The 3 leadership habits that kill momentum in your

organization
Five years ago, while coaching senior managers at a pension fund in Uganda, we
launched an ambitious transformation program. The board had approved it. The funds
were ready. Staff were motivated. We were ready to go. Then… nothing. Three months
in, the energy fizzled out. Staff went back to old routines. Managers defaulted to
firefighting. The momentum died. Everyone blamed "resistance to change." But that
was a lie. The truth was uglier.

I diagnosed the problem. Deeply. It is not superficial, like how most consultants send
you generic reports after Googling your sector. No. I met the staff. I observed meetings.
I reviewed internal memos. Like a surgeon, I dissected the leadership culture. And I
found it: Three bad habits of leadership were choking momentum. Not systems. Not
structures. Not salaries. The leaders themselves were the bottleneck.

a) Obsession with control disguised as accountability

The director in charge of operations insisted that all decisions, even simple ones, had to
pass through him. “I just want to be sure we are aligned,” he said. Nonsense. That was
control. Not alignment. Because of him, the approval for a new digital onboarding tool
took seven weeks. Meanwhile, customers continued queuing at the branch. Frontline
staff were frustrated. Innovation died. Momentum collapsed.

Accountability means empowering teams with clear targets and letting them execute.
Control is about insecurity. True leadership is about setting direction, not
micromanaging every detail. When leaders confuse these, they create bottlenecks that
slowly kill every spark of innovation.

b) Shifting priorities every quarter

The CEO was brilliant, visionary had a new "strategic imperative" every three months.
Staff joked that they’d wait two weeks before taking anything seriously, because it
might change. First, it was digital-first. Then customer intimacy. Then product
diversification. When everything is a priority, nothing is. Teams lost confidence in
planning. Execution suffered. It wasn’t fatigue. It was leadership inconsistency.

Momentum needs rhythm. Great leaders create drumbeats: weekly huddles, monthly
reviews, quarterly sprints. They commit to execution with discipline. You don’t change
the destination because the weather is rough. You change the route. Not the goal.

c) Pretending to listen but not acting

During our strategic townhalls, staff raised genuine issues, like broken backend systems
or outdated KPIs. Managers nodded. Took notes. Promised action. Then did nothing. By
the third meeting, the staff stopped speaking. What’s the point? Once leadership signals
that feedback is performative, not actionable, engagement dies. So does momentum.

1
In the village where I grew up in Kikuube, elders taught us that “when you call a
meeting and do nothing, people stop attending. When people stop attending, you have
no community.” That lesson applies to your organization. Momentum is community.
Kill trust, you kill progress.

Leadership challenge this week

Do an audit of your habits. Where are you over-controlling? Where have you shifted
priorities without proper execution? Where have you gathered feedback and failed to
act?

Call a meeting with your senior team. Share this article. Ask them: “Where do I kill
momentum?” Then shut up and listen. Don’t defend. Don’t justify. Listen. Write it
down. Fix it.

The Momentum Radar

Use the Momentum Radar to track your leadership energy across these 5 areas:
1. Decision speed
2. Team autonomy
3. Strategic consistency
4. Feedback-to-action rate
5. Meeting value score

Score each out of 10 weekly. Track it. Discuss it. Improve it. Because what gets
measured gets moved.

The momentum radar score

Momentum is not magic. It is engineered. And most times, it’s leaders who destroy it—
one bad habit at a time.

2
The above illustrative example means:

1. Decision speed – Score: 7/10

This suggests your leadership team is making decisions fairly quickly. You’re not
paralyzed by bureaucracy. However, a 7 also indicates room for tightening the loop,
especially for cross-functional decisions or escalations. You may need to clarify
decision rights or streamline your escalation matrix.

Leadership move: Delegate more. Empower frontline teams with thresholds. Limit
meetings for minor decisions.

2. Team autonomy: Score: 6/10

Your teams are moderately independent, but many still wait for approvals. This kills
initiative. Autonomy is the backbone of momentum. When team members must “seek
permission” for everything, you create a bottleneck culture.

Leadership move-Redesign roles with clearer boundaries. Set OKRs and let teams run.
Reward initiative, not obedience.

3. Strategic consistency – Score: 4/10

This is a red flag. It means you’re changing priorities too often or delivering mixed
messages. Maybe your townhalls say one thing and your budget allocations say another.
Teams are confused. Execution is suffering.

Leadership move: Lock strategy for 12 months. Align messaging. Align KPIs. Review
quarterly but resist the urge to “pivot” too fast.

4. Feedback-to-action rate: Score: 5/10

You’re listening but not acting fast enough. Staff may be losing faith in feedback
channels. They are watching what you do, not what you say.

Leadership move. Create a feedback log with clear action owners. Publish a “you said
we did” dashboard. Build credibility.

5. Meeting value score – Score: 6/10

Your meetings are decent, but possibly too frequent or lacking outcomes. People may
be showing up physically, but are disengaged mentally. Meetings must be momentum
accelerators, not momentum killers.

Leadership move-Cut meeting time by 30%. Clarify purpose. Start with wins. End with
commitments. No minutes, no meeting.

What It All Means

This radar tells me your team is functional but not flying. You’ve built a solid base, but
you are leaving velocity on the table. Your job as a leader is not just to direct the ship.
It’s to accelerate it. Momentum requires clarity, trust, rhythm, and responsiveness.

3
A radar score below 6 in any area is a signal: either your team is confused, constrained,
or just waiting for you to act.

What will you fix this week?

