8

Momentum

Momentum is really a leader’s best friend. Sometimes it’s the only difference between winning and losing.

—JOHN MAXWELL

ONE OF OUR COACHING CLIENTS, Denise, is an executive at a large medical instruments firm. When we first met Denise, she told us about a complex project she conceived some months back.

As someone who’s known by colleagues to be serious, organized, and above all innovative, no one was surprised when Denise stepped forward with a visionary idea. Her idea was to build a new platform with a “dashboard” to connect and measure in real time the sales of their various medical devices and therapies. The system would deliver data to sales reps and marketers and allow them to see which products were gaining momentum at any given time. In the past, they had no way to quickly compare sales side by side and extract the deal specifics and pricing. This system had the potential to modernize their market-facing units.

The project was massive and would require new hardware and software, updated processes and training, and all-new performance metrics across the company. But the return on investment was compelling. If the system worked as planned, it would save money and increase customer satisfaction.

Denise presented the plan to her boss, who helped her sell it to the executive committee. After some trepidation, they gave Denise the green light and advanced enough capital to launch phase one of the project. Denise and her team worked eleven-hour days for weeks, doing the research and starting the design process. Everything looked promising. Then, something happened out of the blue that stunned Denise.

Denise’s boss called her into his office and took her to task. “We’re sixty days into your project. . . . Where are the results you promised us? I sold the executive team on this project and you haven’t done your part to show progress. I’m putting the project on hold before it goes farther south.”

After licking her wounds, Denise took a little time and, with some help from her coach, she figured out what had happened. She had developed her idea, analyzed the return on investment, and enrolled her stakeholders, but she had never checked back to communicate her interim progress with her boss or the executive committee. What’s more, she never went far enough to sell her vision to the rest of the organization. She had no coalition behind her. The executive team saw a flurry of activity and expended resources, but there was no momentum that they could see. Denise had an aha moment. She realized that she needed to keep selling even after she had started the project. As much as Denise hated to admit it, her big project was delayed because she’d skipped crucial steps that would have helped her pick up steam and maintain support.

THE UNWRITTEN RULE: Manage the Physics of Momentum

Momentum is the force or speed of an object in motion. In business, momentum is the increase in the rate of the development of a process.¹ Momentum keeps us moving forward and focused on our goals, instead of engaging in a frustrating series of starts and stops. As we’ve mentioned, it is harder for women to earn the badge of trust as leaders because, as research from Catalyst asserts, “gender stereotypes portray women as lacking the qualities that people commonly associate with effective leadership. This often creates false perceptions that women leaders just don’t measure up to men in important ways.”² For these systemic reasons, momentum is exceedingly important for women.

Instead of working harder for recognition, we coach women to build momentum by creating a state of energy and strategic forward movement. When it comes to momentum, a law of physics is in play. Energy builds with each milestone, and small wins eventually add up to influence.

LIMITING BELIEFS That Halt Our Momentum

Before moving on to master the strategies that actively help us create momentum, it’s important to first acknowledge the limiting beliefs that hold us back.

“I get tired of the politics”

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus is the iconic figure punished in Hades by being forced to roll an immense boulder uphill, only to see it roll back down, over and over again, for all of eternity.

Sound familiar? One of the women we interviewed likened the task of achieving momentum in her career to enduring this fruitless plight. “Even when I do my work extremely well, I feel like I’m being blocked. My momentum is constantly halted by difficult political dynamics that slow me down and minimize my accomplishments.”

In many organizations, office politics is nonstop. It is that ongoing, continuous drumbeat of political dynamics that can wear some of us down and halt our momentum if we are not properly conditioned.

“I don’t like to brag”

No one likes a showboat, right? Well, that way of thinking only takes us so far. The reality is that our extreme modesty is another major momentum derailer. In fact, when we review 360-degree feedback reports, we are reminded that managers are not mind readers. They do not know all that their employees accomplish unless someone tells them. One boss said, “If you have done something great, let me know—I need to know the facts.”

