Craig Groeschel - 4 Questions to Jump-Start Your Momentum
In our previous episode, we talked about the four factors that fuel momentum and today, we’re gonna talk about four ways to jumpstart your momentum. My dad used to be a baseball coach and he’d always say instead of momentum, he’d say mo. He goes you gotta get some big mo. You gotta get some big mo. So to our YouTube community, if you want some mo, why don’t you type in the comment section right now, I want some mo, I want some mo. And I know that you do want leadership momentum, and so I wanna tell you about a resource that our team created that is free for you. It’s a momentum worksheet. In it, we’ve got all the questions that we cover in this episode. We’ve got additional content, we’ve got some quotes for you, and exercises to help you grow in your leadership momentum. I want to get this to you. Just go to life.church/momentumworksheet, life.church/momentumworksheet. We’ll send this to you to help you get some mo, and now let’s dive into our new content. We are talking about how to create and sustain organizational momentum.
Now, before we look at today’s content, if you haven’t listened to episode 135, stop this one and listen to that one first. The title of that episode is the Four Factors That Fuel Momentum, and just to give you a quick review of that content, momentum is inspired by vision, is activated by faith, is supported by systems, is sustained by grit. There are four factors that fuel momentum. Momentum is ignited by vision, activated by faith, supported by systems, and sustained by grit. Grab that teaching and then come back to this one.
Now, for those of you still with us, let me ask you two questions. Number one, in business, in leadership, in ministry, does momentum last forever? What do you think? In whatever you’re leading and you got momentum, does momentum last forever? The answer unfortunately is no. I’ve never seen momentum continue year over year, decade over decade for any organization. Question number two, by nature, should momentum continue once it starts? And the answer is yes, it actually should. If you remember maybe back in the fifth grade science class or whenever you studied Newton’s law of motion, what does Newton’s law of motion say? An object in motion tends to stay in motion unless it’s acted upon by an outside force.
So organizationally, we don’t tend to keep momentum, but momentum by nature should continue. What’s going wrong? If you have organizational momentum you should keep it unless you do something to kill it, which is what seems to happen almost every single time. It’s frustrating. So why is it so difficult to create and sustain organizational momentum? I’m gonna give you three reasons of why it’s difficult. Number one, leaders don’t anticipate it. Number two, leaders tend to complicate it. And number three, leaders don’t understand it. Why is it so difficult to create and sustain momentum? Let unpack these. Number one is because leaders don’t anticipate it. They’re not anticipating momentum. I’ve said it before, I wanna say it again, the difference between a good leader and a great leader is one who learns to anticipate rather than react.
A great leader learns to anticipate what’s coming rather than to react to what is. I love the Wayne Gretzky quote, the amazing hockey player, who said most players skate to where the puck is, I skate to where it’s going to be. As a leader, what are you doing? You’re not reacting, you’re anticipating, and what specifically are you anticipating? You’re anticipating three things. You’re anticipating problems, possibilities, and people, problems, possibilities, and people.
Number one, you wanna anticipate problems. What do you wanna do? You want to see problems before they’re big. You’re gonna see them early and solve them quickly. You’re gonna see problems before they’re big. Number two is you’re gonna see possibilities before they’re real. You’re gonna see them early and you’re gonna seize them quickly. And then number three, you’re gonna see potential in people that others overlook. You’re anticipating. You’re anticipating potential problems, you’re anticipating potential possibilities, and you’re anticipating potential in people to bring out the best.
I’ll tell you a little story about when I did not anticipate potential momentum and ended up losing it. We started Life Church in 1996. In the first three months of the church, we were so excited to see 105 people coming to church. First in a little garage, and then we were in a elementary school, but we had a big break where a reporter did a very positive news article on our church. The article came out on a Saturday right before Sunday and you’re asking, Craig, how did you prepare? And the answer is I didn’t do a thing.
Lemme tell you what I didn’t do. I didn’t tell anybody it was coming out, I didn’t add any seats to the elementary school, little auditorium, I didn’t tell our kids volunteers we might have more kids, I didn’t order more donuts, I didn’t order more name tags, and the previous week we had 105 people, then after the news article, we jumped up to 165 people, a 50% increase in one week, and guess what? We didn’t have enough seats or enough kids volunteers. We didn’t have enough donuts, we didn’t have enough name tags. It was a horrible experience.
