The Strategy Speed Equation
Physics explains how things move. Business strategy needs to know the same thing.
Do NOT panic! - No pop quizzes, formulas, or advanced math degrees required to proceed.
Motion is the name of the game in both Newton’s world and modern business strategy. Especially now, when customers and business realities shift faster than your team can finish a sprint plan.
So today, we’re borrowing Newton’s language to crack what most companies miss: how to go from knowing something… to acting on it before it’s obvious.
Physics 101: Motion Basics for Strategy
Before we dive into business applications, here’s a quick refresher on three core physics concepts: Position, Velocity, and Acceleration. They reveal not just where things stand, but where and how fast they’re moving.
Position: The exact place where an object is located at a specific moment in time. Think of it as a still photo. In business: today’s sales numbers, active users right now, page views today.
Velocity: The speed and direction at which an object is moving. It’s not just how fast, but which way. In business: trends and insights showing where things are heading, contextualized by what’s relevant to your product, customer, or category.
Acceleration: The rate at which velocity changes. It’s when things start moving faster (or slower) suddenly. In business: live signals indicating rapid shifts in behavior or sentiment, demanding real-time action.
Position = Data
Position is your starting line. In physics, it’s a fixed spot, a single coordinate in space and time. No motion, no momentum. It’s just a point on the map.
In business terms: Position equals raw facts. The numbers you can pull up right now.
“We sold 1,432 units today.”
“Our pricing page had 3,200 views.”
“183 new subscriptions this week (don’t forget to like and subscribe).”
It feels reassuring, something solid you can report in a team meeting. But here’s the trap: Position only tells you where you are. It says nothing about where you’re heading, or how fast things might change.
Trying to steer your business from a single point in time is like trying to win a race by staring at your starting block. You know where you began, but you have no clue who’s gaining on you. And more importantly, if/when you have already been passed.
Velocity = Insight
Velocity is movement with intent. In physics, it’s not just speed, it’s speed with direction. Fast matters, but where you’re headed matters more.
In business, velocity shows up as contextualized data, more formally known as an insight. It’s when you stop looking at isolated facts and start asking: What does this mean for us, here and now?
Insights aren’t a generic trend report. It’s sharpened by relevance to your product, your customer, your category.
Raw fact: “80% of trial users drop off by Day 3.”
(Velocity-level) Insight: “Our onboarding experience is overwhelming new users, killing conversion.”
That’s the leap. An insight isn’t just observing what’s happening. It’s understanding why and knowing where it’s taking you.
And it’s hyper-specific. What’s true for one product or segment doesn’t automatically apply to another. This isn’t about borrowing last quarter’s playbook, it’s about writing a new one, every time the context shifts. But doing this doesn’t have to be resource heavy.
Acceleration = Signal
Acceleration is where things get serious. In physics, acceleration measures how quickly velocity changes. It’s the moment when movement itself speeds up (or slows down) fast.
In business, acceleration means a shift is happening right now, sharper and faster than before. This can be for better or for worse.
Where velocity gives you a sense of direction, acceleration is the real-time flag: Pay attention, things are moving quicker than usual. Fasten your seatbelts.
Insight (Velocity): “Transparency drives Gen Z choice of financial products, specifically for investing.”
Signal (Acceleration): “In the past 48 hours, Gen Z users are 5X more likely to engage with our price comparison tool after a viral Reddit thread talked about our product.”
That’s not a nice-to-know trend. That’s a window opening (and closing) before most teams have even spun up a meeting.
This is where dashboards fall short. What matters isn’t just tracking behavior. It’s recognizing when behavior starts behaving differently.
At CADRE, we build for that edge: Signal Tagging that catches live behavioral clues. Think clicks, scrolls, chat logs, abandoned carts and that quietly say: The ground is shifting. Move now.
How to Spot Acceleration (Before It’s Obvious)
Acceleration isn’t something you wait to analyze after the fact, it’s something you train yourself (and your systems) to notice in real time.
Yes, AI can help. But it’s not about technology, it’s about building the reflexes and signals into your workflow and having these tools in place to detect moments that matter. At CADRE, we use a blend of live signals, behavior-rich segments, and pattern detection to catch shifts as they happen. Here’s some of the flags we watch for:
Sudden clustering: When the same question, comment, or behavior starts appearing across channels at once. It’s rarely a coincidence.
Uncommon behavior from a known group: Your loyal users suddenly acting like first-timers, or vice versa.
Unexpected overlap: Behaviors crossing segment lines, like enterprise buyers showing consumer-style urgency.
Live friction: Customer support logs, live chat spikes, social mentions that surface tension before it shows up in lagging metrics.
These aren’t abstract data points. They’re tangible signals, things your team can see and feel. The difference is, with CADRE, you don’t have to stumble across them by accident. We surface them directly, so your product, marketing, and customer teams can act while it still matters.
Going for Gold in the Acceleration Era
This is where leadership earns its title. Because in the acceleration era, strategy isn’t about polishing perfect plans, it’s about building reflexes.
The teams that win aren’t waiting for a monthly report or a consensus deck. They’re moving on real signals, fast enough to shape the market instead of following it.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
You adjust messaging the same day a behavioral spike shows up.
You tweak product flows before your NPS tanks, not after.
You test and learn inside the signal window, not after it closes.
Insight used to be about knowing more. Now, it’s about knowing sooner. Acceleration isn’t a KPI, it’s a reflex. Build it into your organization or risk building strategy for a world that’s already moved on.
Because in business, just like in physics, if you’re not accelerating, you’re already falling behind.