What's More Important: theory or execution?

What’s more important: theory or execution? Learning or doing?

It turns out the answer is far from obvious:

Enough is enough. You’re tired of being a couch potato and decide it’s time for a change. So you set yourself an ambitious new year’s resolution: participate in an amateur boxing fight.

What better way to motivate yourself than avoiding getting punched in the face?

Only one problem - you’ve never boxed before.

So you consider three options:

• Option #1: Put on some boxing gloves and start practicing on your own. Who needs anyone to help out? You can figure it out by yourself…
• Option #2: Get an instructor and sit down with them and listen to speeches on good boxing technique, how to punch effectively, fight strategy, etc. Never touch a heavy bag before the fight.
• Option #2: Take actual boxing classes with the instructor. Have them tell you about good technique and then actually practice it. Listen to their feedback, do some drills, and improve over time.

Now, unless you want to get knocked out on purpose, you probably would go with Option #3.

Why not the first? You have no idea about technique and concepts that can help speed up your learning. You can throw some punches all you want, but it’s clearly a highly ineffective way of learning since you’ve never actually taken a class before.

And why not the second option? You can learn the theory of fighting. It’s better than nothing. But there are things you can only know by doing. After a certain point you need to get up and try it yourself.

You need theory. But you also need execution. They both help you learn better.

It may sound like I’m stating the obvious, but we face this choice every single day.

Do we read about something? Or do we just focus on execution? Focus on the job, or work less to learn more?

Just theory is option 1. Just executing is 2. The best is option 3.

Let’s unpack it a little more:

Combining theory with practice works so well because it leverages feedback loops that exist between the two.

Examples:

• Learning the traps past business strategists have fallen into
• Learning techniques to create great stories in public speaking
• Learning what leadership principles CEOs use that you can implement yourself

We have thousands of years of experiences to draw from. This saves you time and boosts your knowledge and skills.

A little theory can go a long, long way.

At the same time, execution let’s you learn things you can’t learn passively. Doing makes theory meet reality. It shows you what does and doesn’t work. It teaches you how to actually implement what you learn about.

In short, it provides unique learning opportunities.

If you don’t use both theory and practice to learn, you aren’t tapping into all the rich development opportunities out there. More worryingly, you won’t be tapping into your full potential.

As is often repeated in a modified William F. Butler quote:

“The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.”

There’s a concrete example I love:

How many books do you think the average Fortune 500 CEO reads per year?

Write down an answer before moving on.

Got it?

Here's the answer:

50-60 books.

Think about that for a second.

These are arguably some of the most successful and high performing individuals in the world. There is no question they execute like few others. Running the biggest companies of the world can’t be done by lounging all day doing nothing.

But they still take the time to read 50-60 books per year. Do you doubt that this extensive reading, this extensive theory, doesn’t play a major role in their success?

The key is to always have both: the passive and the active.

So, theory informs practice. Practice informs theory.

There are powerful feedback loops between them that can only be accessed when you actually do both.

You need both study and execution. One enhancers the other.

Become a scholar and a warrior.

A thinker and doer.