For months, I was setting Big, Hairy, Audacious goals (BHAGs) every single week. And not executing them — just setting them.
Every Monday started with enthusiasm and ambition. And every Friday ended with confusion. Over the weekend, I would re-evaluate, reshuffle, and rewrite for clarity, then start the whole cycle over.
Over time, I realized what was happening — I was using the map as the territory. BHAGs are useful for knowing where you want to go. They’re useless for figuring out what to do at 9 am on Tuesday.
The same trap plays out with teams. Everyone knows about the big goal. They’re motivated, energized, and ready to go! But nobody’s clear on what actually needs to be done today, this week. So they default to whatever feels urgent. Always operating in a reactive state — not focusing on what matters, but on tasks that are urgent but not important, or worse, not urgent and not important because nobody gets questioned for doing busy work.
That’s not laziness. That’s what happens when strategy stops at the vision and never reaches the ground.