When day-to-day business eats up strategy
“With top managers and strategy, it’s often like with young teenagers and sex," a senior manager once told me, "they talk about it all the time but rarely ever get down to business." Well, while this may be painful for the teenagers at worst (*if* the observation holds true), for the managers it can have dramatic consequences. Swamped in operational details, they don't have enough time left to work on a master plan. The problem isn't new, but lately it's become even more serious.
All of a sudden, everything's different from before
When asked what their most important job is, managers will usually tell you: keeping track of goals and developing a strategy to achieve them. And yet this is precisely what managers tend to neglect the most on an average workday. Why? Because day-to-day business keeps pounding at their doors, leaving no room for the greater picture. It's what I call a...