WHAT YOU'LL TAKE AWAY
• The final win is a lagging indicator. The work that earns it deserves to be recognized while it's happening.
• Celebrating progress (not just outcomes) builds the culture of trust and boldness that keeps winning.
• Great leaders name the right moves before the scoreboard confirms them. That's what makes teams feel seen.
It was a Sunday. A deadline. A threat disguised as a negotiation.
A major television network had been in talks with our team, and they had leverage. If we didn't sign their deal by end of day, they were prepared to hold our customers hostage. They knew it would overwhelm our call centre. They knew the cost. They were counting on us to blink.
They also tried to weaponize an improper early termination against us. They believed they held every card.
What they didn't know was what we were building on our end of the table.
While they were boarding their plane, our lawyer was already walking into court.
The moment we understood that a reasonable agreement wasn't coming, our team moved. They filed in appeals court. No phones. No wifi on that flight. No way to reach us, and no way to stop what was already in motion.
When the plane landed, their phones were ringing off the hook.
We didn't win the deal that day. The contract was signed a week later. But when we reconvened as a team and looked around the room at what we had pulled off together, we celebrated. Not the outcome. The strategy.
Why We're Afraid to Celebrate Early
There's a belief wired into a lot of high performers: you don't pop the champagne until it's done. Until the ink is dry. Until the number is confirmed.
That belief has real roots. Nobody wants to tempt fate. Nobody wants to look out of touch when things fall apart in the final hour. And in competitive environments, premature celebration can feel like a loss of edge.
But here's what that belief costs you:
It trains your team to believe that nothing they do is ever enough. That the only thing that matters is the last step. That months of discipline, creativity, and courage can be erased by a single bad outcome. That's not a culture of excellence. That's a culture of anxiety.
Progress Is Where Leadership Lives
The final result is almost always a lagging indicator. It reflects decisions made weeks or months earlier. Which means by the time you win, the real work (the thinking, the pivoting, the holding together under pressure) is already behind you.
If you wait for the win to acknowledge that work, you've missed the moment when it mattered most.
That Sunday in court wasn't our victory lap. But it was the moment our team proved something important to themselves: that we could read a situation clearly, move decisively under pressure, and execute without hesitation. That's the capability that wins contracts. And it deserved to be named.
You don't celebrate to declare victory. You celebrate to tell your team: what you just did was real.
What Celebrating Progress Actually Does
Recognizing momentum before the final result does something that end-state celebration can't. It anchors people to the process. It teaches them to trust their own execution, not just their outcomes.
It also builds resilience. When teams know that their effort is seen regardless of the final scoreboard, they're more willing to take the risks that lead to breakthrough results. They don't wait for permission to be bold.
And practically speaking: most of the things worth doing in business are long. The journey from idea to impact can take years. If you only celebrate at the finish line, you will lose people (emotionally, sometimes literally) long before you get there.
Three Questions Worth Asking Right Now
If you lead a team, or if you are someone who holds yourself to a high standard, these are worth sitting with:
1. What has your team done in the last 30 days that deserves to be acknowledged, regardless of where the final result lands?
2. Is there a moment of creative courage, decisive action, or quiet consistency that went unrecognized because it didn't show up on a report?
3. What would change about how your team moves if they knew that the quality of their effort was always being seen?
I'm not suggesting you lower your standards. I'm suggesting that celebrating the right things (the smart play, the disciplined execution, the moment the team came together) is how you raise them.
Community Challenge: The Progress Pause
This week, before your next team meeting ends, name one moment of progress out loud. Not a result. A decision, a move, a behaviour that the team demonstrated that deserves to be marked.
Then ask: What did this take from us? What does it say about who we are as a team?
That's the whole exercise. Name the progress. Make it real.
If this resonated, comment PROGRESS and tell me: what is one moment from the past month that your team pulled off that hasn't been properly celebrated? And if you want my Progress Pause framework, the simple template I use to run this inside team meetings, drop PAUSE and I'll send it directly.