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.