A short advice video by Cameron Herold warning that teams can be highly efficient yet still work on the wrong priorities. He emphasizes "strategic thinking" (deciding core projects and initiatives that move a company toward its goals) over mere execution efficiency, and illustrates the point with a forest-cutting analogy (one team works efficiently but in the wrong forest).
Chapters
One of the biggest dangers that entrepreneurs and CEOs need to be really careful of in terms of execution is when you get your employees and your teams executing and working as fast as possible and being as efficient as possible and getting as much done as possible. The real question is, are they doing the right stuff? And this is where strategic thinking and business planning are two completely different things. There's no such thing as strategic thinking. What you need is actually strategic think thinking. Sorry, there's no such thing as strategic planning. It's strategic thinking that you need to actually focus on. Time to actually decide what are the core projects and core initiatives to be working on inside of your company that are going to make your goals and your vivid vision happen. It's almost like there were, let's say, two managers who were were told to clear cut a forest, and one manager has his entire team clear cutting as efficiently as possible, and they're cutting down all the trees and doing an amazing job with getting everything done. And the other leader climbs up to the tallest tree and looks around and says, holy shit, we're in the wrong forest. So it's really important to actually sit down and think about the core objectives and the core goals that you have for your business and what's actually going to move the business forward and make sure your people are working on that stuff. Because just being busy and being efficient doesn't actually mean that you're necessarily moving the business forward. Something to think about this weekend and as you prepare for next week.
