Latest / The Strategize, Adapt, and Overcome Podcast by Brad Young / Professional Momentum: How to Build and Sustain Success at Work

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Professional Momentum: How to Build and Sustain Success at Work · The Strategize, Adapt, and Overcome Podcast by Brad Young

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  Speaker 1: Welcome back to strategize, adapt, overcome. I'm Brad Young, and
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  Speaker 1: today we are diving into something that I believe is
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  Speaker 1: one of the most underestimated forces in human performance and
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  Speaker 1: one of the most misunderstood concepts in the self improvement conversation.
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  Speaker 1: We're talking about momentum. What it is, how it actually works,
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  Speaker 1: why it matters so profoundly, and most importantly, how you
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  Speaker 1: build it, sustain it, and use it to turn small
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  Speaker 1: incremental winds into the kind of breakthroughs that look from
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  Speaker 1: the outside like overnight success. Here's the thing about momentum
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  Speaker 1: that most people get wrong. They think of it as
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  Speaker 1: a reward, something you receive after you've already done the
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  Speaker 1: hard work, a feeling that shows up when things are
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  Speaker 1: going well. But momentum is not a reward. Momentum is
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  Speaker 1: a tool. It's something you build deliberately, something you protect fiercely,
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  Speaker 1: and something you leverage strategically to amplify everything else you're doing.
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  Speaker 1: Since Su understood this, in fact, an entire dimension of
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  Speaker 1: his strategic philosophy is centered on what he called SHE,
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  Speaker 1: the strategic advantage that comes from accumulated force and favorable positioning.
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  Speaker 1: That concept translated into the language of everyday life is
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  Speaker 1: exactly what we are talking about today, momentum and professional life.
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  Speaker 1: Let us bring this principle into the professional arena, where
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  Speaker 1: momentum is often both more visible and more fragile than
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  Speaker 1: in personal life. In organizational settings, momentum is deeply social.
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  Speaker 1: It is not just something that individual contributors build in isolation.
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  Speaker 1: It is something that teams create together, that leadership can
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  Speaker 1: either support or inadvertently destroy, and that culture either enables
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  Speaker 1: or suppresses. Understanding the social dynamics of professional momentum is
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  Speaker 1: essential for anyone operating at a meaningful level of responsibility.
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  Speaker 1: So and Sue was acutely aware of the role that
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  Speaker 1: collective morale and shared momentum played in military effectiveness. He
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  Speaker 1: wrote extensively about the importance of unity of purpose, of
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  Speaker 1: ensuring that every member of the force understood what they
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  Speaker 1: were fighting for, why it mattered, and how their individual
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  Speaker 1: contribution connected to the larger objective. When that connection was
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  Speaker 1: clear and felt, momentum spread through the army like a current.
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  Speaker 1: When it was absent, even technically superior forces could find
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  Speaker 1: themselves unable to sustain effective action. The translation to modern
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  Speaker 1: professional life is direct and practical. Teams that have clear
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  Speaker 1: shared goals, visible evidence of progress, and leaders who actively
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  Speaker 1: celebrate small wins built professional momentum that compounds over time.
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  Speaker 1: Teams that lack those elements where goals are vague, progress
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  Speaker 1: is invisible, and contributions go unacknowledged tend to experience the
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  Speaker 1: organizational equivalent of the what the hell effect, a slow
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  Speaker 1: erosion of engagement that eventually manifests a stagnation, disengagement, or turnover.
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  Speaker 1: As a leader, understanding that your primary job is off
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  Speaker 1: and momentum management, creating the conditions in which your team's
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  Speaker 1: collective shot builds rather than dissipates, is a genuinely powerful reframe.
