Most management decisions are questions of detail. Reducing costs, improving service quality, negotiating contracts and addressing performance shortfalls all require careful analysis and demand that you zoom in on the detail. They need a management microscope.
Strategy and growth decisions are different. They demand that you look at the world through as broad a lens as possible, searching and scanning for new opportunities. These decisions require a management telescope.
Many issues with strategy projects occur because managers continue to use a microscope mindset when a telescope mindset is needed. As a result, the work becomes narrow in scope, inward-looking and incremental. You may improve what you already do, but you will miss the myriad of new opportunities that lie waiting on the horizon.
Off The Record: Beyond The Sea by Bobby Darrin
Written by Charles Trenet and Jack Lawrence, and based on Trenet’s French song, ‘La Mer’
Somewhere – beyond the sea
Somewhere – waiting for me
My lover stands on golden sands
And watches the ships that go sailing