over the course of these tumultuous 20 months of doing burrp.com, we’ve certainly grown in every aspect of the word. what we have not done, and very consciously mind you, is switch our focus from being a hands-on, execution-oriented team, to something more abstract. i’ve shamelessly copied/pasted a few excerpts from an excellent blog post on successful startup entrepreneurs, and why staying away from the “strategery”, as our good friend mr. bush calls it, is the only way to go. read a snippet below…
Execution Counts More Than Strategy: In a big company, managers can often overly focus on strategy. They plot big, company-changing things. They think out-the-box. They pontificate on what they think will drive innovation, quality, service, sales, or whatever it is that they happened to be focused on. This is all fine and good, but it takes a while to measure whether a given manager’s strategy was actually “good” (i.e. effective). At startups, managers are more often than not measured by less lofty things: like what they get done, or help get done. Nothing wrong with strategic thinking, but I’ve never read a Dlibert cartoon where the pointy-haired boss actually did something useful and productive. He’s usually doing something “strategic” (and lame).
Very true, every guy in a startup needs to be hands-on. You got to be as close to the customer as possible. Execution counts more than strategy for any startup to be successful.