The Grass is Greener (When the Goal is Clear)

A few years ago my husband and I hired a lawn service to handle the mowing and general maintenance of our yard. The arrangement was: they come every Tuesday and we pay a weekly fee. Prior to this, we had been city dwellers. It was our first time having a yard, so we didn’t even own a rake let alone a lawnmower. It seemed like a good setup.

Then I started to notice a problem. When there had been a dry spell and the grass hadn’t grown at all, they would still mow. When it poured rain and the yard was soaking wet, they would show up and rip muddy holes through our yard with those huge riding lawn mower tires.

It got me thinking about goals versus tactics. Ultimately, the reason we hired a lawn maintenance crew was to take care of our yard so that we didn’t have to. The goal was simple: make our lawn look great! From there, we agreed on what seemed like a reasonable tactic – mow every week. But that a bad system. And because the contract was built around the tactic and not the goal, we were sometimes paying to make our lawn look worse.

When Marketers Get In the Weeds

I’ve seen this time and time again in marketing as well. In order to reach a business goal (usually a revenue target), we come up with a strategy and agree on some interesting tactics to try. But then we get in the weeds and those tactics become our main focus. We completely forget what we’re actually trying to achieve.

Here’s what I mean. Let’s look at this example of goals > strategies > tactics in a marketing context:

As long as we stay focused on that top-level goal, our strategy and tactics can remain flexible. We are free to test, measure, experiment, and change course if needed. 

But what happens when you conflate the tactical objectives with the goal? That’s when it gets really easy to start doubling down on things that aren’t working. If you start to believe that the inputs themselves are the goal, then the answer to growth will always be more of those same inputs. One blog post per week isn’t working? Let’s try ten!

I believe this mistake is responsible for a lot of the busywork and burnout in the marketing industry. I think it’s more common than we’d like to admit and can be hard to recognize when we’re in the thick of it – when more-more-more feels like the only solution. 

Stop Mowing and Grab a Hose

So next time you find yourself frantically pulling levers and checking off to-dos while simultaneously feeling like nothing is working – just pause for a sec. Take a look around and ask yourself what the real goal is. Are you mowing a lawn that hasn’t grown in weeks? Would it be more useful to grab a hose?

As for our lawn maintenance dilemma, we bought a nifty electric mower and do our own landscaping now. It looks fabulous and I have an enviable farmer’s tan.