Momentum: What I’ve Learned About the Force That Shapes Every Company I Coach

Over more than 20 years of coaching some of the most exciting, technology-centric companies of our era, one thing has become unmistakably clear to me: momentum is one of the most powerful and most misunderstood forces in a business.

When momentum is there, you can almost taste it, long before it shows up in the numbers. Things you’ve been working on for months suddenly start to move. Deals that have been stuck finally close. Progress feels real and tangible. There's excitement again!

And when momentum is gone, everything feels heavier than it should. Decisions take longer. Energy drains away. Even good work struggles to translate into visible outcomes.

What I’ve come to believe is that momentum isn’t the result of success. More often, it’s the thing that makes success possible in the first place. Learning how to create a flywheel of momentum and then having the courage to lean into it is a defining part of the CEO’s job.

Let’s look at a real example. 

As the world emerged from the horrors of COVID, there was a dramatic acceleration in business velocity for almost all of my clients. This was largely driven by the rapid shift to online and e-commerce. Valuations soared as capital rushed in to take advantage of the opportunity. For a time, everyone had momentum.

For many companies, however, that growth stalled a few years later as the early exuberance faded, and in some cases, over-scaling became apparent. Growth hadn’t exactly collapsed, but it had flattened. Valuations dropped sharply, in many cases back to pre-Covid levels. Companies that had once been growing at 50–100% annually now found 20–30% was the new reality. The IPO market effectively shut down, and many founders found themselves looking for the “next unlock” as Todd Olsen, CEO of Pendo, would say to me during our coaching calls.

Leadership teams were tired. CEOs were tired. The organisation was busy, but nothing felt like it was really moving. Every conversation drifted back to what wasn’t working, and the longer that went on, the harder it became for people to remember why they were doing the work in the first place.

Then came the great hope of AI.

CEOs of existing companies began pivoting, “AI-ifying” their products. Others built entirely new AI-native offerings alongside legacy platforms. Some chose to form completely new AI-native companies, unburdened by the past. For many, AI became a new source of momentum, a signal, a direction of travel, something to lean into.

People didn’t suddenly believe everything was solved. But they believed movement was possible again. And that belief changed how they showed up.

This is the psychological power of momentum that I see time and time again. 

Momentum restores belief before it restores results. In struggling businesses, teams are rarely searching for purpose in the abstract. They’re searching for proof - proof that their effort leads somewhere and that the direction makes sense.

There’s another observation that I have seen time after time. Momentum often appears before a CEO feels ready for it, and when it does, many leaders accidentally slow it down. They question it, over-analyse it, or try to wrap it in a perfect plan. I often ask CEOs to reflect honestly: when momentum starts to show up, do you instinctively accelerate the organisation or do I dampen it through caution, control, or a need for certainty?

AI has made this bifurcation very visible. Some CEOs resist it. Some lean in cautiously. Others embrace it wholeheartedly.

As I’ve mentioned previously, Matthew Scullion, CEO of Matillion and HyperscaleCEO’s own “entrepreneur in residence”, exemplifies the “all-in” mentality. By fully embracing AI, he has helped reignite momentum in his business. There is genuine excitement about the future again and opportunity feels abundant. Not all the answers are clear yet - AI is still evolving - but the direction of travel is unmistakable.

A quote attributed to Wayne Gretzky captures this perfectly: “I skate to where the puck is going, not to where it is.” That mindset defines leaders who know how to harness momentum rather than fight it.

From a practical perspective, rebuilding momentum isn’t always about sweeping change. Sometimes it’s about sequencing, making progress one small step at a time. Ask yourself: if your organisation needed to feel progress in the next 30 to 60 days, what single outcome would most effectively rebuild confidence? Not the full turnaround. Not the vision statement. One practical outcome that makes people say, “We’re moving again.”

That requires restraint from us as founders and CEOs. It means accepting that velocity is often built by stacking small, visible wins - not by fixing everything at once.

Once momentum exists, our role as CEOs shifts yet again. The work becomes protecting it and reinforcing direction. Letting the organisation move faster because confidence is rising, not slower because scrutiny increases. Momentum is fragile but when handled well, it compounds quickly.

Looking back, the most successful companies I’ve worked with didn’t win because they had perfect strategies. They won because their leaders learned how to create momentum, recognise it early and trust it when it appeared. For me, that has become one of the clearest markers of mature leadership and one of the most valuable lessons I continue to share with the CEOs I work with.

Photo by Sunder Muthukumaran on Unsplash