Neil Butler
17 November 2025
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Isaac Newton is arguably one of the most influential people in history and certainly one of the greatest mathematician and physicists of all time. Born in 1643, I suspect that he never expected to find his theories referred to in a business context almost 400 years later, but here we are.
He developed three laws of motion which most people would have learned about in year 9 or 10 science but it is the first and second ones that I want to bring into this conversation.
Law 1: An object will stay at rest, or keep moving in a straight line at constant speed, unless a unbalanced external force acts on it.
Law 2: The acceleration (the change in speed or direction) of an object is directly proportional to the unbalanced force acting on it and inversely proportional to its mass, which in its simplest form is written as f=ma.
Think about your business for a moment.
If we paraphrase Newton and apply his first theory, it says that our organisation will keep moving at the same speed and direction unless something is done about it. If someone imposes an external force on it.
And if we take the second theory, the size of the impact will be determined by the magnitude of the applied force.
Who, in your business, is going to impose that external force? Is it you? Do you have the drive and energy to apply a force that shifts the direction or speed of your organisation.