Stop Begging for Resources (and Start Building a Movement )

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You launch an initiative, run a few sprints, and perhaps even secure a budget. But instead of excitement growing over time, the energy dissipates. Submission rates for idea competitions drop. People stop showing up. It feels like pulling teeth.

Why does this work feel so hard, even when you have the CEO’s endorsement? The problem isn't a lack of discipline or hard work. The problem is a lack of momentum.

Tendayi Viki, Senior Partner at Strategyzer, explores the mechanics of a "feel-good transformation." By applying the laws of physics to organizational change and understanding the psychology of "idiosyncrasy credits," innovation leaders can stop begging for resources and start building a movement that people actively ask to join.

We often associate productivity and transformation with discipline. We define discipline as doing things you don't want to do because you know they are important. You suffer through the hard conversations and the resistance because the goal is worth it.

But there is an alternative: the "feel good" transformation. Tendayi references the work of Ali Abdaal, noting that positive emotions are the fuel that drives human flourishing. If the work feels good, you don't need to force discipline; you do it because it generates energy.

Tendayi explains, "In a feel good transformation, you don’t ever have to make your case. You don’t have to beg, you don’t have to coerce, you don’t have to plead with people to join the innovation movement."

You also don't need to host a massive event to announce the start of the program, nor do you need the perfect PowerPoint deck. "There’s only one thing that you need to do, only one thing. And that thing you need to do is to create momentum."

Momentum is not a vague feeling; it is a mechanical process. Tendayi visualizes this as a flywheel that creates its own energy.

It begins with Consistent Action. You must start doing something: not planning, not pitching, but doing. These actions must focus on producing Visible Results. It is these visible results that start attracting people to the work you are doing.

As you produce results, you generate Growing Engagement. As engagement grows, you gain the capacity to perform even more Consistent Actions, which produce bigger Results, which drives further Engagement.

The goal of the corporate innovator is to be allowed to do "cooler and cooler stuff." But you cannot ask for that permission on day one. Tendayi warns, "If you start having some kind of visible impact on the company with small, consistent actions, what happens is you get more and more people to join the movement... And what that does is it unlocks the capacity to work on cooler and cooler things."

To understand how to generate this movement, Tendayi turns to physics. The formula for momentum is Mass times Velocity ($p=mv$).

In a corporate context, these variables take on specific meanings:

This formula explains why some well-funded programs fail while scrappy initiatives succeed.

Tendayi draws a critical comparison: "A big truck moving slowly is an innovation program with CEO endorsement, but middle management resistance." You have all the mass (weight) in the world, but zero velocity. It doesn't move.

Conversely, "A small car moving fast is a person who’s working with early adopters and producing visible results." That small car often has more momentum than the stationary big truck.

When you assess your own innovation program, you must score yourself on both dimensions. You might have high mass (strategic alignment, stakeholder trust) but low velocity (no success stories being shared, no visible social proof). If your velocity is zero, your momentum is zero, regardless of how much "weight" the CEO adds to the email announcement.

We often treat buy-in as a prerequisite—something we must secure before we begin. Tendayi flips this logic: Buy-in is the outcome of the momentum you create.

Peter Drucker famously said that the purpose of a business is to create customers. Tendayi extends this logic to our work: "The purpose of a transformation is to create believers."

You are not just executing a process; you are manufacturing belief. "The only type of change that sticks is when people believe in the thing. When they buy in." If they don't believe, they will revert to old behaviors the moment the pressure is off or the consultant leaves.

True buy-in requires two distinct elements:

Tendayi maps this on a two-by-two matrix to identify four stakeholder personas:

The danger zone for innovators is the "Supporter" quadrant, specifically with C-level leaders. Tendayi notes, "C-level leaders are very, very good at this thing where they like, offer their support... It’s very, very rare to find them also actively contributing."

How do you get started without asking for massive permission upfront? You leverage a concept from psychology called Idiosyncrasy Credits.

"Idiosyncrasy credits is how much permission a group that you’re part of is giving you to do something different," Tendayi explains. It is your line of credit to be a deviant.

There is a myth that innovators must be “mavericks”—difficult, contrarian, and outside the norm. But to survive inside a large organization, you need the group's permission to deviate.

Paradoxically, you do not earn these credits by being different; you earn them by being a strong member of the group.

If you are hired as a Chief Innovation Officer from the outside, you start with zero credits. The organization views you as a foreign body. To build momentum, you must prove fidelity to the group's goals before you disrupt them.

You cannot move a heavy object with sheer willpower. You need leverage; a small, well-placed move that produces an outsized impact.

In a corporate transformation, your leverage point is not the detractors, nor the skeptics, but the Early Adopters. "You need to find the path of least resistance, which is people that don’t need convincing," Tendayi advises. These are the people already aware of the challenges, already trying to hack together solutions, and willing to invest their time. "If you can’t find early adopters, quit. You’re going nowhere."

Your job is to find this tribe and help them produce an “early win”. This win must be visible and verifiable. It cannot be "innovation theater" like a pizza night or a speaker series. It must be actual work that solves a problem for the core business.

Tendayi shares the story of Claudia Kotchka at P&G, who didn't start by trying to change the whole company. She applied design thinking to the Mr. Clean brand, solved a specific problem, and transformed the brand. That success bought her the permission to do more.

Momentum dies in silence. If you are doing good work but nobody knows, you generate no mass — tell stories to build it.

"Lead with narrative, not facts or data," Tendayi says. "Facts or data don’t win. The person with the best story wins."

Critically, you must not make yourself the hero of these stories, but make your Champions the heroes. "Stories resonate when we can see ourselves in the story."

This social proof drives you toward the tipping point. Tendayi cites research by David Centola showing that you don't need 51% of the population to create inevitable change. You only need about 25%. Once you have a committed minority of 25% who are bought in, you become a force that cannot be ignored.

Finally, if you find yourself in a position where you must pitch or sell your idea, Tendayi offers a crucial piece of advice: "If you must pitch, try not to sound like a lunatic."

Innovators love language like "disruption," "pivot," and "transformation." But this language scares people and signals danger. Instead, leverage the Mere Exposure Effect (or the familiarity principle).

Tendayi uses the example of The Lion King. The team struggled to pitch the movie as "Bambi with lions in Africa." It didn't resonate. But when they framed it as "Hamlet with lions," it clicked. It was familiar. It gave executives a mental anchor. "Address their fears with kindness, speak their language, not yours," Tendayi says.

As we look to the future of corporate innovation, leaders need to shift their metrics. We are used to measuring activity (sprints run) or financial ROI (which takes years to materialize). But if the goal is transformation, the metric that matters is attraction.

When people stop viewing innovation as a tax they have to pay, or a compliance box they have to check, and start viewing it as a vehicle for their own success, you have won.

That means that you don't need to fight the passive resistance of the "big truck." You need to build a small car, fill it with early adopters, drive it fast, and tell everyone about the ride.

Momentum creates buy-in. So… Build the small fast car.

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