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Momentum is a funny thing. While the physical phenomenon may be simple to scientifically measure, in everyday life it is often relegated to little more than a subjective and fleeting sensation. Much like the wind, momentum can't be seen – but you can certainly feel its presence.

Leaders will describe the sense of momentum they feel when their organisation is kicking goals month on month. Runners describe the flow-state of momentum at the halfway mark of a marathon when their body begins to run the race with a rhythm of its own. And we all know that thrill of work days when it feels like the tailwind of momentum is our best friend and everything we set out to do happens with ease and effortlessness.

Much like the wind, momentum can't be seen – but you can certainly feel its presence.

However, while momentum feels great, it can also seem as elusive as the fickle flashes of inspiration – here one minute and gone the next. Although it can be hard to pin down where momentum comes from, we certainly know how to describe the sensation when it hits us.

Here are just a few of the sentiments I routinely hear from clients as they describe the feeling of having momentum:

• ‘I feel like I'm in a groove or in my element – just holding on for the ride!'

• ‘Everything and everyone seems to be in sync. Such a great feeling of harmony and synergy.'

• ‘I was on a roll and everything just seemed to come together at exactly the right time.'

• ‘I felt as if I was in a sweet spot where it wasn't even hard work anymore.'

• ‘The business is firing on all cylinders and I can hardly keep up with the pace – it's an exciting time to be at the helm.'

• ‘We were riding high and felt almost invincible or unstoppable. The growth was exponential and when people asked what the secret was, I honestly didn't know.'

• ‘After a while it was like I was going with the flow – no longer trying so hard but getting better results than ever!'

Now, while momentum certainly feels great and can lead to some incredible results, here are three tangible reasons to pursue and preserve it at any cost.

REASON 01
Momentum is generative

Put simply, the more momentum you have, the more you get. In the same way that success breeds success, the energy of momentum always feeds on itself. While it may be slow at first, in no time momentum grows exponentially till you reach a critical mass.

In his excellent book The Compound Effect, legendary business thinker Darren Hardy likens the process of building momentum to that of picking up speed on a merry-go-round when we were children:

The first step was always the hardest – getting it to move from a standstill. You had to push and pull, grimace and groan, throw your entire body into the effort … finally you were able to get up a little bit of speed and run alongside it … you had to keep running faster and faster, pulling it behind you as you ran with all your might. Finally, success! Once the merry-go-round was spinning at a good clip, momentum took over, making it easy to keep it going. 2

The key is this. Get moving – regardless of how hard it can be at first. Gain traction and get the tailwind of momentum working for you early on, then all you need to do is set your sails and go with the flow.

Perhaps the generative power of momentum is most clearly seen in the sporting arena. More often than not, the team that scores the first goal starts a chain reaction. As they get into a groove, confidence builds and the next goal becomes almost inevitable, then the next, then the next. Conversely, the winning team's opponents can easily fall prey to the negative effects of momentum – the further they fall behind, the harder it is to turn things around and fight back. The reality is that momentum is equally potent when it is working against you (something we will explore in the pages ahead).

We all know that if you want something done, give it to a busy person. Why? Because the gravity of inertia has a tremendous pull that can be hard to break. Busy people are already in motion, so getting things done is no big deal.

Remember, energy is built from energy – speeding up that which is already moving is far easier than getting an inert object (or person, or organisation) off go.

REASON 02
Momentum is attractive

Everyone wants to be on a bus that's going somewhere. There are few things more appealing than being part of an organisation, a movement or even a personal relationship that is on an upward trajectory.

Momentum truly gives you an unfair advantage when it's working on your side.

By the same token, the first hint of stalling or waning can cause even the most steadfast and loyal devotees to start considering their options.

Better still, like attracts like. Happening places attract happening people. Inspiring places attract inspired people. Even great opportunities seem to be attracted to places of great opportunity. Momentum truly gives you an unfair advantage when it's working on your side.

I was reminded of this recently when lining up for breakfast at a happening café in the rural outskirts of Sydney one Sunday morning. When my wife and I arrived, having driven 40 minutes to get there, the line was out the door and a staff member at the head of the queue informed us that there'd be a 50-minute wait to be seated. We'd heard from a few friends how good this café's food was, so we decided to stick it out. When we finally sat down to breakfast almost an hour later, the queue was twice as long as when we'd arrived. While the breakfast was good, in reality there would have been five cafés within a five-minute drive of it that would have been as good – and likely had no wait for a table. But regardless, we, plus hundreds of others, fell for the hype and lined up anyway because this café was the hot place to be – it was a business with momentum.

When you've got momentum on your side, you don't need to develop clever strategies for recruiting staff or persuading customers – both will be attracted to you because you are going somewhere and they want to be a part of it.

REASON 03
Momentum is protective

Just as love covers a multitude of sins in the personal realm, momentum covers a multitude of sins in the professional arena.

Having momentum working for you makes you appear more talented and clever than you really are. When momentum is on your side, you get disproportionately more than you deserve through the power of leverage. Conversely, when momentum is working against you, it's easy to appear ill-fated and incompetent – when neither may actually be the case.

