The Sigmoid Shift

“If I had asked people what they wanted,” Henry Ford once said, “they would have asked for a faster horse.”

It’s a quote that has endured because it captures a truth about progress. Most people don’t reject innovation; they simply interpret it through what they already know. The horse was the symbol of power, speed, and control. So when the first engines arrived, they had to be explained in that same language.

That’s where the term horsepower came from, an invented unit of measurement designed to describe the new in terms of the old. It wasn’t about engineering accuracy, but communication. To sell the idea of the engine, its creators had to connect it to what people already understood: how many horses it could replace. It was a bridge between the familiar and the unknown.

That is how all change begins. The first stage of progress is translation. We measure the new through the scale of the old, until the old scale no longer fits.

The truth is, progress is not linear. It follows what’s known as the Sigmoid Curve. Growth rises, levels, and then inevitably declines. To reach new heights, a new curve must begin, often before the old one has peaked. That shift feels counterintuitive. It looks like starting over, or even moving backwards. But it’s the only way to renew, evolve, and grow beyond previous limits.

Leadership and culture follow the same pattern. The temptation is to keep pushing the same systems, the same structures, the same strategies, just a little faster, a little harder. But there comes a point when that energy no longer produces growth. The work begins to plateau. The returns diminish. The organisation needs a new curve.

The transition from the horse to the engine was one such curve. The move from petrol to electric is another. For over a century, combustion defined progress. Entire economies were built around it. Yet today, trying to explain a combustion engine to someone raised on electric vehicles would sound almost illogical:

You pour a flammable liquid into a tank, ignite it thousands of times a minute to create controlled explosions under the bonnet, convert the pressure into motion, and release the excess as exhaust fumes. You then drive to specialised stations to refill the flammable liquid, repeating the cycle indefinitely.

It worked brilliantly, until something better came along.

That’s the paradox of progress. Each breakthrough eventually becomes the limitation of the next. The same systems that once defined innovation become the ones that resist it.

For leaders, the challenge is to recognise when the curve is levelling off, and to have the courage to start again, to stop chasing faster horses and begin building engines. To communicate new ideas in ways people can understand, while also helping them imagine what lies beyond the familiar.

Culture follows the same rule. What begins as innovation eventually becomes tradition. What once inspired becomes expected. And when culture stops renewing itself, it starts repeating itself.

The Sigmoid Curve reminds us that leadership is not about maintaining momentum at all costs. It’s about recognising when to pause, reset, and begin a new phase of growth, accepting the temporary dip that precedes long-term progress.

Because every lasting improvement, in leadership or culture, follows the same truth: sometimes, the only way forward is to start again.