One thing that is important in digital is execution. The world continues to move at pace. None of us has any time. We know that if we pause to breath we can get left behind. The last thing we need is to start to lose the race against our competitors.  It’s vital therefore to stay focused on the finish line.

The difficulty however is finding the right blend between taking time to think through your challenges and develop good, robust strategies and getting started on the delivery.

In my experience most businesses are either at one end of this or the other and so we all need to look at how we can improve here. Delivery is vitally important to success. The greatest thinking in the world without a plan is worthless. However constant focus on tactical delivery will ultimately trip you up and cause long term problems.

The answer is to develop a clear strategy, gain buy-in, develop a clearly executable plan and then focus on delivering against that. This way the direction and execution are aligned. I talk about this in detail in my book, Digital Marketing Strategy. This isn’t just a shameful attempt at promoting my book – it comes from something I have experienced many times over and from a conversation I have had in just the last week with another digital professional and I’m sure it will ring a bell with many of you.

Execution is essential but not at the expense of the thinking.