Strategic Direction

You can be a policeman at a busy street junction where the traffic lights are down. This means you direct traffic, but this is only tactical direction. It is a coping strategy. You just try to make sure the intersection doesn't get totally blocked, that gridlock is not an option under your watch. This is what most people are doing in today's knowledge economy (and yes, the 'real' economy too).

But quite often, a strategic vision is needed: not just a list of fancy-sounding bullet points cobbled together after lunch in your office, but a genuine plan for making sure traffic is always smooth (and indeed, even better) when you're the officer in charge. This is true for every part of life. Otherwise, your resource expenditure, since it is based on short-term goals, becomes wasteful. It becomes drudgery, slavery to the mundane and quotidian.

Good strategic direction is normally resented by about 20% of the people. This is because that's the fraction who understand that a) you're doing something they're not, b) you're doing something they can't, c) you're doing something they don't understand, and d) it's something they don't know about but know they won't like it.

A lot of management books say you have to bring people on board, enthuse them, and so on. Yes, you can do all of that. There will always be that 20%. Just neutralise them and get on with it, or get on with it and ignore them. And in the end, if that 20% causes you problems, you just have to remember that good strategic direction sometimes won't win either. Heh.