#116: Types of meals

There are 3 types of meals:

• A grand sit down dinner, with real cloth napkins, silverware and possibly, candle lights! The company around the table is polite and well mannered. All in all, its a wonderful, relaxing experience. You don't have to do anything other than be present and enjoy yourself (and pay the bill). Someone cooks the food, serves it and cleans up after.
  
• A meal you cook yourself allows you both flexibility in preparation and the experience of a creative joy. You decide what to cook, when to cook, how to cook and how to serve and eat it. You also have the choice of who to eat it with. You have to make the effort to get the ingredients to make the meal.
  
• A frozen dinner. You take it out of the freezer, heat it and eat it. It is the ultimate in convenience and speed. Very, very handy when you are tired and not in the mood to cook and don't want the expense of eating out. A variation of this is the 'take out', 'order in' or 'to go'.

Information is consumed in one of the three ways listed above. When executing your strategy, getting the right information to the right person at the right time can mean the difference between moving things forward or getting stuck and spinning your wheels. Communication gaps are like serving the wrong type of meal to the wrong audience.

#115: Art? Science? Business? (Yes!)

If diversity is the norm in strategy execution, it is necessary to try and understand preferences in crafting a solution. The artist will try to make the solution look beautiful, the scientist will make the solution work correctly and repeatedly and the business person will try to make money from it.

All three have to come together. Too much time and energy gets wasted in debating the virtues of one approach over the other. The comparisons are pointless even at a theoretical level.

Align efforts to customer outcomes and to what needs to be done to meet and exceed expectations. The leader's preference tends to be imposed on the team and egos will be bruised if they are not able to appreciate and work for the greater good.