“Few people think more than two or three times a year. I’ve made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Irish Author & Playwright
Category Archives: Thinking
Luck
People call it luck when you’ve acted more sensibly than they have.
Anne Tyler, Author
Strategy – Ready, Aim, Fire
Ready, Aim, Fire
Seems logical. You set some goals, plan how you’re going to reach those goals, then pull the trigger on execution. And it is logical as long as you’re dealing with known quantities. You know…you’ve done this type of project before and have a pretty good ideal of what it takes to be successful, both internally and externally. To be successful, the goals have to be reasonable and the stake-holders need a good grasp of the success criteria. But if you’re stepping into some uncharted territory, the strategy could be more wishful thinking and there’s a risk of over-planning when you in fact have a lot of unknowns. Ahww…who cares…we can always blame the people responsible for execution!
Can you think about strategy too much?
A good percentage of the posts here touch on the topic of thinking. But can you “over-think”?
Ok…I’m going to carefully step out on a slippery slope here and try to find a balance. On the one hand, we can labor overt what our strategy should be, and spend so much time honing it that we never actually get into the execution phase…or miss the window that would have produced the most fruit from execution.
My observation is that organizations and individual leaders tend to fall into four categories when it comes to finding a balance between planning and execution. I’ll use a metaphor to explore this. BTW…ALL metaphors break down at some point, and I can quickly point out how the one I’m going to use does, so don’t get too wrapped up in the metaphor itself.
For our purposes here, “Ready” = Strategy Development, “Aim” = Planning, and “Fire” = Execution
- Ready, Aim, Fire
- Ready, Aim, Aim, Aim
- Ready, Fire, Aim
- Fire, Fire, Fire
We’ll explore each in subsequent posts, but a hint about where I’m going can be found in the following quote…paraphrased from a conversation with Paul Marshall, Vice President, Bentley Systems, Inc…
“A (B) Strategy with an (A) Execution will beat an (A) strategy with a (B) Execution everytime.”