The Necessity of Both Vision and Pragmatism

This article originally posted as a part of the Startupland series on Cannabis Economy, where I post my musings of startup life.

The world is expected of a business founder. There is a dichotomy in it. You’re constantly expected to keep reaching for the stars, but keep your feet on the ground. You must constantly have the perspective of both the macro and the micro. How does everything fit into the storyline that you’re painting along the way? When you speak with investors, teammates, or customers, it is your job to paint the vision of the future for them, potentially suspend disbelief, and then quickly bring it back to what is actionable and executable in the here and now. You must not dwell on either of those two arenas for longer than is comfortable.

That’s the art of the science: being able to explain the vision but also pragmatically manage the day to day. Maintaining momentum, which requires having a path in which you can execute and focus. But also finding the red flags when going down either path. If at any moment you’re pulled out and asked to explain how the here and now fits into the grander vision, you need to be able to call upon it immediately.

Prioritizing the Necessities

And so the idea is to be efficient and compartmentalize time. To be able to take a step back and ask, “What is absolutely necessary? What needs to be cut? Which things need to be executed in the next day, in the next week? And how does this all fit into the grand scheme of things? How’s my story changing along the way?”

If you’re not able to bounce back and forth between these conversations, you do stand the chance of getting lost. Being laser focused is good; you hear the term all the time. But if you’re too laser focused for too long, you might go down the wrong path. You might not be listening to market demands or customer needs, and thus losing the path to your greater vision. While you’re outpacing your most immediate competitor, tomorrow might run right past you.

Managing All the Pieces

It’s like being a juggler, juggling a number of balls at once. The job of the founder is to constantly juggle too many, and decide which ones fall and which ones remain in flight. There are an infinite number of things that you can be doing. Everything that you do can potentially add to the possibilities of your company. But the job is constantly categorizing what is the most critical and what achieves.

Becoming more efficient in just one arena only allows you the ability to execute one thing. So the idea that you’re going to be able to build your way out of feeling overwhelmed is a fallacy. Especially in the cannabis industry. The goal, rather, is to become comfortable in having a never ending to-do list and finding ways to ensure that you are keeping momentum. Much like the duck who’s cool on top but paddling like mad under the water.

People driving at their own type of North Star Metric– doing whatever it takes to continually drive the company in that direction– need to understand that the North Star Metric should remain the same. But every day, it is critical to identify and compartmentalize what is absolutely necessary to be done immediately. And then identify highest priority, highest impact tasks that need to be done following those.

The Balancing Act Never Stops

It will be overwhelming, but that’s okay. That’s the dichotomy of being a business founder. You are expected to achieve at a very high pace, yet you’re also expected to remain balanced with self care and health. Achieving that is merely becoming comfortable with the high pace, and finding healthy ways of managing it. That’s why a lot of founders have taken to meditation or stoicism, or other methods of remaining calm in the face of hysteria.

Although, you also have to realize that not everyone has the mentality or desire to put themselves in that type of situation. If you can find a healthy way to manage the pace by implementing the tools you’ve created for yourself, you’ll be achieving the momentum required to succeed. But, again, a necessity is to constantly know where you stand in the greater scheme of your vision, and to know that what you’re executing is absolutely necessary to continue on that path.