A 2014 study from the United Kingdom published in Psychology of Women Quarterly found that women are willing to celebrate the accomplishments of friends and colleagues but they are much less eager to engage in selfpromotion.³ This corroborates what we’ve found in our research, as well as what we witness every day in our coaching work. Many women put self-promotion in the “bad behavior” category, whereas our male colleagues find it simple to take credit for their own accomplishments. The female leadership paradigm is more about collaboration and teamwork, and less about showcasing individual success. This is something to be proud of, yet we need to be willing to own our achievements and build on them to fuel our momentum.

How do we do this? Write them down. Track them in an accomplishments log. What have you been working on lately? What challenges have you addressed? A consistent review, even monthly, can be invaluable. We are busy. We cannot remember our recent results and accomplishments, so reflect and track them. Then you have something to talk about.

We then tell women to find a way to talk about their accomplishments in a way that feels authentic to them. Some of us are great storytellers. Other people are adept at communicating in a slightly self-deprecating way so people barely know they are talking up their achievements. And then there are those of us who can just flat-out own our accomplishments without looking bad. Everyone has her own style. What’s yours?

“It’s like I’m driving through fog—I can’t see clearly”

A third trend is a sense of being lost, or losing sight of our vision. It’s very easy to get caught up in the everyday blizzard of agenda items punctuated by the occasional crisis. We lose our way and sense of direction. Then we are flying blind and proceeding wherever the wind takes us. But achieving momentum requires us to remain focused by managing our direction, perspective, and alignment.

The task of managing our direction relates to our advice regarding vision and checking the weather (chapter 2). Momentum needs to begin with the end in mind. Acknowledging that our ultimate target will sometimes shift, we need to periodically stop to aim ourselves in the right direction. Managing our perspective is about where we are in the journey and how far we have left to go. For example, our decisions—how we deal with setbacks and so on—should be different depending on whether we are at the beginning of the journey, near the very end, or somewhere in the middle. Finally, managing our alignment reminds us to make sure we achieve small wins early so we gain momentum faster and sustain it. Using navigational reminders such as these helps us reflect on the journey and not get lost in the complexity of so many overlapping tasks and commitments.

STRATEGIES to Manage the Physics of Momentum

Sapna was a training director at one of our client companies when she was asked to become chief learning officer. The CEO (Sapna’s new boss) made it clear to her that the priority was to consolidate fifteen different training departments into one large division. It was necessary, he said, to create efficiencies and direct learning and development (L&D) funds toward new technologies.

Sapna took stock of the situation and set about building an overall learning infrastructure. What she found was that the unit managers were extremely upset about losing their training staff and unwilling to let go of their L&D funding without a fight. To make matters worse, Sapna had been their peer until very recently, when she was promoted above them. She could easily have pulled rank, but she understood that it might do more harm than good to use force over finesse.

“On the one hand, this was the CEO’s priority and I didn’t need to negotiate with each department head. I had the mandate,” she told us. “On the other hand, how could I succeed in my new role without gaining the support of these managers?” Sapna asked.

Her first move was to propose a bold vision for learning and development that she hoped would begin to engage the naysayers. As part of her plan, she enlisted a financial analyst to make the business case for investing dollars in the new structure. The vision and numbers were compelling, but not enough to win over the skeptics. It was almost as if they were saying, “Show me.”

Part two of the plan was to get her blockers involved in the implementation phase. Initially, she assigned a member of her team to be the ambassador and assist each business unit. Next, she created a board of advisers consisting of all of the department heads who had just given up their resources. This gave them a voice in the process and a seat at the table. Sapna went out of her way to ask for their input and ideas.

