Category: Notes

February 26, 2026By Ayan Abshir

Postcards from the future

Here at Momentum, we ❤️ a warm-up.

Not for entertainment value (though that’s welcome). For orientation. A creative pause before the hard thinking begins. A way to loosen imagination before analysis tightens it.

A good warm-up lets colleagues step out of earlier sessions and concerns. It invites them into something low-stakes, suspends judgment, and brings people fully into the room before future planning – which can easily become heavy and analytical – begins. A creative exercise makes the future easier to enter.

So before a demanding planning session with colleagues working on climate finance, we ran a simple foresight exercise, ‘Postcards from the Future’:

Greetings from 2040! You are a participant at the COP45 in Norway, and have the chance to write a postcard to yourself back in 2025. Future you has a chance to share an experience, an update or advice with your younger self – what do they need to know?

2040 – far enough away to move beyond the tactical or strategic, and into the visionary and creative.

And colleagues really did! The postcards ranged from deeply worried to gently satirical. Some imagined breakthroughs. Others poked fun at process. A few carried quiet exhaustion. But suddenly, the future wasn’t abstract anymore. It was human.

Shared concerns surfaced, laughter followed, and within minutes the room had shifted from analysis into imagination — which, as it turns out, is exactly where serious strategy needs to start.

Notes

January 8, 2026By Momentum

2025: Lessons we are taking forward

An action-packed year for Momentum: in motion, in learning, and in partnership. We had the privilege of supporting nine organizational realignments, working with two teams on performance and Team Collaborative Frameworks (TCFs), we conducted one UN System Review, and helped shape two full organizational strategies. Each project brought its own complexity – and its own set of deeply moving human stories.

Our engagements stretched from Berlin in the North to Antananarivo in the South, from Baghdad in the East to Rabat in the West. Whilst our experiences were as varied as the cities we visited, a few moments stood out across the physical and operational landscapes:

In January, in Egypt, we found ourselves receiving unexpected applause after a particularly challenging workshop – it wasn’t just recognition for a job completed, it was appreciation for empathy shown, space given, and meaningful listening. A very moving and validating moment for us.
In March, in Jordan, beside the still waters of the Dead Sea, we paused for our first proper annual retreat: two quiet, reflective days that reminded us why we do this work in the first place.
In September, in Madagascar, our work took an unplanned turn when GenZ-led demonstrations broke out just as we wrapped a strategic realignment - forcing a real-time test of the strategy we’d just crafted.

What follows are insights and lessons we’re taking with us from 2025. Not conclusions, but reflections – still evolving, and very much shaped by the people we worked with along the way.

Resilience has a name, and it's the UNDP team in Gaza.

If you’re ever in doubt about the power of human commitment, spend a week with the UNDP team in Palestine. Actually, scratch that – spend 24 months, like they did, facing relentless pressure and insecurity in Gaza and still showing up with grit, grace, and purpose. Working alongside them was nothing short of humbling. They didn’t just move mountains, they shifted water, tents, rubble, and waste. Their resilience taught us more than any playbook ever could: that a deeply shared purpose isn’t just motivational fluff. It’s operational fuel.

Strategy first, structure second: confirmed (with a plot twist in Antananarivo)!

We’ve always believed that strategy should lead structure, but Madagascar confirmed it yet again. We helped UNDP rearchitect their programme and define four flagship portfolios before diving into their organizational realignment, and the sequence paid off. Then, just as we were packing up, GenZ-led protests erupted and the regime fell. Cue: national crisis. But the newly minted strategy held up beautifully. The building blocks were all there, thanks to the foresight and contextual brilliance of the UNDP Madagascar team. Turns out, if you build with foresight, your strategy doesn't shatter when reality takes a hard left.

Scenario planning: still imperfect, but incredibly useful.

Yes, the methodology debates rage on. No, scenario planning isn’t a crystal ball. But after guiding scenario work in Sudan (2024) and Gaza (2025), we’ve doubled down on our version of it. It’s helped teams define the possibilities with clarity. Not to predict, but to prepare. Even when the darkest scenarios unfortunately materialized, clients were better equipped to respond. That’s not forecasting. That’s resilience-by-design. And it’s why we’ll keep doing it.

Adaptability is no longer a skill, it’s a condition.

Across 2025, change was not an interruption but a constant. Working with various international teams navigating conflict, political shifts, and resource constraints reinforced a simple truth: there are rarely perfect solutions, only responsible ones. What stood out was the care with which leaders approached difficult decisions; balancing strategic coherence, financial sustainability, and minimizing harm. That discipline, grounded in humanity, is what allows organizations to hold steady in turbulent times.

Leadership: it doesn’t make all the difference. But it makes most of it.

We worked with 14 senior leaders last year. Fourteen different leadership styles. Fourteen different ways of steering through uncertainty. And the difference was palpable — not just in meeting rooms, but in how teams behaved, adapted, and stayed sane. Leadership isn’t everything, but it’s close. The way a leader shows up in a storm shapes how others move. It’s reaffirmed why we’re so drawn to this topic – and I think we may just turn it into one of this year’s blog pieces.

If 2025 reminded us that change is constant, our hope for 2026 is for fewer crises, more room to breathe, and greater stability for the development professionals carrying much of this work forward. Calm, when it comes, creates the conditions for recovery, reflection and better decisions.

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