#105: Creativity versus accounting

Strategy execution requires two kinds of work: the 'creative' and the 'accounting'.

'Creative' work requires 'problem solving':

• Discovering and inventing strategy.
• Developing new product and service offerings.
• 'Dive and catch' efforts to resolve operational challenges.
• Connecting the dots and bringing order from chaos.
  

The 'accounting' work is the tedious effort of managing the details:

• Getting an inventory of existing initiatives, programs and projects.
• Reporting status.
• Collecting and analyzing data and metrics to measure success.
• Validating that the portfolio of initiatives, programs and projects are internally consistent and aligned with customer outcomes.
• Stopping initiatives, programs and projects that are not aligned with customer outcomes.
  

Both are important. Each has a different skill set. People inclined towards one type of activity or the other: the type of people who excel in one will drive the other crazy.

The most damaging leadership behaviors are:

• Putting a creative person in an accounting role and vice versa.
• Punishing the creative people for being creative and the accountant for paying attention to detail.

Align both types to customer outcomes. This will let each type of person be themselves but focus on what is most important: customer outcomes.