Together with the board of advisers, Sapna’s team designed and created an innovative pilot program that not only involved key customers but also had clear benchmarks to indicate success. The soft launch of the pilot was a success and the numbers were solid. The next early win came when customer reviews were overwhelmingly positive. The advisers reported the results back to colleagues in their respective units. By that time, the advisers seemed to believe the entire new system was their own idea. In short, they were fully enrolled.

Sapna’s early goal was to consolidate the fifteen training functions into a centralized operation. This led to efficiencies and cost savings. Next, an investment could be made in new technology solutions. Sapna then utilized this technology to measure results and create additional savings. The early wins accumulated and a transformational outcome resulted. In the end, momentum led to a big win.

The main difference between Sapna’s story and Denise’s was that Sapna carefully orchestrated her plan to include a string of critical early wins. She created energy by bringing these wins to her corporate stakeholders. This created a positive perception that the project was on its way to success. She also celebrated each of the wins with the wider team, and this built even more excitement. This cumulative effect developed momentum for Sapna, not only with the project but also in her career.

Sapna showed that managing the physics of your career is about creating and maintaining momentum by harnessing positive energy and results. It is also about managing perception to keep your career and its many pieces and parts moving ahead. You’ll notice that the strategies we present next involve motion: moving forward, rising in the organization, and forging an agenda that can lift you up. Creating momentum is an active endeavor. Momentum is energy moving forward. It puts you in the driver’s seat and makes you responsible for achieving success. It is this self-empowerment that enables you to rise above the limiting factors we talked about and begin to achieve influence at work.

1. Center yourself

Momentum requires preparation. The right place to start is with the jettison of the emotional baggage, the excuses, and even some of the responsibilities that weigh us down and create friction in our lives. Our objective is to make ourselves a little leaner and lighter in ways that we can control.

First, let go of your emotional baggage. It sounds simple, but most of us are unaware of the self-imposed limitations that we carry around. For example, one of the executives we interviewed told us about a realization she had. She was passed over for two consecutive promotions and she was ready to throw in the towel on her career. She was beginning to believe that she wasn’t cut out to be a leader. After some feedback from trusted friends and some coaching, she realized she was holding herself back. Eventually, she identified the root cause of her confidence deficit and was able to let go of the limitation. Whether it’s a confidence issue, indecision, fear, or whatever, work to identify your internal barriers.

Next, say good-bye to convenient excuses. The tendency to make excuses to explain setbacks is another stubborn mind-set issue that can hold you back. Excuses don’t weigh you down like emotional baggage does, but they send you off in the wrong direction. One way to lose your excuses is by honing an aim frame instead of a blame frame.⁴ A blame frame mind-set “focuses on the problem and why it occurred.”⁵ It’s about assigning blame. An aim frame mind-set goes straight to determining what next steps will most effectively make things right. An aim frame is about where you are going and how you are getting people to believe in you and go along with you. The aim frame mentality keeps you moving in a positive direction; a blame frame outlook stops you cold. Again, it is all about moving your energy forward.

Finally, let go of responsibilities that are not a part of your plan. As women, we multitask madly to keep lots of balls in the air. But it’s not practical to say yes to planning the company holiday party and cochairing a school fund-raiser if your aim is to run an organization that keeps you busy, body and soul, for fifty-plus hours a week. It all comes down to your goals. Generating momentum requires letting go of the things that matter less to you. You must focus!

2. Generate a string of small wins

As we saw with Sapna, delivering on a string of meticulously planned interim successes can add up to something big. We’re on board with that. In fact, we coach women to use the power of small wins to charge up their career momentum. Our process for using small wins has some guidelines that are all our own.

Plan the wins. In addition to delivering on your major benchmarks, plan your small wins carefully. Meticulous management of small wins keeps stakeholders engaged and on board while you make the bigger progress they are looking for. Pilot projects are a relatively safe way to accumulate small wins without betting the ranch.

