On momentum...

If you have read my articles so far, you know that I loooooove sports... I love football (not the American version), I love basketball, I love tennis, and I used to love boxing - back when Iron Mike was still in the ring.

All of this sports have one thing in common, you are playing against your opponent in real time and thus you can impact their game.

Watching and - even more - playing these sports, I learned a lot about teamwork and I learned a lot about change.

A game of football is fluid... this means it is constantly changing. There are rarely any fixed positions, and even the best coaches in the world can rarely foresee what will happen next.

One of the things that was and still is fascinating to me is how sports teams deal with defeat or how they deal with being down 1 or 2 goals.

There are individuals and whole teams where the body language changes, their shoulders are down, they look to the ground, and it seems like there is very little life and energy left.

Who can blame them? Probably the game is lost... why waste more energy?

But there are those individuals and teams that - no matter the score - keep their body tension: heads are up, shoulders are back, and their eyes have fire.

They still discuss with the referee, they still go after every lost ball, they talk to each other - in many cases even louder and much more frequent.

They look at every little gain e.g. a corner, a freekick, a great tackle as a small win. And inch by inch they crawl their way back into the game.

And sometimes, these little gains some up into a momentum that helps the team score a goal. Once that first goal is scored, there is this belief that a second one can follow.

Once that first game is won in an NBA playoff series - despite being 3:1 behind - momentum starts to build up and there is this belief that the series can be won.

Momentum is an extremely strong force, that unfortunately too many people leading any type of change in organizations completely neglect.

John Kotter talks about the importance of short-term wins in leading change. Why? Because any short-term or small win helps build momentum. They help generate the energy that fuels the hard work to deal with all the obstacles any change initiative will face.

As leaders it is our job to design change journeys that include short-term wins and to talk about these short-term wins to create momentum.

Leaders are the ones that are mainly responsible for an organization's energy balance. Nothing will happen without energy - that is a rule of life.

You might say "we are not facing an opponent like sports teams do"...

My answer: "The opponent is the status quo. The opponent is our existing belief system. The opponent are our individual and collective habits."

This fight between a new idea, the idea for change and the status quo, is by definition an unfair fight... it is David vs. Goliath happening on a daily basis in organizations.

Similar to David, we need a good strategy to win this fight... Contrary to David, it won't be enough to throw just one stone. It requires a series of short-term wins, it requires sheer will, and through that we will be able to build momentum.

That still does not guarantee success... there might be too little too late. But I believe it is the best shot we have.

Today, my son's football team played another match. They won 22:0. And yes, my son was happy... he had scored several goals and assisted on a few as well.

But when we were on our way home, he said: "You know Baba... the game was over after the first two goals we scored. The other team had lost all hope to win this game. They did not believe in themselves. They were just waiting for the game to end and did not put up a fight to not be embarrassed."

I asked him: "What makes you think this way?" His response: "Their body language was speaking louder than words."

I would say, a brilliant analysis from a 9-year old who had discovered the power of momentum.

PS: Here is one of the best movie scenes of all time about the importance of momentum... and of course it is the one and only Al Pacino delivering this incredible speech #FromNothingComesNothing