Johnnie Moore's Weblog: Momentum or strategy?

September 11, 2012

Momentum or strategy?

Eaon Pritchard really got me thinking with his post on momentum and strategy. He gives a good example from US politics and cites Mark Earls' line:

wouldn’t it be useful to think about strategy in terms of momentum?
Strategy as being primarily how to create a sense of momentum in our favour?

My own experience is that strategising has high status in organisations, and often involves long and somewhat heady conversations in front of spreadsheets and diagrams with various geometric shapes and colours joined by arrows and dotted lines.

Momentum, I suspect, is made up of a lot of much humbler actions - something quite well illustrated by the Obama donation approach.

I'm also mulling this: I've written before, about how what I call action theatre - essentially people talking about action being more important than talk, and not catching the irony. So I am a bit wary of demands for action. But momentum? Hmmm, that might be a more interesting conversation.

Posted by Johnnie Moore at 12:54 in Facilitation

Permalink

Trackbacks

URL for Trackbacks: http://www.johnniemoore.com/mt/minotaur.cgi/3029.

Comments (3)

(Site comment feed)

John Dodds says

The great failure is that the high status you rightly highlight means that strategy isn't spread throughout the organisation. Forget mission statements, every employee has to understand the strayegy and how their role contributes to its success. Maybe momentum could have something to do with that?

September 14, 2012 21:33 Permalink for comment

Gavin Heaton says

I really like the idea of momentum. If strategy give us a path to follow or a vision to strive for, momentum is about taking the steps that get us there. Now, I am a fan of a pretty diagram - but at some stage we have to stop the talk and start the walk ;)

September 15, 2012 02:41 Permalink for comment

eaon pritchard says

thanks forthe mention, also I might add a double irony from a communications perspective - in many agencies strategy is, of course, afforded very low status and is often something of an inconvenience to the creative department ;)

September 17, 2012 04:18 Permalink for comment