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  Speaker 1: Clear shared goals momentum teams requires everyone to see the
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  Speaker 1: same target. Ambiguity about direction is one of the fastest
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  Speaker 1: ways to dissipate collective energy and forward motion. Celebrated progress
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  Speaker 1: leaders who actively acknowledge small wins create the dopamine driven
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  Speaker 1: reinforcement loops that keep teams engaged and motivated through the
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  Speaker 1: inevitable difficult stretches. Unity of purpose when every team member
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  Speaker 1: understands how their individual contribution connects to the collective mission,
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  Speaker 1: momentum becomes self sustaining rather than dependent on constant external
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  Speaker 1: direction the relationship between momentum and identity. Here is a
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  Speaker 1: dimension of the momentum conversation that I find endlessly fascinating
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  Speaker 1: and one that I don't think gets nearly enough attention
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  Speaker 1: in the broader discourse around productivity and high performance. The
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  Speaker 1: relationship between a momentum and identity. The way you think
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  Speaker 1: about who you are has a profound and direct effect
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  Speaker 1: on your ability to build and sustain forward motion in
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  Speaker 1: your life, and the reverse is also true. The momentum
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  Speaker 1: you build changes over time how you think about who
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  Speaker 1: you are. Sunsue was intensely focused on the morale and
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  Speaker 1: self perception of his forces. He understood that an army
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  Speaker 1: that believed it was winning would fight differently than an
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  Speaker 1: army that was uncertain of its own strength. He understood
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  Speaker 1: that confidence, not arrogance, but grounded self belief based on
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  Speaker 1: demonstrated capability, was itself a strategic resource. He worked to
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  Speaker 1: cultivate it deliberately, ensuring that his forces accumulated enough small
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  Speaker 1: victories to develop an unshakable sense of their own effectiveness
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  Speaker 1: before being tested in truly difficult engagements and personal develop terms.
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  Speaker 1: This is what James clear calls identity based habits, the
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  Speaker 1: idea that the most durable behavior change happens not when
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  Speaker 1: you set a goal, but when you shift your self concept,
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  Speaker 1: when you begin to see yourself as someone who exercises
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  Speaker 1: regularly rather than someone trying to exercise regularly. The behavior
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  Speaker 1: changes because the identity is changed. And here's where momentum
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  Speaker 1: and identity intersects so powerfully. Small wins are not just
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  Speaker 1: tactical steps toward a goal. They are votes cast in
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  Speaker 1: favor of a new identity. Each small action that aligns
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  Speaker 1: with who you are choosing to become makes that identity
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  Speaker 1: slightly more real, slightly more believable, slightly more natural. Obstacles resistance,
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  Speaker 1: and the test of true momentum. No discussion of momentum
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  Speaker 1: would be complete without addressing directly what happens when it
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  Speaker 1: meets resistance, because it will. The path of any significant
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  Speaker 1: endeavor will incline moments of genuine difficulty, setbacks that are
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  Speaker 1: not just minor inconveniences but real, significant challenges that require
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  Speaker 1: you to dig deeply and draw on resources you didn't
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  Speaker 1: necessarily know you had. How you navigate those moments determines
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  Speaker 1: everything about whether your momentum is real and durable, or
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  Speaker 1: merely a surface level phenomenon that dissolves under pressure. Suns
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  Speaker 1: Who's approach to obstacles was not to avoid them at
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  Speaker 1: all costs, but to understand them deeply enough to navigate
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  Speaker 1: around or through them with minimum loss of strategic advantage.
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  Speaker 1: He wrote in Conflict, direct confrontation will lead to engagement,
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  Speaker 1: and surprise will lead to victory. Those who are skilled
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  Speaker 1: in producing surprises will win. The principle here is flexibility,
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  Speaker 1: the willingness to adapt your approach without abandoning your direction.
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  Speaker 1: The obstacle does not stop you, it redirects you in.
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  Speaker 1: A redirected path can sometimes be shorter and more effective
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  Speaker 1: than the original. The psychological skill that most supports this
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  Speaker 1: approach is what Martin Seligman's research describes as an optimistic
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  Speaker 1: explanatory style. The habit of interpreting setbacks is temporary, specific,
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  Speaker 1: and not definitively reflective of your own capability. When something
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  Speaker 1: goes wrong, A pessimistic explanatory style says it will last forever,
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  Speaker 1: affect everything, and prove something fundamental about your limitations. An
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  Speaker 1: optimistic explanatory style says it is temporary. Bounded and not
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  Speaker 1: conclusive censors. Generals were not naively optimistic. They were clear
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  Speaker 1: eyed about difficulty, but the interpreted difficulty is a tactical
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  Speaker 1: problem to be solved, rather than a verdict on their
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  Speaker 1: ultimate destiny. Designing your environment for momentum. One of the
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  Speaker 1: most practical and immediately actionable things you can do to
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  Speaker 1: build and sustain momentum is to design your physical and
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  Speaker 1: social environment to support the behaviors you are trying to maintain.
