TCFBO #016: Building Momentum

Read Time: 2 minutes

One of the things that prevents business owners from making the progress they would love to make in their business is a lack of momentum.

Often, the business owner will get their team fired up to work on a project that will move the business forward.

Everyone’s on board.

The project kicks off.

Some tasks get done.

And then the business owner comes into work a few days later with another amazing idea that will help the business move forward.

The focus moves away from the first project and onto this next great idea.

And then a few days later the business owner comes into work with an idea to solve a problem the business has been facing for the last few months.

The focus moves away from the first two projects and a third one is initiated.

And then a few weeks later the business owner is surprised to discover that very little progress has been made on any of the projects.

Their team has pretty much forgotten about the first two projects, thinking that the most recent project is the one to focus on.

But hardly any progress has been made on the third project either because the team is pretty sure that soon the business owner will come up with yet another project to focus on.

What’s the point in putting effort into the third project when it’s soon going to be abandoned anyway?

Now, imagine for a moment that you have ten cars lined up and you have to push each of them to get them started.

Imagine you give the first car an initial shove.

It moves a fraction but hardly at all.

So now you move to the second car and give that one an initial shove.

Again, nothing but a very slight movement occurs.

You move to the third car and give that one a shove too.

Again, just a very slight movement occurs.

You repeat this for all ten cars and then go back to the first one, which is once again completely stationary.

Clearly, giving one shove across so many cars is not going to get any of these cars moving very far in any reasonable amount of time.

And the same thing is true when building momentum on your projects.

If you attempt to get too many projects running at once, you’re not going to build enough momentum on any one of them.

Instead, you have to take sufficient action to get one project moving and build sufficient momentum before starting the next project.

Even if you hand over the running of a project to someone on your team, to begin with you still have to give sufficient focus on the project in order to ensure your team member understands what the deliverables are, what is required of them, and what support they need.

This is the difference between delegating responsibility and abdicating responsibility.

We’re not saying that you can only have one project running at a time.

Or that you must complete your first project before starting another.

There are likely to be lulls in a project when you are waiting for something outside your control and these pauses enable you to move another project forward.

The size of your business and your team will dictate to some degree how many projects you can effectively run at once.

But whatever the size of your business, avoid spreading your resources too thinly.

Instead, focus on building sufficient momentum on one project before starting another.

Let us know how you get on and we’ll see you next week.

Paul & Philly

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