Priorities: Success or Execution?

Given my personality, I think will always want to have a clear vision from a broad and ideal perspective, as in, THIS is how we should be doing things because it suits my sense of what my quality of life should be. The "THIS" should fit my sense of style and values (warts and all).

I think from a business perspective, I would love to just spend my time developing plans that zero-in on the relationship / relational aspects of a situation. From there, I'd want to gravitate towards developing the ideal vision from a variety of perspectives (i.e. feasibility; radical improvement; buy-in; crushing the competing forces; creating alignment with contributor needs, human potential, cultural ideals, available resources, etc.; and, available/affordable resources).

During the process of creating that success vision, I'll be impatient and confused by how to execute. The way forward wont be obvious or clear in any way. Or, I will have a succession of "obvious" ways forward, each being initially desirable but then quickly failing to reach the potential of the above criteria.

That approach, however, is not how most of the economy or my desired peers work. In that context, it's all about how well do you execute and how much have you accomplished?

That's why a lot of business people are "boring" in my eyes. They don't aspire to create an elegantly beautiful model that simultaneously accomplishes many positive outcomes. They just look at what challenges are in front of them and solve those challenges - over and over again. Same thing, day in / day out.

They look at things from the bottom-up (referencing Maslow, here). So, it's about:

1. Focusing time and energy exclusively only on what's absolutely necessary to keep us alive (money, health, key relationships, knowledge & command of key drivers of domain success),
2. THEN developing momentum, in terms of garnering desiring results with increasing efficiency, never taking too much risk that will endanger the results you've achieved.
3. THEN if there are excess assets generated from the above, they are folded into improving upon 1 and 2.
4. IF there happens to be even greater excess assets still being generated from this approach, then business people will either a) treat it like a bonus, b) tuck it away as a future asset-in-waiting, and/or c) addressing the context and concepts of the business. THEN AND ONLY THEN will they see a need for developing an idealized vision - BUT, it's usually driven by experiencing some sort of threat to the fundamentals, such as a strong, new competitor or a change in operational context, such as the social media explosion or a recession. 

And because they are always ensuring their foundation is intact, (assuming they're not totally isolated, which I see a lot of, btw) they survive through recessions, don't go broke, don't kill trust in key relationships, and look at their "survival" within an increasingly longer term perspective to ensure they aren't ever at risk of not surviving. 

Their system works in most situations. Mine, requires a very specialized scenario and set of resources. It requires awareness and cultivation of that specialized framework; a very shrewd and careful navigation of whatever issues and opportunities are present to ensure my system can be sustained. 

In other words, I need to adopt their system if I'm going to have a chance to engage in mine. I need to find balance between my need to be imaginative and stimulated versus my as yet unappreciated need to execute.