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  Speaker 1: This is not a glamorous piece of advice. It does
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  Speaker 1: not come with the emotional charge of a motivational story
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  Speaker 1: or the intellectual satisfaction of a complex strategic framework. But
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  Speaker 1: it is extraordinarily effective, and it is deeply consistent with
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  Speaker 1: how Sun Soo thought about the relationship between environment and performance.
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  Speaker 1: Sun s Soo's concept of terrain was central to his
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  Speaker 1: entire strategic framework. He categorized different types of terrain exhaustively favorable, unfavorable, contested, open, constricted,
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  Speaker 1: and his core advice was always to choose your terrain deliberately.
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  Speaker 1: You do not simply go where the battle happens to be.
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  Speaker 1: You select and shape the ground on which you fight.
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  Speaker 1: Applied to everyday life, This means asking a fundamentally different
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  Speaker 1: question than most people ask about behavior change. Instead of
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  Speaker 1: how do I motivate myself to do this, ask how
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  Speaker 1: do I design my environment so that this behavior is easy, natural,
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  Speaker 1: and almost inevitable. This manifests in dozens of practical ways.
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  Speaker 1: Where your workspace should be organized to minimize friction for
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  Speaker 1: your most important work. Your social environment should include people
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  Speaker 1: who model the behaviors and mindsets you are trying to cultivate.
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  Speaker 1: Your schedule should protect the time blocks that matter most
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  Speaker 1: from the constant erosion of urgent but less important demands.
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  Speaker 1: Your digital environment should reduce the accessibility of distractions and
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  Speaker 1: increase the accessibility of the tools that support your goals.
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  Speaker 1: None of these changes are individually transformative, but cumulatively they
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  Speaker 1: create a terrain that favors your momentum rather than depleting it,
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  Speaker 1: and over time, the terrain advantage compounds just as decisively
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  Speaker 1: as any other form of strategic advantage. Physical environment reduce
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  Speaker 1: friction for important work. Set up your space so that
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  Speaker 1: the right behavior requires less energy than the wrong behavior.
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  Speaker 1: Sunzou choses terrain deliberately, so should you social and environment.
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  Speaker 1: Surround yourself with people who are building momentum in their
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  Speaker 1: own lives. Social proof and peer modeling are among the
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  Speaker 1: most powerful environmental influences on behavior. Temporal environment. Protect your
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  Speaker 1: highest value time blocks, like strategic positions. Once lost, they
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  Speaker 1: are costly to reclaim. Schedule your most important work first,
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  Speaker 1: before the day's demands can displace it. About this podcast, Strategize, Adapt,
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  Speaker 1: Overcome as a podcast by Brad Young dedicated to exploring
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  Speaker 1: the enduring wisdom of Sun Sous the art of war,
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  Speaker 1: and making that wisdom immediately applicable to the challenges of
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  Speaker 1: modern life. Every episode is a deep, honest, narrative driven
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  Speaker 1: conversation with the ideas that have shaped strategic thinking for
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  Speaker 1: over two thousand years, brought forward into the present with care, curiosity,
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  Speaker 1: and a genuine belief that ancient wisdom and contemporary challenges
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  Speaker 1: have far more in common than they have differences. The
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  Speaker 1: episodes in this collection represent just two entries in an
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  Speaker 1: ongoing series that spans topics from leadership and communication to resilience, focus, creativity,
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  Speaker 1: and the nature of success itself. Each one is written
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  Speaker 1: with a single purpose to give you something that you
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  Speaker 1: will still be thinking about long after the final word,
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  Speaker 1: and that will show up quietly and powerfully. And the
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  Speaker 1: choices you make in the life you build opportunities multiply
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  Speaker 1: as they are seized. Sin Sue The Art of War
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  Speaker 1: and the Art of Living. Sunsou wrote The Art of
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  Speaker 1: War approximately five hundred years before the Common Era, in
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  Speaker 1: a China that bore almost no resemblance to the world
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  Speaker 1: we inhabit today. The weapons were different, the political structures
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  Speaker 1: were different. The geography, the culture, the technology, all of
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  Speaker 1: it was different in ways that should, by any reasonable measure,
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  Speaker 1: render his observations irrelevant to the questions you and I
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  Speaker 1: face in our daily lives. And yet here we are
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  Speaker 1: two and a half thousand years later, and the book
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  Speaker 1: is still in print. It is still studied in military academies,
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  Speaker 1: in business schools and philosophy departments. It is still quoted
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  Speaker 1: in boardrooms and coaching sessions and self improvement conversations around
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  Speaker 1: the world. And why because Sun Sue was not ultimately
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  Speaker 1: writing about warfare. He was writing about the fundamental nature
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  Speaker 1: of a strategic action in a world of incomplete information,
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  Speaker 1: competing interests, and constant change. He was writing about how
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  Speaker 1: to think, how to prepare, how to adapt, how to
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  Speaker 1: build advantage, and how to move decisively towards your objectives
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  Speaker 1: without being destroyed by either your opponents or your own limitations.
