Two Types of Management

Another one from Meeks:

Two types of management:

1. Strategic management. Use the strategic process to plan and execute against strategy.
2. Shit-slinging management. You show up and shovel shit all day long with a smile on your face and at the end of the year you hope some of the shit stuck because you don't have a plan.

Let me expound on this a little bit more with some of my thoughts:

The strategic process is an important thing. It's hard to run a business without a plan in the long run; it can be easy to have no strategy in the relative short term because you may find yourself in a position where you really are throwing something against the wall to see if it sticks. In an ideal world, you approach even your startup with a good knowledge of goals and objectives and a plan about how you are going to get there with the knowledge that things are likely to change, perhaps significantly change in the very short term.

What you don't want to wind up with is a company that started small with the slinging stuff around principle, what I'll refer to as the "lemonade stand" strategy, that relatively suddenly becomes a big company is just a million dollar lemonade stand . . . throwing cups of lemonade at the wall.

Picture from maubrowncow.