Momentum Decay
Nobody cancelled the initiative. That would require a decision. Instead, it decayed. Slowly. Silently. The way things do when nobody is watching.
Effort creates fortune. Lack of effort invites poverty. Valluvar’s equation is simple: effort in, fortune out. No effort, no fortune. Your initiative started with excitement. All-hands announcements. Dedicated resources. Executive visibility. Energy. By month four, the energy had dissipated. The executive moved to a new priority. The dedicated resources were quietly borrowed for another project. The all-hands stopped mentioning it. Nobody cancelled the initiative. That would require a decision. Instead, it decayed. Slowly. Silently. The way things do when nobody is watching.
When Travis Kalanick ran Uber, the cultural mandates came from the top with no negotiation. ‘Always be hustlin.’ ‘Make magic.’ ‘Super-pumped.’ I traced the consequences: a culture that celebrated aggression created Greyball, a tool to evade law enforcement. It created a workplace where Susan Fowler’s harassment complaint was dismissed by HR. The top-down imposition wasn’t accidental. It was Kalanick’s explicit theory of management: culture is what the founder says it is, and anyone who disagrees should leave. 8,000 people filed complaints. The founder left instead.
Everything decays without sustained energy. In physics, orbital decay occurs when atmospheric drag gradually reduces a satellite’s altitude. The satellite is still moving. It’s still in orbit. But each orbit brings it fractionally lower. Without periodic boosts to re-elevate it, gravity wins. Organizational momentum works identically: every initiative starts with an energy burst, a launch. But sustaining orbit requires periodic boosts of attention, resources, and executive visibility. Without those boosts, gravity, competing priorities, budget pressures, leadership distraction, pulls the initiative lower with each cycle. It’s still technically alive. But it’s falling.
Find one initiative that started strong and has gone quiet. Ask: when was the last time a senior leader asked about its progress? If the answer is measured in months, the orbit is decaying. It doesn’t need a relaunch. It needs a boost. Or an honest deorbit.
That silent descent has a name. Momentum Decay. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Untie The Knot
Uproot
Momentum decayed because the initial energy was event-based (launch, announcement) rather than rhythm-based (regular investment). The initiative received a sprint of attention and then was left to coast. Coasting in an organisation with competing priorities means stopping.
Navigate
Every active initiative has a monthly executive touchpoint and a quarterly resource review. Momentum is maintained through rhythm, not events.
Tool
DMG / Decision Cadence: the protocol that creates recurring decision checkpoints for active initiatives. Cadence provides the periodic boosts that prevent orbital decay.
Implement
Find one initiative that started strong and has gone quiet. When was the last time a senior leader asked about it? If the answer is measured in months, it needs a boost or an honest deorbit.
Emerge
When momentum is maintained through rhythm, initiatives reach completion instead of trailing off, and the organisation stops accumulating half-finished transformations.