The Planners and The Executors

I've been thinking a lot lately about planning and executing, both at ScriptEd and in triathlon training. The more experience I have doing both, the more I recognize that planning and executing are two equally important but separate things.  It's really difficult to be a person who both plans and executes.
I think I'm starting to learn that for large projects and big undertakings, there needs to be people who plan, and people who can execute against that plan. One person shouldn't be playing both roles.

Here's an example of what I mean:

For the first five years of doing triathlons, I didn't have a coach. I made up my own plan (which was basically "run today, swim tomorrow, bike the next day...").  Because I have been an athlete for my whole life, this wasn't a terrible approach.  I did well. I also ended up spending a lot of time and energy first trying to come up with a plan, and then wasted some time executing on a plan that wasn't as good as it could be.

Now I have a coach (John Hirsch).  John is a professional triathlete and coaches tons of athletes, and brings his expertise to my training.  John makes my plan, and I execute against it. I don't have to spend time thinking about my workouts or my training schedule. John does that.  He listens to my progress and adjusts my plan accordingly. This saves me a ton of time.  I don't have to strategize, and the work that I'm doing has more of an impact on my progress as an athlete.

I'm learning the same thing at ScriptEd.  When ScriptEd started, I was both planning and executing against the plan.  ScriptEd is too big for that now. My time is not well spent if I'm the person executing against ScriptEd's plan. My job is to make the plan, adjust it as necessary, and make sure that my staff adjusts their execution as time goes on.  I don't always do this perfectly, but I'm getting a lot better.