Question: Sometimes I tend to get caught up in the details and miss the big picture. What should I do to develop my abilities to have a broader focus?

Answer: Life in general and entrepreneurship specifically, is a mixture of strategy and tactics. It is very easy to fall into a routine of dealing with tactics on a daily basis and letting someone else worry about strategy. After all, this subject is a bit fuzzy anyway. The work has to get done and if the details aren’t tended to, then everything falls apart – right?

Actually the reason many people are extremely tactical is because the overall strategy has never been adequately explained to them. Let me give you an example that borders on the absurd, but will illustrate the point well. Let’s say that you are blindfolded and led into the cockpit of an airplane. The blindfold is removed and you are told that your job is to fly the plane. Let’s also assume that you actually know how to fly the plane. Great. Now what? No other instructions are given. Are you supposed to fly the plane to another destination? If so where? Will there be passengers on the plane or are you flying cargo? Maybe this is just a test flight. Are you starting to get the picture? You know how to fly the airplane – that is to say, that you understand the tactics. But you have no idea what the end result is supposed to be – that is to say, the strategy. By now it’s pretty obvious that the “What” is the strategy, and the “How” are the tactics.

Stop and think about you daily routine. Do you understand the strategies to which your tactical efforts are aimed? If you are a leader, how well do you explain the strategies to those you are expecting to implement tactics to deliver said strategies? This may sound like a very simple premise but it’s one of the biggest areas of miscommunication in our lives today. As a result, many people toil in frustration, feeling like one more cog in a wheel that is going nowhere.

Starting today, resolve to understand the strategic aspects of what you are doing. Make certain that you communicate the strategies to everyone involved if you are the leader. If the strategy is to deliver better customer service than any of your competitors, make sure that you clearly articulate this and make everyone aware of the metrics to be used for accountability. If your team understands the strategy, it can develop the tactics that will lead to success. But if the strategy is unclear and poorly communicated, don’t be surprised if you don’t have the buy-in of the team members.

Each of us wants to feel as though what we are contributing matters. Only when the strategy is clear to all do the tactics matter. And then our sense of self-worth can be fulfilled.

This blog is being written in tandem with my book, “An Entrepreneur’s Words to Live By,” available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle (My Book), as well as being available in all of the other major eBook formats.