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Now to our regularly scheduled programming.

There’s a tried and true piece of wisdom which says, “if everything is a priority, then nothing is” that is oft quoted and oft ignored. Like all pithy aphorisms, speaking for myself, it doesn’t matter how often I hear it I somehow still fail to heed its wisdom.

The more experienced I get in my own leadership career the more I’ve come to believe there is no greater obstacle to making progress than trying to do too much at once.

Ironically, the smarter someone seems to be the more likely they are to fall into this trap.

Now intelligence is an interesting thing that takes many shapes and forms. EQ vs. IQ, street smarts vs. book smarts, etc. But the smarts I’m referring to in my above statement are the raw intellectual horsepower kind. The better the school you went to, the better grades you got, the more likely you are to fall into the fallacy of comprehensive thinking.

Not that thinking comprehensively is on the face of it a bad thing, but all too often it leads to acting comprehensively also aka doing everything at once. If you try to act comprehensively I promise you your team will be spread too thin and you’ll fail.

Force concentration

Within the military context during offensive operations there is a concept known as force concentration which I often think of as the antidote to comprehensive thinking.

Force concentration, often colloquially referred to as “shock and awe”, refers to that strategy which involves concentrating your forces to overwhelm a portion of an enemy force. In these instances the contrast in strength between the two forces at the point of attack serves as an advantage for the concentrating force.

The same is true within a corporate sense, though the enemy in this case may be the broader market, your team’s objectives for the quarter, or just your own to do list.

Regardless, if your team is in an offensive posture you need to find your own version of force concentration which means you have to prioritize. Being comprehensive in your planning is fine, but when it comes time to do the actual work you need to pick your single most important objective and pursue it with uncommon intensity.

If you find yourself saying no so often it’s uncomfortable then you’re doing it right.

Analysis paralysis

I have had the great fortune to work with and learn from many management consultants across my career. When it comes to intellectual horsepower and rigor the frameworks, systems, and models they use to analyze problems are hard to beat.

That said when it comes to execution, oftentimes these same frameworks and models lead to a never ending cycle of planning and presentations which lead to incremental action and stagnation. Everything is MECE and nothing gets done.

In the noncommissioned officer ranks of the Marine Corps it’s common to hear the teaching that, “70% now is better than 100% later.” This saying isn’t meant to act as an excuse for lazy planning or an apathetic attitude toward an all too serious business, rather it is an acknowledgement that preparation can take you only so far. At some point, you need to leave the wire, run the race, enter the arena and do the work.

When it comes to amateur vs. professional leaders the amateur will ask for one more turn of the spreadsheet while the professional will ask how easy it is to reverse the decision that’s being made.

If the decision is hard to reverse, by all means continue your research, analysis, and debate. However, if the decision is easy to reverse, and when you really think about it most decisions are, the professional looks for the minimum level of analysis needed in order to achieve the conviction to move forward.

Once this minimum level of analysis is complete they make a call, knowing that the world we live in is kinetic and it’s far better to launch and iterate than sit on the sidelines debating the perfect mouse trap.

Call your shot

The last major driver of that fallacy which I think of as comprehensive thinking is a fear of owning a decision and calling your shot.

So often I’m in rooms where debate goes round and round because no one has the courage to fill the void and make a call. Bad leaders look to preserve maximum optionality until the last minute which often leads to their team being mired in a continuous cycle of unproductive analysis all because they are afraid to call their shot.

Professional leaders have an opinion, informed by facts and their experience, and aren’t shy about taking a stance.

When you’re on a team led by a professional with an opinion and bias toward action it feels like you’re in a Formula 1 car while your competitors are on bikes with training wheels.

This doesn’t mean you can’t course correct as you learn something new. But it does mean if you keep pushing your team to think “comprehensively” without ever committing to a course of action, that you’ll never get anything done because you won’t have concentrated your team’s efforts in a way that allows them to succeed.

So do the work, but when the time comes call your shot and deploy your teams considerable intellect and effort to a single point of action.

Conclusion

As a leader, one of the greatest things you can do for your team is to protect their time ferociously. An amateur leader says yes to everything and gets nothing done. A professional leader says no often, but leads a team that consistently delivers on their commitments.

If someone works for you and they haven’t pushed back on any of your asks in a while you should be suspicious of both their underlying team’s morale and that same team’s output.

As a leader striving to do good work you do need to actually get work done. So be wary of analysis paralysis, remember the principle of force concentration, and call your shot.

See y’all next week.