Posted on October 22, 2012 at 7:00 PM
Do you get a great ideas and then plan and plan, and plan some more? After all, you want to get the details just right before you execute the ideas.
Or are you more like the converse and jump headlong into something without having a clear understanding of it? The details will work themselves out as you go, right?
If you operate at either end of the spectrum, you could be hampering your practice and leadership.
Let's look at "vision without action" first:
If you spend lots of time imagining every possibility, playing the 'what if' game, you create your own obstacles to progress - some know this affliction as 'analysis paralysis'.
There are two factors at work when a person gets stuck in acycle of asking "what if:" 1. The fear of making a wrong move leads people to rehash the scenarios again and again. They may even think that their critical focus on the possible out-comes is actually productive. After all, it's hard work to determine the right path to take! Sadly, despite all their efforts and good intentions to do the right thing, they are merely spinning their wheels.
2. Then there is the fact that, for many things in life, there are just too many options from which to choose. You'd think that having lots of choices available would allow us to be able to have exactly what we want. The reality is that the more choices we have available, the worse our decision-making skills become.
Not a good place to be, is it? To feel like you are longingly looking out the window at what might be, but never attaining it can be downright depressing! "Vision without action" is not a good option.
And then there's "action without vision:"
When I think about this, I picture people thrust in a giant, pitch-black room. No sense of direction or location of any objects can be determined. Because nothing can be seen, they stumble around, bump into one another, and