Are you wanting to make a fresh start with your team or organisation? Do you want to create and encourage momentum?
Then what you need next is the wisdom of snowballs….
In the little Welsh valley where I grew up, snow was good news. It meant school closures, great mountainside sledging and – best of all – rolling snowballs down hills!
How much trouble was I in on the day my small snowball rolled down the hill, gradually picking up size and speed, narrowly avoiding the occasional goat, and finally smashing over the dry stone wall at the bottom?!?!
This is the principle of momentum: under the right conditions, small actions result in significant impact.
Jim Collins, in his book “Good to Great” put it this way:
“Good to great transformations do not happen overnight or in one big leap. Rather, the process resembles relentlessly pushing a giant, heavy flywheel in one direction. At first, pushing it gets the flywheel to turn once. With consistent effort, it goes two turns, then five, then ten, building increasing momentum until – bang! – the wheel hits the breakthrough point…”
This raises 2 questions for the New Year:
1. Have you got the right conditions in place for your team to make a fresh start?
The research, as well as our experience confirms that there are 9 conditions that outstanding teams have in place. red10 has trademarked these as the 9-Dimensions of Leadership Development. You can use them to structure the agenda of a team start-up.
2. How do you get momentum?
Have you been in a team where, for example, actions were committed to but nothing seemed to happen? Like the rain turning the snow to slush, this is the opposite of momentum. Yet when every member of the team follows through fully, quickly, and communicates…this is when the snowball starts to roll and picks up speed and size.
So, why not choose to make a fresh start this New Year, create the conditions your team needs, and encourage everyone into action and get those snowballs rolling?