2. Demands: Leaders have to balance two often competing demands on the business — People and Process. This requires simultaneously maintaining a great reputation with the employees, customers, and shareholders (the People side of the business); and improving the productivity of how the firm makes/buys, sells, and tracks these transactions (the Process side of the business).

3. Disciplines: To effectively execute, there are three fundamental disciplines (routines): Set Priorities; gather quantitative and qualitative Data; and establish an effective meeting Rhythm. It’s in these meetings, debating the data (the brutal facts!), where the priorities emerge.

4. Decisions: Ultimately, all of the above require some decisions. To scale the business requires getting four key decision sets — People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash — absolutely right, and there are right and wrong answers. Shortchange any one element and you’re not maximizing your opportunity.

TRY THIS: To help shed some light on alignment, write for seven minutes on this topic: In what ways are my work and life aligned with what is most important to me? In what ways am I not in alignment? What actions might I take to be more aligned?

A company’s culture is shaped by a lot of things, but this is one of the most important—you have to convey your priorities clearly and repeatedly. In my experience, it’s what separates great managers from the rest. If leaders don’t articulate their priorities clearly, then the people around them don’t know what their own priorities should be. Time and energy and capital get wasted. People in your organization suffer unnecessary anxiety because they don’t know what they should be focused on. Inefficiency sets in, frustration builds up, morale sinks.

Then I ask this question: if you were to fault yourself in one of three areas, which would it be: (1) the inability to prioritize; (2) the inability or desire to organize around those priorities; or (3) the lack of discipline to execute around them, to stay with your priorities and organization?

It’s natural to think these abstractions will save us time and improve our decision-making, but in many cases they don’t. Reading a summary might be faster than reading a full document, but it misses a lot of details— details that weren’t relevant to the person summarizing the information, but that might be relevant to you. You end up saving time at the cost of missing important information. Skimming inadvertently creates blind spots.

Information is food for the mind. What you put in today shapes your solutions tomorrow. And just as you are responsible for the food that goes into your mouth, you are responsible for the information that goes into your mind. You can't be healthy if you feed yourself junk food every day, and you can't make good decisions if you’re consuming low-quality information. Higher quality inputs lead to higher quality outputs.