Well, now you know the secrets of the momentum effect – the phenomenon that drives some firms to such exceptional and efficient growth. As we mentioned in the Preface, each of its elements is individually simple. It is assembling the pieces of the puzzle that is challenging but you have now a framework to guide you in this task.

You, too, can deliver exceptional growth by building momentum in exactly the same way that leaders like Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Richard Branson and Sam Walton did.

Yes, they were outstanding leaders, but you can be too. You might make mistakes along the way, but so did they. There were plenty of moments when Jobs, Dell, Branson, Walton and others stumbled off course, and so although their stories should serve to inspire and empower all of us, at the same time they caution us.¹ Any one of us can create the conditions to generate exceptional growth but even great leaders can drop the ball. Never mind – they carried on. Like them, we must all constantly strive for improvement. Momentum is a journey, not a destination.

Seizing the unlimited potential

Remember the contrasting stories of Gary Kildall and Bill Gates presented in Chapter 2. The first lost his momentum and never managed to recover it. The second changed the world of computing and beyond, and in the process became the world’s richest man.

The lesson here is simple – there is unlimited potential out there, innumerable opportunities for exceptional growth just waiting to be grabbed, if you have the wit to spot them and the will to seize them. The success of every company that has enjoyed extraordinary growth is founded on at least one compelling customer insight. It is the strength of these insights that powered Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Dell, Apple, Toyota, Virgin, First Direct, FedEx, Swatch, BMW, Skype, Google and many others. Building first on some insights, all these firms took the appropriate actions that garnered the conditions required to ignite the momentum effect. All of them harnessed the power of momentum strategies for generating exceptional growth. On the other hand, their success highlights the failings of all the companies that were in place at the time and could have grabbed these same exceptional growth opportunities, but didn’t. When these striving young firms started, their respective fields were dominated by large, established competitors who were convinced that they knew their market inside-out and had a lock on what their customers wanted – but each and every one of them failed to see the enormous potential sitting under their noses.

Business is about continuously discovering and grabbing growth opportunities. Managers talk about catching a wave. But why wait for a wave to appear and hope to grab it? Momentum strategy offers you the chance to build your very own wave and ride it so far that your competitors are left floundering in your wake. Don’t miss it.

The momentum journey

This book offers you the means to exploit this unlimited potential – we hope it has also given you the desire. The momentum path you will follow to sustainable, profitable growth requires you to supplement the control and logic of managerial analysis with a process of exploration and discovery. This is not how established firms usually operate, so you will probably face challenges as you attempt to convince others of the compelling benefits of momentum strategy. To help you to face this challenge, we would like to share with you four simple ingredients of successful change toward momentum.

• Patience is a precious quality on the momentum journey. It is about diligence, about taking the time to explore more deeply in order to be more effective. The first handicap managers face in established corporations is the traditional managerial imperative of being overloaded with busywork, rather than taking time to look around and consider whether there are more efficient and rewarding alternatives. By wishing to move too fast along the established paths of tradition, we risk missing great opportunities. Energetic entrepreneurs constantly offer us object lessons in the power of original thinking. They have limited resources, but they have time and they are not prisoners of established groupthink. Instead of a headlong rush forward in an attempt to improve on the past, momentum strategy requires the patience to take time out and invent a different and better future.
• Timing is everything, and it should be carefully chosen to suit both internal and external stakeholders. A momentum strategy should never be launched because of artificial deadlines if the chances of success are slim. Often, a good time is just when you begin a new role or assignment, putting you in the best situation to explore novel paths without being hostage to your past decisions. But you still will have to engineer the proper dynamics. Momentum leaders do not pointlessly push against walls. They wait until they have created the conditions for exceptional growth – then they surge forward as the walls recede in the rearview mirror.
• Sense of urgency is vital – mobilization is easier when employees sense a strong reason for change. It’s not easy. It can be a slog to coax people out of their comfort zones onto the momentum path. Even well-intentioned colleagues can be remarkably blind to the urgency of a situation they don’t understand. You must yourself have a clear understanding of the reasons behind the challenges facing your firm’s profitable growth and of the changes needed to meet them. Find the ‘burning platform’ that will create a sense of urgency and rally support. Explain why the momentum journey is essential and why it should start without delay. This is the point when transformation toward momentum begins.
• Powerful images are essential tools for energizing your people. They can be numbers, graphs or stories. These powerful images can vary from telling about the pizzeria staff learning that each customer was worth $5000 to using the top box in a customer satisfaction survey. Tell them Gary Kildall’s story so they don’t, in their own way, ‘go flying’ at crucial times, tell them about the tailor in the Virgin Atlantic departure lounge, tell them about the New York students listening to their Walkmans on the sidewalk and the team at Novartis getting letters and e-mails from cancer patients, tell them about First Direct, the bank that doesn’t like banking, and warn them with the cautionary tales of Gerald Ratner’s ‘crap’ and Philip Watts’s lackadaisical handling of an important conference call. Use these stories as if they were your own. Take them and mobilize your people with them – they’re yours to use on the journey to sustainable, profitable growth.

Some of what we put forward may seem contradictory – how can patience be reconciled with the need to create a sense of urgency? Talleyrand, the French revolutionary politician, writer and rogue, answered it succinctly when he gave an order to the driver of his carriage: ‘Please go slowly – I’m in a hurry.’ This is a nicely fitting paradox to keep in mind when embarking on the momentum journey.

Our momentum future

We opened this book by presenting our 20-year study showing significant differences in the growth and profitability of three groups of firms – the Plodders, the Pushers and the Pioneers. These groups represent three standards of growth efficiencies – past, present and future.

We have revealed the momentum effect, the power of the exceptional organic growth that it delivers and the conditions under which it arises. We have set out the components of momentum strategy focused on securing those conditions, and described a systematic process for implementing them. Based on a deeper understanding of customers, this process enables the design of power offers loaded with customer traction, ones that create a virtuous circle of vibrant satisfaction, retention and engagement. With empirical research, company analyses and computerized simulations, we have demonstrated the significant economic superiority of momentum strategy.

This economic superiority is not good merely for business and customers. It is essential for society and our quality of life. By getting closer to the real needs of customers, by delivering more for less, by providing higher but more efficient growth, we achieve a better use of our resources. One day, the new standards of growth efficiency made feasible by the momentum paradigm will no longer be optional – firms that fall behind will be unable to survive.

As borderless, globalized competition increases then more and more businesses will be forced to explore new avenues for value origination, and this will build a better world for customers. This new world will be led by colourful individuals, momentum leaders determined to create value for their customers, their company and themselves – and by doing so contribute to building a better world for all.

We will see more momentum leaders like Sam Walton, who was convinced there was a way to bring large-scale retailing to rural America – like Luciano Benetton who saw that the world was starving for colours, like Steve Jobs who understands that customers can have an affective relationship with gadgets, and like Richard Branson who believes that air travel need not be boring. New generations will push momentum further with an even deeper understanding of customers and they will find ways to deliver more value more efficiently. This book aims to help those aspiring momentum leaders who embark on their own journey, firm in the conviction that it leads to a brave new world.