"Go big or go home!"
Sounds great in a sneaker commercial. But for most of us, that advice does more harm than good.
This week I'm giving you something a little different than my usual "brilliant insights" (i.e., ramblings...): an excerpt from my upcoming book.
This section is about why small steps beat massive action - and how that applies to improv, leadership, and getting your team unstuck.
(The book comes out in April - there's info at the end of this article on how you can join my "Launch Team" and get an advanced reader copy).
If you enjoy or get value from this excerpt, please comment or share!
Start Small, Take Small Steps
I know, I know, as a “motivational speaker” I’m supposed to say things like:
Take massive action! Burn your boats!! Go big or go home!!!
Sounds great in a sneaker commercial, but for me, and most people and teams, that advice does more harm than good. “Go big or go home” usually means we go home tired, guilty, and still stuck. It just turns into a reason to procrastinate.
“Wait,” you might be saying, “in chapter 5 you encouraged me to “set an Impossible Goal! Aren’t you contradicting yourself?”
No, not at all. Yes, you should set an impossible goal that is meaningful and lights you up. But when you take action on it, you should start small. Very, very small. Because massive change rarely starts with massive action. It starts with a single, doable “Yes, And.”
“Yes” is acknowledging where you are: your limits, resources, and uncertainty.
“And” is taking a step: testing, learning, and adjusting.
Every time you (or your team) take one small step forward, you are living the mindset. You’re saying, “Yes, this is my current reality… and here’s what I’m doing with it.”
When organizations go through change, the same principle applies. Big initiatives die under the weight of their own ambition. Leaders who win don’t demand a giant leap from their people, they make it safe to take the next small, visible step. They reward progress, not perfection.
Yes, massive change happens, and it can happen quickly, and it happens one step at a time.
Improv Comedy Happens One Small Step at a Time
One of the hardest, but most important, things for an improv comedian to learn is to stop trying to control the whole scene. You don’t need to know where the scene is going. You can’t control what your fellow performers will say. You have no idea what the audience will suggest.
All you can and should do is to focus on the one thing you can control: Your one next step.
When you try to plan ahead in improv, it can lead to disaster. Early in my improv career, I learned that lesson the hard way in front of two newspaper reviewers. Our show format then was to start with short-form games à la Whose Line, and then we’d close Act I with a 20–30 minute longform built from a single audience suggestion. Our audience suggestion that night was “Kool-Aid.”
If you’re of a certain vintage, you already know the image that detonated in all our heads: a giant red pitcher bursting through a wall yelling, “Ohhhh yeah!” Instantly, every one of us pictured the same finale: somebody bursting through a wall yelling, “Oh yeah!” We didn’t talk about it, but we all silently agreed: that’s the ending.
And that’s when the show died.
For the next 20 minutes we weren’t discovering; we were dragging ourselves toward a pre-chosen punch line. The energy flattened, the creativity vanished, the scenes were all boring, and the audience could feel us straining. We finally hit our big moment, got one good laugh (and a polite review that called the scene “interminable.”)
What went wrong? We stopped taking small steps. We locked in the ending and killed the adventure.
Great improv (and great leadership) doesn't cling to the ending. It trusts the process.
If I could redo that night, we would’ve started with the Kool-Aid Man instead of saving him for the end. Get the obvious idea out, then say yes to what happens next. That’s where discovery lives.
Change works the same way. When leaders script the ending too soon, they strangle innovation. When they take one honest step, see what emerges, and keep saying “Yes, And,” progress becomes inevitable.
One small step at a time beats one perfect plan every single night.
Give Your Team Permission to Take Small Steps
Micromanaging kills creativity. But it usually comes from fear, not ego. Fear of giving up control or having things fail or being done in the “wrong” way.
This is where empowering people to take small steps becomes so powerful.
Small steps create psychological safety: the belief that it’s okay to experiment, speak up, and learn without fear of blame. When people know they won’t get punished for a small misstep, they start taking more action. That’s when innovation and ownership come alive.
Rather than micromanaging, you are giving them freedom to do things their way, but in small increments. You’re not abandoning oversight; you’re redefining it. Instead of telling people exactly what to do, you set clear parameters and let them explore within them. Think of it as creating an improv scene for your team: you establish the boundaries of the story, but let your players discover what’s possible inside it.
After a keynote, a manager in a heavily regulated industry approached me and asked, “I can’t just let people do whatever they want. What if they do something not in compliance? Or even illegal?”
“Absolutely,” I said, “I completely understand. The approach then is to shrink the task. You don’t let them ‘do whatever they want;’ you give them small freedoms to try and experiment within the guardrails of the law and compliance. See what happens, evaluate with them, and then decide the next step.”
He agreed and went back to work and tried it, and a few weeks later he emailed me to let me know that his people responded. Not with overnight transformation, but with something better: energy, ownership, and ideas. When people feel safe to take small steps, they don't just comply, they contribute.
This is the “Yes, And” mindset applied to leadership. “Yes,” you acknowledge that mistakes will happen. “And,” you design a system where those mistakes are manageable, reversible, and instructive.
When you give people small, safe ways to say “Yes, And,” they grow more capable, confident, and creative. And as they grow, you can widen the boundaries a little more. Bit by bit, those micro-permissions turn into macro results.
Because when your team feels safe to take small steps, they don’t just execute change, they own it.
That's the excerpt. And yes, I'm aware of the parallel: I'm telling you to take small steps while also asking you to take a small step right now.
So here it is:
If you want to read more (and get the full book before anyone else), join my Launch Team. You'll get a free advanced reader copy, and all I ask in return is an honest review when it goes live in April.
Drop me a line and let me know you're interested, and I'll add you to the list.
And if you're already on the list, thank you. Seriously.
What's one small step you've been avoiding that you know would make a difference?