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  Speaker 1: Those are not military problems. They are human problems. They
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  Speaker 1: are your problems in mind, and they are as fresh
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  Speaker 1: and pressing today as they were in fifth century China.
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  Speaker 1: This podcast exists because that truth deserves to be void, explored,
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  Speaker 1: and brought to life in the stories and struggles of
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  Speaker 1: ordinary modern people trying to build extraordinary ordinary lives. Not
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  Speaker 1: the lives of generals, not the lives of emperors, the
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  Speaker 1: lives of people who wake up every morning with goals
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  Speaker 1: they care about, obstacles they have to navigate, decisions they
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  Speaker 1: have to make, and the constant, beautiful, difficult challenge of
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  Speaker 1: becoming more fully who they have the capacity to be.
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  Speaker 1: That is what Strategize, Adapt, Overcome is about, and that
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  Speaker 1: is what soon Sue, at his deepest and most enduring
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  Speaker 1: was about. Two a final word. Every episode of this
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  Speaker 1: podcast begins with the same three words in the title Strategize, Adapt,
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  Speaker 1: overcomebab because I believe those three words capture something essential
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  Speaker 1: about the life well lived. Strategizing means thinking before acting,
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  Speaker 1: building frameworks, and making choices that serve your long term
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  Speaker 1: vision rather than your short term comfort. Adapting means holding
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  Speaker 1: your plans loosely enough to update them when reality pushes back,
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  Speaker 1: staying nimble in the face of change without losing sight
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  Speaker 1: of where you are going. And overcoming means persisting through
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  Speaker 1: the inevitable difficulty of any meaningful endeavor with enough resilience, resourcefulness,
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  Speaker 1: and self belief to reach the other side. Sun Sue
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  Speaker 1: embodied all three, and in studying him and sitting with
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  Speaker 1: his ideas and turning them over and finding their contemporary expressions,
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  Speaker 1: I find myself continuously reminded of something that I think
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  Speaker 1: we all need to hear more often. The capacity for strategic, adaptive,
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  Speaker 1: resilient living is not a rare gift distributed to a
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  Speaker 1: fortunate few. It is a skill. It is learnable, It
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  Speaker 1: requires attention, practice and patience. But it is available to
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  Speaker 1: every person willing to show up, do the work, and
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  Speaker 1: keep going even when the path is not clear. That
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  Speaker 1: is the invitation this podcast extends with every episode, not
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  Speaker 1: to become Sunsu, not to turn your life into a
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  Speaker 1: milli military campaign, but to borrow the depth of his thinking,
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  Speaker 1: the precision of his observation, and the elegance of his
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  Speaker 1: principles and to apply them with full creative adaptation to
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  Speaker 1: the specific and irreplaceable challenge of being you, living your life,
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  Speaker 1: pursuing your goals, navigating your obstacles, and building something that matters.
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  Speaker 1: And thank you for listening, thank you for thinking, and
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  Speaker 1: thank you for doing the ongoing, courageous, necessary work of
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  Speaker 1: becoming who you are meant to be. I will see
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  Speaker 1: you in the next episode.