Mr Strategy

4
Why micromanagement is a symptom of a weak
executive team
Three years ago, I visited a struggling school in Kyengera. The headteacher was
exhausted. He kept the office keys. He signed every gate pass. He supervised kitchen
supplies. Worse still, I was informed that he usually sits in every class, pretending to
“observe” teachers. After three days of school operations review and interaction with
the school management, I got a chance for a one-on-one.

The first question I asked was why. His voice cracked, “They don’t do it right if I’m not
watching.” I walked with him around the school. The chalkboards were half used. The
library was dusty. The staff room was silent. Teachers had mentally checked out. And
so had the students. We had chats with students who said the teaching was horrible. No
room to ask questions, and all class work exercises were never marked!

Micromanagement had crushed initiatives. The school didn’t lack money. It lacked
trust. I have seen the same thing in multibillion-dollar corporations.

Micromanagement is not a leadership style. It’s a symptom of a weak executive team

and an insecure leader. It is how power compensates for incompetence.

When the captain rows, the crew stops paddling

During a transformation support engagement for a fast-growing fintech, the founder was
brilliant, visionary, driven, and charismatic. But he was also burnt out. He reviewed
every product spec. Sat in every HR interview. Signed off on every vendor payment.
“We’re scaling too fast,” he said. No. They were not scaling. He was doing all the
scaling. The executive team was just watching him row.

I grew up in a village where, during the rainy season, if the family head insists on being
the one to cut all the grass, till the land, and tie all the goats, he gets burnt out, the crops
fail, and the children stop trying. Not because they are lazy. But because they know
their father will redo everything anyway.

Micromanagement signals that your lieutenants can’t be trusted with the mission. That’s
not a scheduling problem. That’s a recruitment, capability, and structure failure.

Three root causes of micromanagement

a) You hired loyal followers, not competent owners. Many executives fear hiring strong,
independent leaders, so they go for “safe” options. Those who won’t challenge them.
Now you’re stuck with people who need hand-holding. That’s not a team. That’s a
burden.

b) You’ve built no rhythm of trust. If your execs do not have clear KPIs, decision rights,
and review mechanisms, you’ll always feel uneasy. Visibility is the vaccine against
micromanagement. With dashboards, trust becomes measurable.

5
c) Your strategic priorities keep shifting. Teams lose grip when the “what” and “why”
change every two weeks. So you step in to “fix” things. But what you’re fixing is the
confusion you created.

Leadership challenge this week

Ask yourself: What do I do for my team that they should be doing for me? List them.
Then stop. Just stop. Let them fall, if they must. Leadership is not about preventing
mistakes, it is about building ownership.

Book a brutally honest executive meeting. Pose this: “Where have I been doing your
job?” Then pose this: “Which of you, if I left today, could run this business better?” If
no hands go up, your team is broken. Fix it.

I recommend you use the Executive Trust Grid

Map each direct report:

a) Competence; do they know what to do? How good are they at it?
b) Ownership: Do they take action without being pushed? To what extent do they
take ownership? Is it extreme or low?

6
On a 2x2 grid; above,

a) High competence, high ownership → Empower and elevate

b) High competence, low ownership → Confront and realign
c) Low competence, high ownership → Coach or redeploy
d) Low competence, low ownership → Exit immediately

This is how grown-up leaders build a legacy. Not by hovering. But by hiring right and
trusting wisely.

Micromanagement is the cough. Your executive team is the lungs. If you are coughing
too much, check what you’re breathing. And who you’ve surrounded yourself with.

Mr Strategy

7
Culture is not the party, it’s who cleans up after.
Two years ago, I visited the office of a tech firm in Nairobi. Bright lights. Good coffee.
A room labelled “Innovation Hub” is filled with beanbags and sticky notes. The CEO
told me, “Our culture is amazing. People are free to speak. We even have pizza
Fridays.” I smiled. Then I asked the janitor how long the company delays salary
payment without any explanation. He said three weeks and sometimes more.

That’s the culture.

You see, culture is not the playlist at your staff party. It is those who do the dirty work
without applause. It is whether people can say the truth without being punished. It’s
whether leaders show up to staff funerals, not just AGMs.

You want a strong culture? Stop funding vibes and start enforcing standards. Because
culture isn’t what excites you. It is what you tolerate when you’re tired.

Take it from me: If your team smiles in meetings and mocks leadership on WhatsApp,
that’s your real culture. If people clap at your vision but dodge responsibility, that’s
your culture. If your best staff are always “burnt out” and your worst ones are “always
available,” your culture is broken.

I don’t care about your mission statement. Show me who gets promoted. Who gets
blamed? Who gets protected? That is your culture. Not what you write. What you allow.

And yes, this applies in Kampala, Nairobi, and Kigali. You’re not building a startup.
You’re building a jungle. The loudest animals will dominate if the leader doesn’t
enforce the rules.

Culture is not magic. It is policing. Quiet, consistent policing.

Fix your culture before it fixes you

If what you tolerate is killing your team’s fire, it is time to stop talking and start acting.
At Summit Consulting, we do not give you generic workshops with colourful slides and
buzzwords. We enter your trenches. We observe. We investigate. We diagnose. Then
we rebuild with you.

From culture audits, executive team re-alignment, DISC personality reviews, to custom
culture dashboards that show you exactly where the rot is—we deliver truth, not theatre.
Because culture is not what you say. It’s what your people survive.

Let Summit Consulting help you turn your culture from a slogan into a system.

Ready to fix it? Visit www.summitcl.com to start your culture reset.

Stop managing symptoms. Start curing the cause.

Mr Strategy