So our attendance went like this. 105, 165. In the next week, 106. We netted a total of one person growth from that potential momentum because we were not ready for it, we did not anticipate. You’re not gonna do that. You’re gonna anticipate well, and when you anticipate well, you’re preparing for momentum. And lemme just tell you right now if you don’t anticipate it, you can’t seize it. You have to be ready for it.
Why is it difficult to create and sustain momentum? Well number one, leaders are not anticipating it. Number two, leaders complicate it, and this is a very common challenge, because whenever your organization or your business or your ministry grows bigger, it naturally becomes more complicated, and this is a very important principle, you may wanna write it down, growth creates complexity and complexity kills growth. That’s why when it comes to momentum, simplicity is momentum’s best friend. If simplicity is momentum’s best friend, then complexity is momentum’s worst enemy. When you get some mo, you gotta fight for simplicity, you gotta kill complexity, or complexity will kill your mo.
Why is it difficult to create and sustain momentum? Well number one, leaders don’t anticipate it. Number two, leaders complicate it. Number three, leaders don’t understand it. They just don’t understand why they have momentum. For example, if you ever talk to a pastor and things are going well at that pastor’s church and you say why are things going well at your church, pastor? Lemme tell you what the pastor’s gonna say, they’re gonna say it every single time, this is the pastoral line, we learn it in seminary, they’re gonna say well, God is just blessing it, God is just blessing it, which is true, but it’s stupid and incomplete, because if God is blessing your ministry, you have to be able to answer the question what specifically is God blessing?
God’s just not like randomly blessing, like he likes you more than everybody else, he’s blessing a specific action that you need to be able to clearly define and understand what it is. The same is true with your business. If you wanna have Mo, you wanna know why you have Mo, whenever you’ve got some good momentum, you wanna be able to accurately discern why you have it. I would ask myself these three questions. I would ask myself this, when you have momentum, what is present that’s contributing to the momentum? What’s present that’s contributing to the momentum?
I would ask, who is strategic in creating and sustaining the momentum? You’ll almost always see the right who when you have the right what. And then I would ask myself very simply what are you doing that’s working? To quote Andy Stanley, who has a great leadership podcast, he says this. He says if you don’t know why something is working when it is, you won’t know how to fix it when it’s not. You want to understand why you have momentum. When it comes to momentum, if you don’t anticipate it, if you complicate it, if you don’t understand it, you’ll disrupt or destroy it. Let me say it again, you have to hear this. If you don’t anticipate it, if you complicate it, if you don’t understand it, you’ll disrupt it or destroy it.
So how do we jumpstart momentum? Let me give you four questions that you want to ask to jumpstart momentum. Question number one, do you need an inward burst of momentum? Whatever you’re leading is a reflection of what’s inside of you. Do you need an inward burst of momentum? Because what’s happening inside the leader will always show up inside the organization, always. For example, years ago our church was struggling and people were saying things like Craig’s kinda off right now, Craig’s not whatever, and I was mad, I was hurt, like what are you guys talking about? But I didn’t realize that I’d become distracted, I’d lost some focus, and what I needed was fresh vision, I needed fresh passion, I needed fresh energy. And I just need to say to some of you, that may be you right now, you still care but you’re not leading out of an overflow.
And the bottom line is this, you can’t pour from an empty cup. You’ve gotta be full on the inside. I like what my good friend John Maxwell, he teaches this, and I’ll give you a brief example of his teaching. He says if you’re a seven, you don’t attract an eight. What does he mean? However you define it, if you’re a seven in your passion, you’re not gonna attract eights and nines. If you’re a seven, you’re gonna attract fives and sixes. If you’re a nine, he says you’re gonna attract sevens and eights. You’re not gonna attract a 10. The way I’d say it is this, I’d say it this way, you’ll never attract more than you are. So I would ask you, how is your inward passion? How’s that burning fire within you? Because leadership without passion is just management, and good management never changed the world. What does momentum do? Momentum tends to follow those who are already moving fast.
And so I ask you, if you don’t have momentum in your organization and you’re the leader, do you need an inward burst of momentum? Question one, do you need inward momentum? Number two, you’re gonna wanna ask yourself, if you don’t have momentum, ask yourself do you need to make a leadership change? Do you need to change some key player, or maybe multiple key players in your organization? It’s been said that everything rises and falls on leadership. You probably heard that before. I used to hear that quote and I thought that’s a bit dramatic, like everything, really?
