Explore it yourself
Practical starting points for exploring momentum in your organisation - individually, in a one-to-one, or with a team.
These are starting points, not a structured programme. Use whichever feels right for where you are - individually, in a one-to-one, or with a team.
A question to sit with
How much of the effort in your organisation goes into doing the work - and how much goes into navigating the organisation?
Don't guess. Actually think about your own last week. The ratio might surprise you. And that ratio, more than almost anything else, determines what your organisation is capable of.
A conversation to have
Ask five people across different teams the same question: Where does your work get stuck - and what do you do when it does? Listen for the workarounds. Everyone has them. The informal phone call that bypasses a broken process. The spreadsheet that exists because the system doesn't talk to another system. The person everyone knows to ask because the official route doesn't work. Those workarounds are a map of your friction. And the people navigating them have already diagnosed the problem - they just haven't been asked.
Something to observe this week
Pick one piece of work that's currently in progress and follow it. Not in a meeting about it - actually trace its journey. Where is it right now? Who's working on it? What's it waiting for? How many times has it moved between people or teams? You're not auditing. You're following the thread. The story that one piece of work tells you about your system will be more revealing than any process diagram.
A useful tension to name
Think about the last time something needed to happen quickly. What did people bypass to make it work? Those are the things your system has that momentum doesn't need. If the shortcut worked, it tells you something about the long way round. The question isn't whether the shortcut was right. The question is what it reveals about the normal route.
One thing to try
At your next team meeting, ask everyone to name one thing that, if it were removed, would make their work flow better. One thing. Not a transformation programme, not a restructure - just one source of friction they deal with regularly. Collect them. You'll probably hear patterns - the same friction points named from different angles. Pick the one that appears most often and remove it. Just one. Then notice what happens. Momentum builds from small clearings, not grand redesigns.