Momentum, Sustainability, and Strategic Success

In our articles, we place emphasis on the need to either acquire or produce clean and reliable data that corporate managers can use to make strategic and profitable decisions, thereby facilitating corporate sustainability and long-term growth.

When companies spend extensive financial, human, and time resources in an effort to create a business that’s self-sustaining, it’s logical to leverage those resources as well as existing skill sets produced along the way to help realize strategic goals and objectives, establish timetables and metrics, and realize what they define as success in their particular corporate environment.  This is what Kurt Kuehn defines in his article with Lynnette McIntire, “Sustainability a CFO Can Love”, as momentum. [1]

Kuehl notes that the concept of corporate momentum is aptly presented in Judo, where momentum is a fundamental principle.  The martial art emphasizes the concept of “maximum efficiency, minimum effort”, which is best achieved by following the movement of your opponent and striking in a way that takes advantage of his momentum rather than resisting his force.  Another analogy would be rowing with the current, where a stride of equal measure will result in greater progress with the current as opposed to against it.  If you push something in the direction it is already going, you will accomplish much more with each unit of energy.

Like other components that rely on the quality of prerequisite tasks, momentum facilitates success only if the resources being leveraged (ex: data, skill sets, infrastructure) are themselves optimized for the realization of the strategic vision.

Our research has shown that momentum is best achieved when the following occur:

1. Discipline

With a strategic vision in place and the assurance of clean data providing decision-making confidence, discipline in carrying out the plan naturally produces momentum.  Prospects will naturally gravitate toward repeated messages, and equate a repeated, consistent message with a credible product/service provider.  Momentum will be very difficult to achieve on the heels of a sporadic and intermittent marketing plan.  The message has to be consistent in order for you to attract the attention of prospects and other at the executive level.

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2. Collaboration

When management collaborates with staff, gets them on board with the strategic vision, invites active participation to realize the vision, and gives them autonomy, the combined positive effects emanating from the fusion of skill-sets to strategic participation can literally catapult the vision to fruition.  Intelligent and eager staff can be the primary catalyst for momentum within the organization if given the correct environment.  It’s this understanding that has birthed knowledge-sharing software tools within organizations, where employees of different mindsets collaborate to offer new ideas, keeping the R&D departments busy and fresh.  When we consider companies like Google, Hootsuite, and any video gaming outfit, we’re looking at organizations where staff comprise the main pipeline of new ideas based on their perceptions and observations of the marketplace.

3. Measurable Results

In his article titled “The Power of Rapid Results”, Ron Ashkenas explains the need for “quick wins” to complement “stretch goals”.[2]  Both are needed for organizations to remain healthy.  Momentum grows with the confidence derived from reaching the smaller, easily attainable “stepping-stone” goals on the way to the strategic finish line.  The smaller successes have to be microcosms of the larger goal, so the responsibility of the creators of the smaller benchmarks is to ensure that those smaller “wins” keep the organization on track to reach the larger success.  In the process, momentum is normally the propulsion quality that drives the team form on success to the next.

Nicholas Kilpatrick is a partner at the accounting firm of Burgess Kilpatrick.  He leads the firm’s consulting and strategy practice and works with companies to enhance their Analytics, Forecasting , and Data Optimization functions.  The practice’s focus includes quantitative forecasting, corporate and unit strategy and planning.  Please visit our website at www.burgesskilpatrick.com or on Facebook at www.facebok.com/BurgessKilpatrick for more information on our firm.

[1] Kuehn, Kurt and McIntire, Lynnette; “Sustainability a CFO Can Love”;  Harvard Business Review; April 2014; Harvard University Press; pp 71-74.

[2] Ashkenas, Ron; The Power of Rapid Results; www.forbes.com, June 21, 2013.