I’m gonna tell you, like right now, after over three decades of leading, I think it’s pretty dang accurate. Everything tends to rise and fall on leadership. And you’ll see it every time you see big momentum, you will see it as a reflection of great leadership. In fact, what I wanna do is I’m gonna give you a series of quotes, these are all quotes I made up. I’m gonna say basically the same thing but I’m gonna say it in several different ways, because I want you to hear it in several different ways. So here they come, ready? You’ll rarely see big momentum under small-minded leaders. You’ll rarely see forward movement under problem finders, not problem solvers. You’ll never see selfless and passionate contributors under a self-centered and selfish leader.
If I can summarize those three quotes, I’d say it this way, you’ll rarely see the right results without the right leaders leading well. So if you don’t have momentum, you’re gonna wanna ask yourself every single time, do we need to make a leadership change? And the problem is right now, some of you, you will have some of the wrong leaders in place. And so anytime you see that, your first goal is always to help that leader improve and succeed, that’s always your first goal. You wanna give 'em a shot and help them get there. Don’t blame them, take responsibility, try to help 'em get there. If you cannot help that leader improve and succeed, then listen to me very carefully, you have to make the change. Why? Because if they are not carrying their weight, then everyone else knows that they’re holding back the team, and you have no idea how much credibility you lose if you don’t address that problem team member.
Now, if you have a team member that is a problem, and you continue to ignore the problem, and you don’t address the problem, eventually that team member is no longer the problem. Do you see where I’m going? Okay, eventually, if you don’t address it, you become the problem. So if you have a person that’s not carrying their weight, can’t get there, you got the wrong leader on the wrong seat on the bus, you have to have the courage to lovingly and caringly make the change and when you do, lemme make you a promise, when you replace an ineffective leader with a very effective leader, you’ll almost always be shocked at how fast things get better. And what’s gonna happen is almost every single time you’re gonna ask yourself at the end, why did I take so long to make that change?
Remember it, it may seem painful, it’s gonna be difficult, but the results of putting the right people in place will always be more than you can imagine. So if you don’t have momentum in whatever you’re leading right now, you’re gonna ask yourself do I need an inward burst of momentum? You’re gonna ask yourself do I need to make a leadership change? And the third question I want you to ask yourself is this, do you need to reallocate resources? Kind of a boring question but it’s actually unbelievably important.
Do you need to move some resources around? And this is so common and you’re gonna see it all the time. You’ll probably see it in something you’re leading now or eventually you will. Some organization, the leaders, they’re not satisfied with the results, so here’s what they try to do. We don’t like the results, so they try to do what they’ve been doing, but they just try to do it better. We’re gonna do what we’ve been doing, but we’re gonna do it better. This is not the worst strategy because we all wanna get better, but you have to remember that marginal improvements usually create marginal results. So if you want to create momentum, instead of just thinking better, you might want to think different.
If you remember our rocket ship illustration from last week, it takes an enormous amount of thrust for a rocket to overcome the gravitational pull, the same is true in organizational leadership. It usually takes something different, some kind of big thrust to overcome the gravitational pull toward what’s known, what’s easy, what’s safe, and what’s comfortable. You have to do something different. For example, I consulted with a business owner that was complaining that revenue was essentially flat or slightly down over 14 consecutive months. So we’ve got no movement, and even a little bit of decrease in revenue over 14 months, and so I had a hunch of what this leader was not doing.
So just for fun, I asked him a series of questions. I asked him so have you changed your marketing strategy? Well, no he hadn’t. Okay, have you targeted niche markets instead of broad sweep advertising? He hadn’t. I said have you changed your pricing structure? No. Have you created incentives for people to use your service? No. Have you tried new customer acquisition strategy? No. Have you added customer retention benefits? No. Have you offered additional products or services to your existing customer base who already warm buyers? No. Have you enhanced your referral structure? No. Have you made a product or service change or improvement? No. Have you streamlined your sales process?
See where I’m going? Have you changed your sales team? Changed your sales manager? Have you enhanced your online presence? Have you studied the data and the sales metrics to find out what’s changed? Have you interviewed the customers that left you to find out why they left you? No, no, no, no, no, and no for 14 months. What is the definition of insanity? Someone else said it, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So many businesses, so many nonprofits, they invest their resources the same way year over year. They deploy people in similar ways with the same budget process, with the same meeting schedule, with similar investment of time by similar team members, and they’re surprised when their annual outcome is marginally different to the prior year.
