Startup founders need to connect vision and action.
Some startup founders are great at it. I was not.
A former business partner once said to me “You’re better at articulating what needs to be done, but I’m better at actually doing it”. It was a fair statement.
I think this gets to an important fact for startup founders everywhere — you need to be good at articulating the vision, and you also need to be good at executing on it.
A few years ago two Stanford professors wrote and published The Knowing-Doing Gap, a book that warns company executives to avoid the “smart talk trap”. An executive who talks a good game isn’t nearly as valuable as an executive who can actually walk the talk.
This often surfaces in the startup world. Investors tend to make investment decisions based on the articulated vision (the pitch), but the reality is the leading cause of startup death isn’t lack of vision — it’s a failure to execute.
As I tell my students, ideas are cheap; execution is hard.
The legendary founder of Southwest Airlines, Herb Kelleher, was known as a brilliant leader. “Planes don’t make any money sitting on the ground”, he told employees as was out there on the tarmac, working his ass off to help unload luggage. By successfully connecting vision and action — while modeling a solid work ethic to the team — he led the company to a remarkable 68 consecutive profitable quarters. There was no “knowing-doing gap” with Herb.
Similarly, Steve Jobs was famously great at articulating the vision, but he was also great at zooming-in to the detail level, making sure that what he and the team were doing every day aligned with that vision.
To win you have to think in the future, but to survive you have to think in the present. Successful startup founders are the ones who can zoom back and forth — they can see where they want the organization to be five years from now, but can also zoom-in on the details required to meet payroll next month.
As the great entrepreneur Pablo Picasso said, “Action is the foundational key to all success”.
I’m sure my former business partner would agree.
This was adapted from my weekly missive for entrepreneurs, innovators, and investors.
