Creating & Maintaining Momentum - Your Single Biggest Challenge

There are two particular things a leader can influence when it comes to getting results.

1. Where you plan to place your improvement focus and ...
2. Your ability to create and maintain momentum behind that plan.

'If you're leading people, right now you are probably trying to get them to do something different.'

However, time and time again we see leaders struggling much more with the later than the former.

After years of working with leaders across a wide variety of industries what we have learned is that, once you've decided what it is you need to do, your single biggest challenge beyond that point is maintaining momentum.

Why is maintaining momentum so difficult ?

After all, if the purpose and the plan are clear and you as the leader are driving it forward, won't the team naturally engage to achieve it ? Unfortunately, the answer is 'no' and it's likely that your own experience has proven this more than once.

All leaders struggle with this challenge even if they don't realise it. If you're leading people, right now you are probably trying to get them to do something different. And that's understandable because the reality is that no significant result can be achieved unless people change their behaviour. Yet, to be successful you will need more than just compliance; you will need commitment. And as every leader worth his or her salt knows, getting commitment that will endure within busy, highly pressurised operational environments isn't easy.

When you need to get momentum behind a vital goal or strategy that requires lasting change in the behaviour of other people, you are facing one of the greatest challenges you will ever meet.

Whether you call it a vital goal, a strategy or a plan, any initiative you as a leader drive in order to significantly drive your team forward will fall into one of two categories - the first is more commonly know as 'Just Do It' or 'JDI' for short - you have the means, the authority and competency to make it happen without fuss or complication. The second requires behaviour change.

JDI strategies are those improvements that you make happen just by ordering or authorising them to be done. Behavioural change strategies on the other hand are very different from JDI's. You can't just order them to happen - you need team momentum and that requires people, often lot's of people, to do something different. And if you've ever tried to get other people to change their ways you'll understand just how tough that can be.

For example, you may have to ask your team to check and act on a particular report every day or you may need other leaders in your business to carry out sales reviews on a more frequent basis or perhaps call more prospects or complete more on site visits to customers.

'to get a different result will require a different approach'

The expression 'if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got' is very, very true and by that logic to get a different result will require a different approach - and when you have an approach that gets the results you need you would call that a 'results mechanism' or in our case 'The Brilliant Basics'.