Editor’s Note: As I wind down my stint as Editor of TLNT — Friday is my last day — I wanted to share some of my favorite posts from over the years. Here’s one from April 2013.
Sometimes, the most complicated questions have the simplest answers.
This can be a little hard to comprehend because we’re conditioned to believe that complexity requires more complexity, a lesson that may have sunk in for me back when I was taking higher math classes as a kid and got freaked out by the humongous equations.
But, it also infects the business world and the talent management arena, too.
I used to have a boss — let’s call him Steve — who seemed to be obsessed with what the “strategy” was for my area of the business. Never mind the fact that HE really didn’t have a coherent strategy for anything, but he drove me (and my managers) crazy with meetings, required memos, and all manner of discussions that were designed around formulating a strategy that he approved of.
I thought I had gotten there on many occasions only to have him pooh-pooh what I thought was a good strategy with a dismissive, “that’s not a strategy, those are tactics” response.