solutions, and see them through to completion, we created both. Ownership became tangible, progress was visible, and momentum followed.

We are proud to say that the programme went on to deliver a significant amount of benefit for the organisation through 2025. Those results came from sustained effort and disciplined execution, but in hindsight it is clear that the early wins played a critical role. They gave us a ticket to play. They created credibility and trust, and they earned us the licence to take on more complex, higher-impact change.

As a result, we now set a clear expectation for our transformation initiatives: something of value must be delivered within the first 90 days. With the increasing availability of low-code and no-code platforms, and tools such as Copilot and AI agents, this is more achievable than ever.

The lesson is straightforward. Transformations gain traction when they demonstrate, early and visibly, that they can finish what they start. Minimum viable progress builds confidence, reduces uncertainty, and creates the conditions for meaningful, lasting change.