Scaling Momentum and Building Capabilities into an Organisation's Operating System | Momentum Series Part 3

Our journey through building momentum has progressed from recognising constraint-breaking opportunities that create pivotal "momentum points" (Part 1), to overcoming initial blockers and creating the first turns of the momentum flywheel (Part 2).

Creating isolated pockets of momentum is not enough.  The true challenge and opportunity lies in transforming momentum from a series of discrete initiatives into an organisational capability that's woven into the very fabric of how an organisation operates. It's about moving from "doing momentum work" to "being a momentum-driven organisation."

In this third part of our series, we'll explore how to scale momentum beyond individual projects or teams to become part of an organisation's operating system, its DNA. We'll address three critical dimensions of this transformation:

• Dimension 1: Enabling teams to identify and act on momentum points.

• Dimension 2: Creating organisational architecture for momentum flow.

• Dimension 3: Building rhythm and resilience for sustained momentum.

Dimension 1: Enabling Teams to Identify and Act on Momentum Points

The most powerful scaling mechanism isn't replication, it's multiplication as leaders cannot identify and capitalise on every momentum opportunity themselves. The real transformation happens when teams throughout the organisation develop the ability to recognise and act on these opportunities independently.

The Skills That Spot Momentum Opportunities

For momentum to become part of an organisation's day to day, certain key skills need to be developed and nurtured at all levels:

• Seeing patterns: the ability to notice when the same friction points keep appearing across different processes or teams. Teams who are good at seeing patterns can often spot momentum opportunities hiding in plain sight.

• Thinking in systems: understanding how changes in one area will create ripple effects elsewhere. This helps teams anticipate how breaking one constraint might unlock possibilities in unexpected places.

• Testing ideas quickly: the habit of quickly trying new approaches without overthinking or overplanning. Teams who excel at rapid testing can explore several ways to break through constraints without getting bogged down in analysis.

• Sorting real from assumed constraints: developing an eye for distinguishing between genuine limitations and those that just seem fixed because "that's how we've always done it". This helps focus energy on constraints that, when addressed, will create the greatest forward movement.

• Telling compelling stories: the ability to describe momentum opportunities in ways that engage others. This includes explaining not just what could change but why it matters to customers, teams and the organisation's goals.

Leadership Practices That Embed Momentum

Leadership practices must consistently reinforce and model the momentum mindset. These practices aren't one-time interventions but ongoing approaches that gradually reshape how the organisation operates.

Fostering a Constraint-Questioning Culture

Leaders play a crucial role in developing the momentum mindset across all levels of the organisation:

• Celebrate recognition over results: acknowledge teams that identify potential momentum points, even when the initial attempts don't yield immediate success. This reinforces that seeing new possibilities is valuable in itself.

• Make constraints visible: help teams distinguish between genuine immovable limitations and assumed constraints.  Often, simply naming and questioning a constraint is the first step toward transcending it.

• Share stories strategically: when teams do find momentum points, amplify their stories throughout the organisation with a focus on the pattern of constraint-breaking rather than just the specific solution.  These narratives help others recognise similar opportunities in their own domains.

• Legitimise experimentation: demonstrate through leadership behaviour that thoughtful experimentation is valued, even when it challenges established practices or a leader's previous decisions.

  
  

Moving From Project-Based to Principle-Based Momentum

As momentum initiatives mature, the goal shifts from completing a specific project to establishing momentum principles that guide work:

• Embed principles in strategic planning: make constraint identification and questioning a formal part of strategic planning cycles.  Before setting strategies, explicitly examine what constraints are being accepted as fixed and challenge their immutability.

• Integrate into operating rhythms: build momentum discussions into regular business reviews, team meetings and performance conversations.  Simple questions like "What constraints are we accepting that might actually be flexible?" can become standard elements of these operational cadences.

• Connect to purpose: continually link momentum work to the organisation's broader purpose and strategy.  This helps everyone understand that momentum isn't about change for change's sake but about more effectively delivering on the organisation's mission.

• Evolve governance models: design governance approaches that balance necessary controls with momentum enablement.  This might include "fast track" approval paths for initiatives that meet certain criteria.

The organisations that consistently find momentum points are not necessarily those with the most resources or the most advanced technologies, they are the ones that have built a culture where every team is constantly asking: "What if the limitations we've accepted are not actually fixed?"  By embedding this questioning into operating systems and leadership practices, momentum becomes not just a periodic initiative but a defining characteristic.

Balancing Bottom-Up and Top-Down Approaches with Cognitive Forward Thinking

While scaling requires distributing capabilities throughout the organisation, this doesn't diminish leadership's critical role. When teams across the organisation are empowered to identify and address immediate opportunities, leaders can focus on complementary forward thinking that extends the horizon.

