Many years ago, I used to coach basketball. We had some pretty good teams and were known for our aggressive defense which was based on a philosophy that was centered on one central idea: rather than play defense by reacting to what the offense did, we wanted to force the offense to react to us. Put another way, we wanted to control the game by forcing our will on the opponent and not be controlled by their movements and set plays. In a similar vein, Dorie Clark views most of us as players limited by our “execution mode” of working where we constantly deal with the minutiae of our jobs and the short-term rewards of this reactive work. In her treatise on long-term thinking, she invites us to look at our work differently in order to accomplish greater and more satisfaction in the long-term.
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