I Used to Think Momentum Was a Sports Cliché. I Was Wrong.

Every time a sportscaster said "they've got momentum now," I cringed a little. It felt like a storytelling device to explain a scoring run that wasn't real analysis.

But I've changed my mind.

Research I've recently come across actually proves out why momentum is real.

Psychologist David McRaney has written about studies showing that simply telling people a task is easy causes them to rate their own performance higher, even when the actual difficulty hasn't changed. Framing shapes self-assessment, and self-assessment shapes how people perform. When a team gets on a roll, players start believing they're capable of more. That belief changes how they play. Momentum is the confidence, and the confidence is real.

And it plays out the same way in execution.

When your team gets early traction on an initiative, something shifts. People start to believe the work is working. And that belief changes how hard they push. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer's research on the "progress principle" found that small, meaningful wins are among the most powerful drivers of motivation and performance. Even minor accomplishments create a feedback loop that keeps people engaged and moving forward.

So design your initiative so early milestones are achievable. Put some wins at the front. A team that hits its first few targets with confidence will attack the harder ones with more belief than a team that's been grinding without a sign of progress.

That's the planning side. The leadership side flows naturally from the same psychology. Before the work starts, frame the early milestones as genuinely doable. Be honest about the road ahead, but lead with what's achievable right now. Then, when those early wins land, celebrate them and connect them explicitly to the bigger goal. Specific recognition tied to outcomes sticks. "We hit this milestone, and here's exactly why it matters for where we're headed" rewards the work and keeps the strategy visible at the same time.

Momentum is really just the effect of confidence. So if you're planning an initiative right now, where do the first real wins show up?

The more deliberately you set the conditions for momentum, the more confidence—and success—you'll breed.