Momentum also provides a powerful sense of stability to any organisation or individual. If you think back to when you learned to ride a bicycle as a child, you will recall how you came to realise that speed is your best friend. Naturally, this seemed counterintuitive at first; typically, an unsteady rider will assume that the lowest speed possible is safest. The reality, however, is that a bike is at its most unsafe and unstable when moving slowly; forward momentum is the key to setting off and staying upright.

Having momentum working for you makes you appear more talented and clever than you really are.

When the tide turns

While we all love the sensation of momentum and the benefits it offers, the reality is that we also know how it feels when momentum starts to dissipate or disappear.

The language my clients use is again often the clearest indication that they sense the tailwinds of momentum have abated or even become headwinds of lethargy:

• ‘We felt like we had lost our mojo – we were doing all the same things as before but now it felt like we were going through the motions. The spark just wasn't there.'

• ‘It was as if things came off the boil. We were no longer the flavour of the month. Our growth plateaued at first and then began to nosedive.'

• ‘I noticed the culture internally start to shift. Staff members seemed despondent – as if everything was a bit ho-hum. Passion and enthusiasm gave way to indifference and even boredom.'

• ‘Suddenly even the simplest tasks felt like a hard slog – the effortlessness of going with the flow gave way to a daily grind of drudgery. It felt like we were constantly up against it.'

• ‘Little things started to get blown way out of proportion. Even the most minor setback was cause for frustration and bitter infighting. It's like we took our eyes off the ball and turned on each other.'

CASE STUDY

Tough times

@ Twitter

A few short years ago, Twitter was the undisputed runner-up to Facebook in the social media world. More recently, however, a host of new, hotter social apps have taken the spotlight.

At the time of writing, apps such as Instagram, Snapchat, Dubsmash, WhatsApp and Pinterest all rank ahead of Twitter in download rankings. Further still, Instagram's monthly active user count of 300 million is roughly equal to that of Twitter and industry insider Tero Kuittinen suggests that it won't be long before Snapchat is nipping at Twitter's heels too.3

Twitter has failed to achieve the mass-market appeal of other social media platforms. One commentator sums it up this way: ‘Ask someone, anyone, “Is your mother on Facebook?” And they will likely answer yes. But you ask the same question of Twitter, the answer is almost always no.'4

The numbers indicate that it isn't just mothers who are failing to embrace Twitter. Twitter's user growth stalled during mid 2015 and in the fourth quarter even shrank by 2 million monthly active users.5 While the company's share price had hit a record high of US$74.73 in December 2013, by early 2016 this had plummeted by almost 80 per cent.6

There are myriad reasons for Twitter's momentum woes.

According to Kuittinen, one of the main things Twitter lacks is the ‘fun, adventurous, funky, experimental' feeling users get on younger social apps such as Snapchat and Dubsmash. Twitter has been slow to make the platform more visual; however, its acquisition of the live-video app Periscope in early 2015 could help.7

A second key drag on momentum is that Twitter is just not easy enough to use. Even Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was forced to acknowledge this in an October 2015 tweet: ‘Our work forward is to make Twitter easy to understand by anyone in the world, and give more utility to the people who love to use it daily.'8 Dorsey and other Twitter executives have acknowledged that jump-starting growth momentum will require rethinking fundamental parts of the service, such as the 140-character limit.9

For Twitter, the stakes are high. They must engage a wider cross-section of new users lest they become, as one technology commentator friend of mine recently described it, the BlackBerry of social media.

Starbucks coming off the boil

In October 2006, the US coffee giant Starbucks was rapidly losing its mojo. The company's shares began a decline that would last more than two years and leave them trading at $8 (down from $40 at their peak). In the face of global economic turmoil, many started to feel that the brand was, as the Financial Times put it in 2010, ‘a poster child for the frothy excess of a bygone era'.10 Clearly something needed to be done – and fast.

In January 2008, Starbucks' founder, Howard Schultz, returned as CEO, telling analysts, ‘Just as we created this problem, we will fix it.' Re-igniting Starbucks' momentum was not easy, but today the coffee giant is once again riding high and enjoying greater success than ever. In part 03 we will look at just how Howard Schultz achieved such a phenomenal feat.

2

Hardy, D 2010, The Compound Effect, Vanguard Press, New York, p. 94.

3

Chaykowski, K 2015, ‘Add this to Twitter's growth woes: a flock of younger social apps threatens to eclipse it', Forbes, 15 June.

4

Goel, V 2014, ‘Twitter has a problem with your mother', The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 February.

5

Koh, Y 2016, ‘Twitter woes mount as user growth stalls', The Wall Street Journal, 10 February.

6

Russolillo, S 2016, ‘Why Twitter should eyeball Yahoo's past', The Wall Street Journal, 9 February.

7

Chaykowski, K 2015, ‘Add this to Twitter's growth woes: a flock of younger social apps threatens to eclipse it', Forbes, 15 June.

8

Koh, Y 2015, ‘Twitter names co-founder Jack Dorsey as CEO', The Wall Street Journal, 5 October.

9

Koh, Y 2015, ‘Twitter to cut up to 8 per cent of workforce', The Wall Street Journal, 13 October.

10

Rigby, R 2011, 28 Business Thinkers Who Changed the World, Kogan Page Limited, London, p. 149.