Nearly everywhere I’ve worked, someone will make the point that everything we do is tactical and not strategic. That we focus too much on work that produces short-term results rather than work that will serve us in the long run.
Everything I saw suggested that those at the top were thinking strategically. After all, isn’t that their actual job? To be thinking about the long-term future of the organisation?
The more I think about it, the more I see this as a symptom of the divide that develops between those thinking about the work and those doing the work. Leaders sit in ivory towers, disconnected from the reality of the work being done. They don’t understand the implications of their strategy because they haven’t thought through their problems and haven’t taken the time to understand the context of how work takes place.