When we work with printers, we generally see two different cultural challenges when it comes to the balance between strategy/vision and execution. There are print businesses with a lot of vision, ideas, inspiration with little or no execution. Vision with no execution results in a lot of things getting talked about but nothing actually gets done. There is a focus on the next new shiny object and a lack of focus on the executing on the last shiny object. On the other hand, there are companies that lack the strategic element so they have no vision, but they have good tactical execution. The business results when there is a lack of strategic thinking are mediocre because individual contributors execute without any strategic direction.

Success requires the right amount of both ingredients. I’ve seen the magic. In one example, the business owner is the visionary but he’s aware of his weakness on the execution side of things. So he hires a world-class team to execute on his visionary ideas. The combination creates so much value.

We can bring this down into a smaller scale to the project level. You have a project—for example, your Print MIS implementation or the launch of your web-to-print system.