Momentum Stealers

Focus always requires saying “no” to good ideas that aren’t your Mission

Let me talk to you about momentum stealers.

If you ever build anything of value, you’re going to encounter them.

A momentum stealer is someone who appears excited about your mission, but is actually more excited about the energy surrounding it. Consciously or subconsciously, they want to redirect that momentum toward the things that have captured their interest.

That’s an important distinction.

They’re often not against your mission. They may even genuinely like it. They simply aren’t committed to it in the same way you are. What excites them is that something is finally moving, and they want to harness that movement for their own priorities.

Let me give you three examples.

First, family life.

Suppose you set aside an entire Saturday to clean out the garage. You’ve made good progress, and your spouse comes outside and says, “This is great! We should clean out the attic too.”

Now, you probably agree the attic needs to be cleaned. That’s not the issue. The issue is that today was set aside for the garage. If you divide your attention now, you may not finish either project.

If your spouse really wants to make progress, they’re welcome to help you finish the garage. Or, if they want to work independently, they can certainly start on the attic. But what they shouldn’t do is redirect the energy and momentum you’ve built toward the thing that’s been on their mind.

The same principle applies in business.

Imagine your company has a product that’s selling extremely well. There is still plenty of market share to capture, and you’re executing your strategy successfully. Then someone comes along and says, “You know what we should really do? We should launch this other product.”

Again, they aren’t necessarily against your current product. They simply aren’t committed to your mission of dominating that particular market. They’re excited by the momentum and want to redirect it toward the product that interests them.

Churches and ministries experience this constantly.

Take Ohio Valley Mission as an example.

We’ve intentionally defined the mission. We are a fellowship of churches subscribing to either the Westminster Standards or the Second London Baptist Confession, focused on Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.

As momentum grows, I fully expect people to say, “Why not include the Savoy Declaration?” or “Why not the Thirty-Nine Articles?” Others will ask, “Why not include Tennessee? Virginia? Oregon?”

Those aren’t unreasonable questions.

But they reveal something important.

Those people aren’t actually excited about our mission. They’re excited about the general idea of what we’re doing, but they want to reshape it around their confession, their region, or their priorities. In other words, they want to redirect the momentum toward what matters most to them.

That doesn’t make them bad people. Many of them will be sincere and well-intentioned.

It simply means they aren’t committed to the specific mission we’ve set out to accomplish.

Now, there are certainly times to pivot. There are times to expand a mission. Sometimes the original plan was flawed. Other times the mission has been so successful that you’ve earned the opportunity to broaden it.

But that’s very different from allowing every enthusiastic outsider to redefine your purpose.

One of the primary responsibilities of leadership is simply restating the mission over and over again. In practice, that’s just another way of enforcing boundaries. You thank people for their encouragement. You appreciate their interest. But you calmly return everyone to the mission.

If you don’t, you’ll never build anything substantial.

Your energy will be scattered across a hundred good ideas. You’ll spread yourself too thin. And you’ll eventually discover that many of the people you were trying to accommodate were never truly committed to your mission in the first place. They were committed to their own agenda, whether out of selfish ambition or perfectly good intentions.

Building anything meaningful requires focus. And focus always requires saying “no” to good ideas that aren’t your mission.

Painting: Dawn Dwyer