Sempre Avanti - Always forward
Maybe not in the way you think
This past week I found myself overwhelmed by several of my writing goals, and I found myself revisiting this blog post I wrote for a Resilient Leader program I designed in the late 2010's. The post reinvigorated me and I hope it resonates for you.
The 10th Mountain Division slogan for their campaign in WWII was "Sempre Avanti", which translates from Italian to "Always Forward." It's easy to see how that motto affected the men of the 10th: they progressed across the Apennine range in Italy, taking every objective asked of them and never giving up any ground. Always Forward, into the Po Valley where the German Army in Italy ultimately surrendered.
Sempre Avanti is a powerful call. "Always Forward'. Imagine yourself as a young soldier of the 10th: the view of the next ridge, clearly ahead and necessary to protect your allies from German artillery. The pride of seeing your progress behind you, knowing that the land you have passed has been liberated. You see your past as progress and your future filled with worthwhile goals.
I have to admit, as inspiring as Sempre Avanti is, it is also a little intimidating. Thinking of mountain soldiers taking ridge after ridge brings forth a sense of big accomplishments, clear and impressive. While I have big projects in my work, the top of those metaphoric mountains are far apart in time. And I find that many of my clients are in the same situation: big goals feel amazing to achieve, but that thrill and its resultant motivation burst are infrequent. With that in mind, it makes me as: how do we lead in the spirit of Always Forward? How do we make big goals more frequent?
Turns out, we don't have to. In fact, research suggests that we shouldn't. Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School and consultant Steven J. Kramer have researched what they call the inner work life, and its consequents for motivation and success. It turns out that the biggest influence of inner work life is making progress - even a little progress - towards meaningful goals.
Amibile and Kramer asked knowledge workers in various fields to keep diaries to examine the inner work life of modern professionals. Through examining over 10,000 diary entries, they discovered the Progress Principle -
Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work. And the more frequently people experience that sense of progress, the more likely they are to be creatively productive in the long run.
The progress principle can be Sempre Avanti on a modern time scale. Always forward means seeing the progress you have made today, noting where you have moved towards your meaningful goal. How do you do this? One tactic that productivity gurus suggest is a morning journal to focus on the coming day. For Sempre Avanti and feeling that progress, try the opposite: a day-ending journal, writing down one to three things that moved forward in the day. Making yourself mindful of the success you have had is key part of reaping the success of small wins.
Amibile suggest that you track this consistently, day to day-
Don't make a big commitment to it; tell yourself you'll do it for just one month. Five to 10 minutes a day, focusing on just one project, one issue, that you want to work on. Pick a time in the day when you're likely to have about 10 minutes uninterrupted. It's a good idea if it can be the same time every day. Attach a reminder to that time. So if you want to do your diary before you leave work, you might set a repeating calendar alert for 15 minutes before you take off …
Sempre Avanti is Always Forward, but it's easy to see it as Always Forwards in Big, Leaping Bounds. That's not the right answer. The true motivating power in Sempre Avanti is that each step is progress, and when we acknowledge that step it brings us a small zing of motivation.
So now, instead of thinking of that soldier on the top of the ridge, I think of him a quarter of the way up. Each step a small victory: ski and skin moving forward into the powder, closer and closer to the goal. Each slide is progress, no matter how small or hard. Sempre Avanti.
My understanding of Sempre Avanti and the history of the 10th Mountain Division comes from books including The Boys of Winter and The North Apennines and Beyond that I read in preparing a course on resilience.