Are you looking to grow more aggressively? Do you have goals you hope to achieve but seem to consistently fall short? Let me suggest that perhaps what’s missing is not a strategy, not desire, not the right players on the team but something else – momentum.
Sir Isaac Newton, the famed 17th-century scientist, gave us several laws explaining how our universe works. His first law of motion states that an object at rest will stay at rest, and an object in motion will remain in motion in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. In marketing, we see this principle play out in our everyday decisions. If you are currently satisfied with your job, your house, your wardrobe, it’s easier to stick with what you’ve got until some significant level of influence compels you to make a change. That influence is typically an external force we call advertising. The goal of any ad is to help overcome our tendency to stick with the status quo. It’s called inertia. Even when the status quo is uncomfortable and undesirable, we tend to stick with it unless forced to change – and most of us don’t like change, even when it’s a good change. Sometimes the need to make a change, to break our inertia, requires momentum.
Once you are moving forward, you are making a change, a shift. Adding momentum can be the secret sauce that takes you over the top. Momentum is where you build on the speed and force of your movement.
Consider this; a fully loaded freight train traveling 50 miles an hour can plow through a 5-foot steel-reinforced concrete wall like butter. Yet, that same freight train sitting still can be stopped by placing a single one-inch block directly in front of the drive wheel. With that block in place, the locomotive won’t budge. Why? It has no momentum.
We see the power of momentum in sports all the time. A team that has been behind the entire game, clearly being outplayed, gets a break, a key first down, or a three-point shot at the end of the quarter. The trailing team gains some emotional momentum and builds on it. Pretty soon, the team that’s been ahead the entire game is on its heels and winds up losing the game. Momentum is a game-changer.
So within your team, your business even your family, what can you do to build momentum? How can you build on the forward progress you are already having? What bonus, words of encouragement, unexpected play can you introduce that can be like adding lighter fluid to an already burning fire? Momentum exaggerates the talents of everyone on the team. It makes you better and can make your problems seem like speed bumps.
Think of ways to build on your forward progress. Look for ways to add momentum to the success you are already experiencing and watch what happens.