Advertise and celebrate at multiple levels. The only way to build on small wins is to fully own them. When you exceed expectations, it’s up to you to make sure people know about it. When Sapna could show that her pilot program was popular with customers, she not only presented the results to the board, she also encouraged colleagues who were involved in the program to share their stories of success with their peers. Before long, word got around and people were actively lobbying Sapna to expand the pilot.

Use meaningful specifics. The original sales guru Zig Ziglar says, “Don’t become a ‘wandering generality.’ Be a ‘meaningful specific.’ ”⁶ Plan for small wins and focus on the deliverables that mean the most to your stakeholders. Sapna was right on the mark—lowering costs and elevating customer satisfaction was exactly what the organization was looking for. When we are asked about our projects, our tendency is to say, “The project is going well.” Instead, try saying this:

“We saved $10,000 dollars.”

“We improved customer satisfaction by 70 percent.”

“We reduced cycle time by 15 percent.”

Manage surprises. Save surprises for birthdays, not bosses and supporters. If you are sensing a setback on the horizon, start steering people toward a more realistic small win. The key is to avoid surprises, remain in control, and maintain the perception of ongoing success.

Small wins carve large, complex goals into manageable chunks. You’ll find that these ta-da moments generate not only logistical momentum for your project or career but also a significant emotional lift that accelerates your pace and progress. Betty Thompson at Booz Allen Hamilton said, “Women need to be more deliberate.” We agree.

3. Create your tipping point

Our final strategy for building momentum does so through followership. While the other strategic actions we’ve discussed will start to mobilize the critical mass you need, support from the people around you is what creates the tipping point that will sustain momentum and eventually deliver influence.

A tipping point, as described by author Malcolm Gladwell, is “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.”⁷ For our purposes, we use the metaphor of rolling the boulder uphill. Although the climb is hard work, the coalition of support we accumulate along the way gets us to the peak—and our momentum multiplies as the boulder rolls briskly down the other side.

Generating followership requires employing the strategies we described in the previous chapter for building relationships. It also requires the ability of a leader to articulate a vision that inspires people. At the beginning of this chapter, we told Denise’s story. She had an idea that was innovative and important, but she was not able to get her executive colleagues to take the leap with her, so they shut her down. However, Denise regrouped. She repaired her relationships and began to build a coalition of support around her plan to create a platform for real-time sales results. She created a framework to measure progress, and she also articulated a dynamic vision that excited followers. This time Denise leveraged the groundswell of followership she developed. She got her sales platform launched, and it put her reputation back in a positive light. Her do-over (we love do-overs) created momentum for the project and for her career.

No matter what the specifics of your goal, followership and momentum are inextricably linked. None of us can roll that boulder all the way over the peak alone. Reginald Van Lee of Booz Allen Hamilton (retired) said, “You have to get things done in an environment where there are multiple agendas and different levels of power and control.” We need energized supporters to speak and act on our behalf. We coach women that followership today comes from all corners of an organization—above, below, and across.

Neither followership nor momentum happens overnight, and there is no one path to take. Yet building followership as a path to momentum can help you reach a tipping point. Just as momentum and followership are linked, followership is closely connected to influence. The wave of support that followers provide generates momentum and opens a channel for influence to begin to develop.

* * *

The physics behind the Influence Effect is cumulative in nature. Small wins and followership generate momentum and energy. This energy leads to a greater lift toward your transformational vision.

Executive Summary

• Momentum is most often halted by difficult political dynamics, extreme modesty, and a lack of clear strategic intent.
• Achieving momentum requires us to carefully manage our direction, perspective, and alignment.
• Momentum requires preparation. The right place to start is with the jettison of the baggage and excuses—and even some of the responsibilities that create friction in our lives.
• Small wins carve large, complex goals into manageable chunks. These ta-da moments generate logistical momentum for your agenda and a significant emotional lift that accelerates your pace and progress.
• Followership creates the tipping point that will sustain momentum and eventually deliver influence.
• Sideways momentum can be a launchpad when your career is feeling stale or unfulfilled.