It’s crazy. If you don’t have momentum, you want to change where you’re investing resources to get a different return. McKinsey company, they do great research, and they found, in my opinion, the best, did the best research on this. One of the things they found is this, that regardless of how the market is changing, on average, companies allocate 90% of the resources to the same projects year after year. Can you imagine that? The world is changing faster than you could imagine, and yet we run essentially the same place. On average, companies allocate 90% of the resources to the same projects year over year. What is momentum? Momentum is movement. If you don’t have momentum, you have limited movement.
So when it comes to your resources, your time, your capital, your money, your talent, your energy, what you want to think is you wanna think fluid, not static. You wanna move things toward where they’re working. So very simply, I’d say it this way, you wanna move resources away from what’s producing marginal results, toward what has potential for maximal results. You wanna move things away from what’s producing marginal, toward that which can produce even greater results. And this is not easy to do and that’s why few leaders do it, but I wanna speak directly to somebody right now, you need to hear this. You have to have the courage to disrupt what is to create the potential for what could be.
One more time. Hear it, feel it, and do it. You have to have the courage to disrupt what is to create the potential for what could be. And you’re probably gonna think somewhere along the way, I’m not quite sure, if I do this is it really gonna create momentum? And the bottom line is you are rarely gonna get it a hundred percent right, but I promise you, you’ll always be wrong if you don’t occasionally change what you do. So to jumpstart momentum, you’re gonna ask do you need an inward burst of momentum? Do you need to make a leadership change? Do you need to reallocate resources? And number four, you’re gonna ask do you need to be willing to do something that you’ve been unwilling to do? Do you, as a leader, need to be willing to do something that you’ve been unwilling to do?
And I’m gonna just kind of get up in your business and tell you right now, of the four questions, this one, for some of you, will be the most important, yet the most difficult to answer, and it’s difficult to answer for two reasons. The first is because you don’t know what you don’t know, and that’s true for all of us, right? You need to make a change, but you have no idea what change you need to make, and that’s why this just takes time in the game. Meaning you want the right mentors, you’re gonna ask questions, you’re gonna listen, you’re gonna study, you’re always gonna be a student. This is gonna take time. That’s part of it, but the bigger and more common reason that you’re not gonna attack something is because you know what to do, but you’re afraid to do it.
You know what you should do, but you’re afraid to do it. And the list could be endless. Like you need to have a difficult conversation with a struggling team member, but you don’t wanna do it. Or you’ve had the conversations and you need to make a change, but you’re afraid to make the change. Or the list could go on and on. You need to close the department, or shut down a campus, or eliminate a product line, or change your location, or whatever. Or for some of you, the changes are more internal. You need to overcome some insecurity that’s holding you back, Or you need to really learn to trust people and delegate, or you really need to surround yourself with better people. Not just yes people that make you look good, but great people that make your organization good. You need to be around people that you listen to, because if you haven’t listened, you’ve trained them not to talk, you need to take a risk, you need to be willing to fail whatever it is.
So I’m gonna just kind of pause and ask you some questions, And I want you just to meditate on these questions. These will be in the leader guide and you can just you can ask 'em, you can pray through 'em. I wanna ask you is there something about you that needs to change? I’m gonna ask you this. Is there something in you that needs to change? I’m gonna ask you this. Is there something you need to do that you haven’t done? All three again, 'cause I know some of you are listening at 1.5 speed, and you need to listen to these slowly. Is there something about you that needs to change? Is there something in you that needs to change? Is there something you need to do that you haven’t done? And no one can answer these questions, and no one can make these changes except for you, and it’s gonna be difficult because you’re gonna be scared. We all are, but this is what separates the best leaders from the rest, and what you need to do is do what great leaders do.
Now, I’m gonna give you the secret sauce to momentum. This is my little extra part. What is momentum? In the last episode, we defined momentum this way. We said momentum is the force that’s greater than the sum of all your leadership, strategy, and resources combined. To those of you that are believers like me, I would say this, faith is the force that’s greater than the sum of all your leadership, strategy, and resources combined. So you don’t have to settle for what you see, because you’re never alone in your leadership. If you have faith in a God who is good and is with you when you’re weak, you can tap into the one who is strong, and with his help, you can do more to make a difference in this world than you ever thought possible. Seek him and let him empower you to do.
Faith is the force that’s greater than the sum of all your leadership, strategy, and resources combined. I wanna tell you sincerely thank you for being a part of our community. Thank you for trusting me to invest in your leadership. Watch for bonus episodes. Get the leader guide, go to life.church/leadershippodcast. And again, thank you for inviting others to be a part on social media. What did you do today? Guess what? You got a little bit better. And that’s a really good thing, because there’s one who loves you and can help you get better and closer to him every day.