Ep. 494 – Blurring The Lines Between Technical and Strategic


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Episode Transcript.

Hey guys, I want to talk to you today about how to really drill down and get focused on what you need to do.

And here’s a concept that I think is really important. The more that you have to put your head down and get in the weeds to do the work, the less you’re going to focus on the vision, and the more easier it is to lose the big term picture. The more strategic you need to be, the less in the weeds you need to be okay, and this is what I mean by that.

If you’re building a website, if you’re building a house, if you’re putting together a car, or, let’s just say, you own a landscaping business or a plumbing company, whatever, the more that you have your head down, doing the landscaping, doing the plumbing work, doing those things, the more likely it is that you’re gonna lose sight of the big vision. The more likely it is that you’re going to be less strategic when you are in a strategic operating place. You have to have your head above the water, above the technical execution of the work. You have to have your face and your eyes above what you need to get done technically in order to look at where you are going.

Picture it this way, if you are constantly staring at your speedometer and your fuel gage and your dashboard in the car and you’re constantly looking down, how are you going to be able to actually see what is coming up ahead of you in the road for you to make the correct turns, maneuver, slow down, speed up, stop whatever. And that’s how it works and work. That’s how it works in life. And so you if you are doing both, because you’re in a place, in a position that requires you to do both, you have to make sure that you have pre set aside time to lift your head up to look around you.

It’s interesting, because the more that you get dragged into the technical the more bla the more blurry you become on strategic actions, strategic thinking, and the more that you are thinking about the strategic the more blurry you become with the technical actions. And this brings me to my next point. This is how working with the team occurs. It is so much easier to work with the team and to parse the workout as needed according to the job position.

For instance, if you are the strategic driver of the team in the company, like a project manager or manager, or even someone higher up, you have to make sure that the technical work gets delegated out to the team appropriately. Now, the team needs the vision, the team needs the long term thinking and even the long term plan in order to connect their work and what they’re doing with a better purpose and a deeper purpose to help them see, oh, this is just bigger than cutting this person ‘s yard. If you’re in a landscape company, this is bigger than that. It is about growing a team. Here’s my pathway out of this. If I want they need that.

However, what I’m talking about is when you get lost in the technical one of the conversations that my partner and I have had even today, one of the things that we were thinking about, talking about was, how do we get me out of even more technical work that just pertains to my day to day, to help me focus more on the strategic that was something we were talking about today, and it’s important, because my skill set really comes with the strategic and with the vision. And it’s important that I’m focused on those things, because that moves everything forward within the company.

It’s interesting how saying no actually propels you forward. Saying no is what actually propels you forward. And working in life, if you want to lose weight, saying no to eating into certain foods is what actually makes you lose weight, not saying yes. It’s interesting how often times it’s the opposite of what we think it is that actually gets us to where we are going. It’s the same thing here. In order for you to be more strategically focused, you got to get away from the technical you actually have to have a team, and you have to grow. You have to be able to delegate. You have to be able to get the work done through people.

And then here’s the hardest part for people. You have to be able to replicate how you do things, and you have to be able to replicate the process that produces the outcome, especially if you are in service, if you’re providing a service to a customer, if you’re providing the service to a client, you must be able to replicate the outcome in the results through that service.

And it’s interesting, because people normally find this to be very hard, and it is hard because you take a lot of pieces and you take a lot of parts that don’t normally make sense and don’t normally seem to be repeatable, and you make them repeatable. You walk your team through the same steps. You walk your team through the same goals and objectives, and you walk your team through a process that produces the same results across the board for different client talent, different talent, different projects. It ‘s interesting, because the more custom your service becomes, the more vital the process to contain the chaos and the mess.

But anyways, to go back to my main point, if you are looking to become more strategic in life, you have to walk. Walk away from the technical you have to walk away from the technical work and the execution. And there’s priorities for both. And in the meantime, if you’re in an in between place where you have to do both, make sure you know what you’re doing when you’re doing it, and it will help you knowing what seat you sit in.

Anyways, guys, that’s all I have for today. Catch you later. Peace.


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