Ep 21 – Good reasons to avoid being strategic

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Ep 21 - Good reasons to avoid being strategic
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In this episode, we explore several reasons that someone might want to to avoid strategic thinking or planning all together. We’ll hit on the idea of naval gazing as well as exploring whether a strategy makes you more or less agile.

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Email us: brandon@strategic.li | tyler@strategic.li

Episode Notes:

  • While many people may be talking about strategy in a specific area, our goal is to explore concepts around a strategy that is universal.
  • Self-help can tend to stray away from practical actions to take.
  • Why is strategy important? Why does it matter?
    • It increases the odds of success
    • It also has an emotional impact, it brings confidence and energy, and clarity.
    • If a strategy is important in some areas, then it’s important in every area!
  • Most people feel like they don’t have the time or energy to be strategic. Often, getting strategic takes energy but a lot less time than you might expect at first.
    • Our instincts tell us that any time spent not doing the main thing is wasted time. But that is simply not the case!
    • Four Disciplines of Execution
    • “The whirlwind can consume all our time. Make sure to spend 20% of your time improving the overall things.”
  • 7 Days to Absolute Clarity ebook
  • What do people think are the “downsides” of strategy?
    • You can get overconfident: once you have a plan, you assume everything will go the way you planned.
    • You get complacent: once you have a system, just work the system.
    • You get less agile: you feel like you can’t act without a strategy and it’s harder to change it once it’s created.
    • Less productive: you spend too much time thinking and never work to accomplish something.
  • In reality, these are not strategy issues but people issues! These are tendencies that humans tend to have when we are being strategic.
    • Humans can mess up good things. That doesn’t mean those things are bad.
  • The vital thing to consider is how you frame and think about your strategy.
  • Most people are not being TOO strategic but not strategic ENOUGH
  • Are there alternatives to living strategically?
    • Living randomly, focus on just moving forward – this is a common pitfall for small business owners and entrepreneurs. They are action-oriented, which is good, but it’s also important to stop and evaluate and change and thing carefully sometimes. You may even think, “But what got me here is being
      • Old Proverb: without oxen, your stable is clean, but without ox, you don’t get as much done.
      • Progress brings a mess! That’s a normal piece of life. Productivity makes messes that need to be cleaned up.
      • Also, great results require a certain amount of complexity. And as complexity grows, there’s a greater need for strategy. It helps you see the pattern in the chaos.