One of the things I’ve noticed about talented people is that they usually want to get started. Give a creative person a problem and they immediately begin thinking of ideas. Give a problem-solver a challenge and they start looking for solutions. Give someone an assignment and their instinct is often to begin doing the work. I understand that instinct because I have it too. But over the years, I’ve learned that starting quickly and starting intelligently are two very different things. Sometimes the fastest way to get somewhere is to slow down long enough to make sure you know where you’re going.
That may sound obvious, but I think it’s one of the most overlooked disciplines in business. We’re surrounded by pressure to move. Deadlines are tight. Clients want answers. Emails keep arriving. Technology has made everything faster. And because we’re capable of producing work faster than ever before, there’s a temptation to believe that speed itself is progress. It isn’t. You can move incredibly fast in the wrong direction.
That’s why I’ve become increasingly disciplined about what needs to happen before execution. Whether we’re creating an advertising campaign, solving a client problem, developing a new system, writing a press release, producing a commercial, or making an important business decision, I believe there’s a sequence that dramatically increases our probability of success.
It starts with the objective. Before anyone begins doing anything, we need to understand exactly what we’re trying to accomplish. Not approximately. Not what we assume the client wants. Not what someone thinks they heard in a meeting. What is the actual objective? That distinction matters because an assignment and an objective aren’t the same thing. “Create a social campaign” is an assignment. Why are we creating it? What behavior are we trying to influence? Who are we trying to reach? What should be different after the campaign runs? That’s the objective. If you don’t understand the objective, everything that follows is being built on an assumption.
Once the objective is clear, we research. Research doesn’t always mean commissioning a study or spending weeks analyzing data. Sometimes research is simply doing the work necessary to understand the problem before trying to solve it. What do we know? What don’t we know? What has already been tried? What is the competition doing? What does the audience believe? What does the data tell us? What assumptions are we making that we haven’t actually verified? Research is really the discipline of replacing assumptions with information.
Research gives us information, but information alone isn’t strategy. That’s where the next step begins. Strategy is deciding what we’re going to do with what we’ve learned. It’s the bridge between understanding the problem and solving it. A strategy should tell us why one path gives us a better probability of achieving the objective than another. And there’s an important part of strategy that I think sometimes gets overlooked: understanding it. It isn’t enough for someone else to develop the strategy and hand it to you. If you’re responsible for executing it, you need to understand it. You should know what we’re trying to accomplish, why we’ve chosen this approach, what we’re deliberately not doing, and how your part contributes to the larger outcome.
Which brings me to a question I think may be one of the most important in business: Why? Can you articulate the why behind what you’re about to do? Why this headline? Why this audience? Why this design? Why this recommendation? Why this media channel? Why this process? Why this solution? “Because that’s what I was asked to do” isn’t a why, and neither is “because that’s how we’ve always done it.” If you can’t explain why you’re doing something, there’s a reasonable chance you don’t understand it well enough yet.
I’ve found that people who truly understand their thinking can usually explain it simply. They don’t need jargon to make it sound intelligent. They can connect the decision directly back to the objective. We are doing this because we learned this, which makes us believe this approach gives us the best opportunity to accomplish this objective. That’s clarity.
But even clarity isn’t enough. Before execution, I think our thinking needs to survive one more step. We need to stress check it. Stress checking means trying to break your own idea before the marketplace, the client, a teammate, or reality does it for you. What could we be missing? What assumption might be wrong? What happens if this doesn’t work the way we expect? How could someone misunderstand this? Does this contradict anything else we’re saying? Is there a simpler solution? If I were arguing against this recommendation, what would I say? If I were the client, what question would I ask? If I were the customer, would this actually matter to me?
One of the dangers of creating an idea is that we naturally become attached to it. Stress checking requires enough intellectual honesty to stop trying to prove ourselves right and start actively looking for where we might be wrong. That isn’t negativity. It’s preparation. I’d much rather discover the weakness in our thinking while we’re sitting around a conference table than after the work is in front of a client or in the marketplace.
And only after we’ve done all of that do we execute. The sequence is deliberate: Objective. Research. Strategy. Why. Stress Check. Execute. Each step strengthens the next one, and skipping one of them increases the possibility that we’ll execute something beautifully that never should have been executed in the first place.
Execution should be the result of thinking, not the substitute for it.
I think that’s particularly important today because technology is making execution extraordinarily easy. We can generate ideas, copy, images, presentations, research summaries, videos, spreadsheets, and plans faster than at any point in history. Artificial intelligence can help us execute in seconds what once took hours or days. That’s an extraordinary advantage, but only when the thinking directing it is sound.
If the objective is wrong, technology helps us pursue the wrong objective faster. If the research is incomplete, it helps us build on incomplete information faster. If the strategy is weak, it helps us execute a weak strategy beautifully. And if we don’t understand why we’re doing something, technology can make something look remarkably polished without making it remarkably intelligent. The ability to execute faster doesn’t eliminate the need for thinking. I believe it makes disciplined thinking even more valuable.
That’s why I don’t think the competitive advantage of the future will simply belong to the people who can produce the fastest. Everyone is gaining access to faster tools. The advantage will increasingly belong to the people who know what to ask those tools to do, why they’re asking them to do it, and whether the result actually accomplishes the objective.
This discipline applies far beyond advertising. A chef doesn’t simply start throwing ingredients into a pan and hope dinner emerges. There’s an outcome in mind, knowledge behind the ingredients, a method, a reason for the sequence, and constant evaluation before the dish reaches the table. An architect doesn’t start pouring concrete and then decide what the building should become. A surgeon doesn’t begin operating and figure out the objective halfway through. The greater the consequence of execution, the more seriously professionals respect what happens before it. Business should be no different.
There’s another benefit to this discipline that I think is easy to overlook. When people understand the objective, the research, the strategy, and the why, they become better executors because they can make intelligent decisions when circumstances change. Someone who only understands the assignment needs instructions. Someone who understands the objective and strategy can adapt. They can encounter something unexpected and make the right adjustment without waiting for someone to tell them exactly what to do because they understand what we’re ultimately trying to accomplish.
That’s ownership. That’s leadership. And that’s ultimately what I want from the people around me. I don’t want people simply completing tasks. I want people understanding why those tasks exist in the first place. I want them thinking deeply enough about the objective that if the circumstances change, they can change with them without losing sight of where we’re trying to go.
So before beginning the next assignment, resist the temptation to immediately start doing. First understand exactly what you’re trying to accomplish. Do the research. Develop and understand the strategy. Be able to articulate the why behind it. Stress check your thinking. Challenge your assumptions. Look for the weaknesses before someone else finds them.
And only then execute.
Because great work doesn’t begin when someone starts doing. Great work begins when someone understands exactly why they’re doing it.
