The real cost of leadership indecision? Momentum debt.
How Much Momentum Debt Is Your Team Carrying, and what exactly is it?
I’ve always been curious about the term "technical debt" used in software development. It’s often the easier option in the short term, but it creates ongoing complexity and long-term cost that, I imagine, requires significant investment to unwind.
I believe the same thing happens in leadership.
At Embertree, we call it momentum debt: an invisible weight that builds up in your leadership operating system. It slows everything down, but because it happens gradually, it’s rarely addressed head-on.
The term might be novel, but the concept isn’t. You’ll find echoes of it in Sull’s ‘active inertia’ and Argyris’ ‘defensive routines’. It’s that pattern of glossing over complex challenges, such as avoiding discomfort, delaying action, until nothing can move forward without a full-blown change of your management program. The kind of shift that should be baked into the work of a team every day: to adapt, to learn, to improve.
Why does this happen?
Partly, it’s cultural. Many organisational systems still reward paternalistic power dynamics. Both sides play their part: leaders who protect, and teams who wait. So no one talks about the hard stuff. Few are willing to live out the uncomfortable truth in Ronald Heifetz’s famous quote: “Leadership is about disappointing your people at a rate they can absorb.”
Instead of building an adaptive operating system that surfaces and progresses complex challenges, we often respond with more control. More approvals. More bottlenecks. And fewer decisions are made where the actual information lives.
That’s how momentum gets strangled.
What does momentum debt actually look like?
A pattern of escalating issues without a clear response. We celebrate the hero who takes on everything but delivers little.
Stalling on initiatives or waiting for perfection rather than delivering “good enough.”
Adding controls instead of solving root causes. It makes us feel safer, but doesn’t change the system.
Waiting for everyone to endorse before moving. This is where good ideas often go to die in committee or receive token sign-offs with little to no real accountability.
So, how do we repay our momentum debt?
Take a hard look at your team’s work in progress. What can you stop, pause, or fully commit to so you can find a rhythm again?
Create a culture that talks openly about both the upside and downside risks of an initiative. What’s the worst credible outcome? And how does that compare to doing nothing?
Test decision boundaries. Move authority to where the information is, not the other way around. (A nod to Marquet’s Intent-Based Leadership.)
Ready to repay your momentum debt?
Come and talk with Embertree today about how momentum debt can accumulate in leadership operating systems, often quietly but with real impact. We’ll help you make sense of the bottlenecks, bring clarity to the challenges, and work with you to strengthen the foundations of your Leadership Operating System so your team can move forward with confidence.