Even when teams are operating at full capacity, organisational momentum doesn't have to stall.  Leaders contribute most effectively by maintaining cognitive momentum, i.e. thinking ahead of current execution to prepare the path for what comes next.

Consider this scenario: teams are fully engaged, tackling their immediate priorities with focus and commitment.  As a leader, responsibility isn't just to manage current execution but to maintain forward momentum by:

• Scanning the horizon: looking beyond current initiatives to identify emerging opportunities and potential blockers before they materialise.

• Conceptual preparation: developing the intellectual foundations for future momentum work while teams implement current priorities.

• Creating option value: exploring alternative pathways and approaches that might bypass known constraints when execution capacity becomes available.

• Building intellectual readiness: preparing the organisation mentally for transitions that will come after current momentum initiatives are complete.

This approach creates a pipeline of momentum rather than treating it as a single-threaded process.  When teams complete their current work, they don't start from zero, they step into already-developing thought patterns that maintain forward motion.

This balance between distributed capability and leadership foresight creates a powerful synergy. Teams tackle immediate opportunities while leadership clears the path ahead, creating a continuous flow.

Dimension 2: Creating Organisational Architecture for Momentum Flow

Once momentum becomes embedded in the organisation's operating principles, acceleration naturally follows.  However, without thoughtful organisational architecture, this acceleration can create chaos rather than transformation.

Establishing Momentum into the Organisation's Operating System

The foundation of effective momentum architecture needs to be reflected back into the organisation's operating system, i.e. into the infrastructure that allows momentum to become an embedded capability rather than remaining isolated in pockets.

Organisations that excel at momentum design their organisational architecture around several key principles:

• Decision authority: clearly define where teams have authority to act independently on momentum opportunities versus where broader consultation is needed. The goal is not unlimited autonomy but appropriately calibrated decision rights that allow teams to move quickly within defined guardrails.

• Resource flexibility: create mechanisms for reallocating resources to emerging momentum opportunities without requiring lengthy approval cycles. This might include innovation funds that teams can access quickly, flexible staffing models that allow people to contribute to momentum initiatives while maintaining core responsibilities or quarterly priority reassessments that ensure resources flow to the highest-impact opportunities.

• Cross-functional collaboration: establish formal and informal pathways for collaboration across traditional silos.  Momentum points often emerge at the boundaries between functions, requiring mechanisms that facilitate cross-pollination of ideas and rapid alignment across departments.

• Information flow: design systems where insights, learnings and signals of both opportunities and constraints flow freely throughout the organisation. This includes feedback mechanisms that quickly identify when acceleration is creating both positive ripple effects (opportunities to amplify momentum) and negative ones (emerging risks or quality issues). Information hoarding or restricted access to data prevents teams from seeing the connections that often reveal momentum points.

• Streamlined processes: redesign processes to reduce unnecessary transitions between teams or departments. Each handoff represents a potential momentum killer where context is lost, priorities shift or bureaucracy intervenes. Organisations that sustain momentum actively identify and eliminate these friction points.

• Recognition systems: redesign how success is measured and rewarded to account for momentum contributions.  This includes acknowledging not just those who execute momentum initiatives but also those who identify opportunities, remove blockers for others or create conditions that enable momentum elsewhere in the organisation.

Architecting for Safe Acceleration

Once momentum begins building, acceleration naturally follows. However, without thoughtful architecture, this acceleration can create chaos rather than transformation. Building momentum into everyday work requires creating structures that enable speed while maintaining necessary stability.

Designing Architecture that Multiplies Impact

When designing organisational architecture for momentum, a key objective is to create structures that naturally amplify and propagate breakthroughs. The most powerful architectures don't just enable individual momentum points, they systematically multiply their impact through carefully designed interconnections.

What is fascinating about organisations that get this architectural element right is how they create ripple effects that extend far beyond where momentum initially starts. These rippling, multiplier effects aren't accidental, they are the product of deliberate architectural choices.

Dimension 3: Building Rhythm and Resilience for Sustained Momentum

For new ways of working to truly stick, constraint-breaking thinking must become muscle memory, not a special initiative but simply how work gets done. Having outlined the core skills teams need to spot momentum opportunities, now to tackle how to keep momentum alive over time.

Three approaches are particularly effective:

• Make learning part of the regular heartbeat: weave momentum capability-building into existing business cycles. For example, at quarterly reviews, create space not just for reporting numbers but also for teams to share moments where they challenged a constraint or found a better way. When one team showcases how they questioned a long-standing assumption and broke through, others naturally begin thinking, "What assumptions are we accepting that we should question?"

