I’ve spent my career living and dying by big goals. The driving belief being — the bigger the ambition, the better the strategy. But this week I discovered that those big, hairy, audacious goals (BHAGs) are just one part of the big picture, and honestly, a convenient feature that gets everyone’s approval and your own validation, rather than something that’s core to accomplishing anything remarkable.
As a professional, I’ve never felt this wrong in my understanding of how strategy really works. Or at least, incomplete.
The foundation of an effective strategy is built on proximate objectives. They aren’t a boring alternative to BHAGs. They’re the actual work underneath them. The part everyone skips because it requires diagnosing real problems instead of painting inspiring calls to action.
Here’s the uncomfortable part — we skip it because it feels less strategic. Getting your hands dirty, having difficult conversations, admitting you don’t know yet — that feels operational, fundamental, or even downright elementary. All beneath the level of serious leaders.
And that assumption is exactly how the fluff illusion survives.
What I still can’t answer: if we all know this trap exists, why do we keep falling into it? What would it actually take to see through our own smokescreen?
That’s what I’m sitting with going into the weekend — and what I’ll be working through in Sunday’s essay. DM me if you want me to send it across.