The Right Things
Working on the right things. Easy to agree that is the proper approach, but not so easy to do.
Good leadership, as Peter Drucker has so succinctly stated, is working on the right things. The devil is in the detail and subtleties. For example, you have an SAAS product with existing customers that does not support IE8 and you are starting to get calls. IE8 is starting to get popular, so you want to support it, but your next release is a month away. Do you hot fix it, moving resources away from your next release or wait? Of course the best answer would have been, realize months ago that this would have been an issue, and schedule it into a release. So for next time, lesson learned, but what about right now? Leaders need to have a long range vision and balance that vision with the tyranny of the immediate. Responding only to the immediate will doom you to failure, but not responding to immediate needs will also doom you to failure. Incorporating the immediate into your long range vision, allowing for the inevitable and unpredictable, will give you the flexibility to respond, but also keep you moving towards a better future. Lesson learned…plan for Windows 7.