The hidden physics of organizational culture, and why performance is stalling even when strategy is clear.
🕓 Reading Time: ~4.5 minutes
📥 Includes free e-book link + quick experiments you can try this week
The Premise Everyone Believes
Executives agree on one thing:
Culture eats strategy for breakfast. — Peter Drucker
But here’s the twist no one’s talking about:
Culture doesn’t kill strategy. Undirected energy does.
And energy problems are almost always diagnostic problems in disguise.
The Real Reason Execution Stalls
You’ve launched a strategy....Communicated it clearly...Your people say they’re aligned.
So why does it still feel like you’re stuck in molasses?
🧠 Research shows that over 70% of leaders misjudge how well their culture supports execution (Denison Consulting, 2020).
📉 Gallup data shows that only 23% of employees strongly agree they can connect their work to their organization’s goals (Gallup, 2023).
Declining culture isn't an engagement problem — it's an energy leak.
Despite best intentions, execution often breaks down in the invisible spaces — the trust, systems, and shared beliefs that either fuel or frustrate progress.
Culture Isn’t Soft — It’s Physics
Let’s reframe the issue.
Culture isn't a vague concept. It’s either flowing and fueling performance, or it’s the friction creating a drag on execution.
Remember Newton's First Law:
Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest.
In business?
Teams with strong cultural energy keep moving.
Teams without it? They stall.
One proposed formula that captures this idea is:
Cultural Energy = Mass × Connection × Capability
When any variable drops, momentum fades. Not because people don’t care — but because they don’t believe their effort will lead to results.
A Broader Framework: Diagnosing Cultural Energy
While many frameworks exist to assess culture, few treat it as a system of energy and flow. But the Momentum Culture Framework, detailed in the new book — Momentum Culture: How High-Performing Companies Leverage Culture for Competitive Advantage — offers a lens for identifying how energy is created, directed, and harnessed within an organization.
It defines culture across three performance domains that together form a cultural flywheel:
🔄 Fusion: Creating Energy
This domain captures how employees come together to collaborate, learn, and solve problems. It represents the raw energy of the company. The more people engaged — and the stronger the trust and connection between them — the more energy is available. But like any source of energy, it needs direction.
➡️ Vector: Directing Energy
Strategy provides the direction for that raw energy. This domain focuses on how employees connect with customers and align their work to the broader mission. When teams deeply understand and believe in the strategy — and when they’re tightly connected to the customers they serve — organizational energy becomes productive, value-creating force in the market.
⚡ Velocity: Applying Energy
This domain reflects how energy is translated into action. Empowerment without accountability is inefficient; accountability without support is demoralizing. Organizations that balance both — empowering employees while holding them accountable, and supporting them with fast, clear decision-making — accelerate execution. This is where energy turns into motion.
💡 The Flywheel Effect
When Fusion, Vector, and Velocity are functioning well, culture becomes a self-sustaining flywheel. It stores energy and releases it when needed — helping the organization deliver better results with less effort and more consistency.
🏁 The End Result
This cultural flywheel creates something powerful: a competitive advantage competitors can’t easily copy. It’s not one program or leader. It’s the underlying system of cultural energy that makes strong performance repeatable.
The Momentum Culture Framework
These aren’t survey questions. They’re diagnostic lenses:
Ask them, and you’ll hear energy patterns — not just opinions.
Experiments You Can Try This Week
⚙️ Culture Energy Check-In
Ask your team: “What gives you energy in your work right now? What drains it?”
Track whether it relates to connection or capability — and see where your flywheel is stalling.
🧭 Strategic Clarity Pulse
Ask a few employees: “Do you know how your work connects to our strategy?”
If the answer is “not really,” you’ve just found an energy leak.
📈 Energy Line Exercise
Draw a 0–10 line on a board. Ask your team to anonymously mark where they think the org’s energy level is — and where they are personally. Compare and discuss.
Takeaway
Next in the Series
Up Next: “Why 95% of Your Workforce Can’t See the Strategy”
We’ll explore why even well-communicated strategies fall flat — and what to do when people hear the message, but don’t believe it or act on it.
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Download the Free E-Book
Want to dive deeper into culture diagnostics and how to fix what’s actually broken?
👉 Download: The Misdiagnosis Epidemic
Discover how to stop solving surface problems and start unlocking real momentum.
📚 References