• Build a living 'cookbook', not a rulebook: rather than rigid templates, create a simple collection of "momentum recipes" that teams can adapt to their own contexts. When a team successfully breaks through a constraint, capture their approach in a digestible format focused on the key ingredients that made it work. Unlike a dusty best practices manual, keep this collection alive by regularly adding new recipes and refining existing ones based on what teams are learning in real time.

• Develop momentum coaches: identify people who have successfully led momentum initiatives and enable them to coach other teams.  These coaches transfer not just the methods but also the momentum mindset, helping to embed momentum capabilities throughout the organisation.

The Power of Purposeful Pauses

Surprisingly, one of the most effective techniques for sustaining momentum isn't pushing harder, it is knowing when to pause. This might seem counterintuitive but strategic pauses actually accelerate progress in the long run.

These aren't random breaks, but purposeful moments that allow teams to:

• Capture what is working:  document insights and lessons before they fade from memory, thus building the organisation's momentum toolkit (contributions to the "cookbook") for future challenges.

• Check direction: confirm that momentum efforts still align with evolving priorities and market conditions, adjusting course while maintaining forward progress.

• Recharge: give teams time to recover from intense change periods: sustainable momentum requires sustainable energy.

• Reconnect with purpose: remind everyone why this momentum work matters in the first place, ensuring it's delivering meaningful outcomes rather than just creating change for change's sake..

Good leaders develop a keen sense for when purposeful pauses will actually accelerate progress.  They watch for telling signs such as:

• Diminishing returns: when more effort is yielding smaller improvements, it's often time to step back, learn from what's happened and reconsider approaches.

• Team fatigue: rising errors, decreasing creativity or falling engagement suggest people need recovery time before the next big push.

• Autopilot mode: when teams stop asking challenging questions and just execute without thinking, it signals that reflexive action has replaced thoughtful consideration. A pause can reignite curiosity.

• External changes: significant changes in the market, customer needs or competitive landscape often warrant a pause to reassess whether the momentum focus remains relevant.

  
  

In organisations where momentum has become second nature, purposeful pauses aren't simply down time, they are valued opportunities to strengthen momentum capabilities:

• Learn together: gather key people to assess what is working, what is not and what has been learned that might enhance approaches going forward.

• Celebrate progress: acknowledge achievements and the people behind them. Recognition reinforces the momentum-building habits throughout the organisation.

• Reset priorities: use the pause to adjust the sequence of the next momentum opportunities based on what is now known.

• Strengthen relationships: reinvest in the connections between teams that will fuel future momentum work. Often, these relationships become as or even more important as they build and enhance the organisation operating system.

Building In Resilience

For momentum to become a lasting feature in any organisation, it needs to withstand challenges, setbacks and changing conditions. This is not about rigid adherence to plans but about creating systems that adapt while maintaining forward progress:

• Spread ownership widely: expand the circle of people who feel personally responsible for maintaining momentum. When momentum depends on just one leader or small team, it becomes vulnerable when people change roles. In organisations where momentum has truly taken hold, this responsibility is widely shared.

• Look around corners: proactively identify where sustained momentum might hit roadblocks whether from legacy systems, competing priorities, political or cultural resistance. Develop approaches to address these before they become serious barriers.

• Create breathing room: build deliberate cycles of intense action followed by consolidation. These "breathing spaces" let teams absorb changes, refine approaches and prepare for the next push forward.

• Watch vital signs: track not just results but also indicators of organisational health e.g. team energy levels, customer satisfaction, error rates, coordination effectiveness, etc. These signals help identify when the momentum approach needs adjustment before serious problems develop.

  
  

From "Doing" Momentum to "Being" Momentum

In this article, we've explored the three dimensions of bringing momentum into an organisation's every day work:

• Enabling teams to identify and act on momentum points: developing their capabilities to recognise constraints, experiment with solutions and implement breakthroughs without constant central direction.

• Creating organisational architecture for momentum flow: designing structures that allow ideas and innovations to spread naturally across traditional boundaries, creating ripple effects that multiply their impact.

• Building rhythm and resilience for sustained momentum: establishing the cadences of action and reflection, with purposeful pauses and distributed ownership that make momentum a lasting capability.

  
  

Organisations that truly excel at building momentum are not necessarily the fastest in any given sprint, they are the ones that have made momentum part of how they naturally operate. They have moved beyond isolated momentum initiatives to create environments where questioning constraints, breaking barriers and creating forward progress is just how things get done.

This transformation from doing momentum work to being a momentum-driven organisation doesn't happen overnight.  It requires intentional development of team capabilities, thoughtful organisational architecture, leadership practices that reinforce momentum principles and rhythms that balance acceleration with consolidation.

In the final instalment of this series, we will explore what is already in our midst and triggering major momentum points across organisations today.