“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six sharpening my axe.” Abraham Lincoln

Kirk is on vacation this week. He’s taking some time to “sharpen his axe” so he can be a healthier more productive husband, father, friend, and leader. It’s hard for any leader to disconnect, but it’s even harder to deal with the consequences of not taking time for true self-care. Learn and grow from 9 award-winning CEOs, esteemed journalists, and overall great people about how they think about slowing down to speed up in this special podcast we produced to help you. 

“Ideas are great… but they are only as good as the people executing them.”

Sean Spector, CEO + Founder Of Dropoff

It’s almost a foregone conclusion - if you set the strategy and keep measuring it, it will all work out. However, a mediocre strategy with an amazing, aligned team will beat the brilliant strategy with a mediocre team almost every single time. The problem can be counterintuitive. We have all kinds of metrics and measurements to see how the business is performing, but we often neglect the most important metric to executing our strategy: how are our people doing (both personally and professionally)? That’s what today’s episode is all about: how to increase velocity by knowing how your people are doing through impactful 1-on-1s.

Working closely with leaders and their organizations, I hear a ton of myths around strategy. Many people have a strong opinion on what they think will (or will not) work when it comes to developing and executing their growth strategy. For example, “OKRs don’t work… We have to get everyone aligned to these goals… We need to set stretch goals... We have too many meetings... We need a 10-year vision...” The list goes on and on.

Today, I’m not only going to dispel some common misunderstandings around developing and executing strategy, but I am also going to share the best practices learned from some of the world’s best strategists and CEOs.