Long-Term Thinking in a Short-Term World

When I worked at an insurance company, my patience was being tested one morning as I drove to work. I wasn’t late when I left the house, but construction and other traffic issues were pressing me down to the second to make two important teleconferences, scheduled one right after the other. Since one of my LinkedIn Groups was just discussing a “gratitude exercise” the other day, based on an article in Inc.com about the secret to success, I’ve been trying to think about such happy thoughts during my traffic time. It wasn’t helping me today, because I really wanted to be fully engaged in the two calls that were on my calendar.

Thinking about patience on that drive gave me the idea for this article. In our society now we have the constant conversation about the benefits and risks of living life in 144 characters or less, at the speed of light. Lots has been said about how our brains cannot effectively multi-task, and how we should take a breath, turn off the electronic devices and let our brains work.

How much has our long-term strategic thinking been affected by this tendency to do everything at the speed of light? Has our patience for waiting for a positive result from a great plan worn too thin? For so many years management consultants like me have been practically begging business owners to build a long-term plan. We asked for five years strategies and projections. Finally, we’re getting the documents written by more and more of our businesses. And, even better, many businesses are actually pulling them out of the desk drawer on a regular basis and building out the ideas in the plan.

The question now is: do we have the patience to work the plan? Or are we constantly pulling up the flowers to check the roots? Really good strategic planning means that you are looking at the far future – three, five, ten years out – and attempting to build that business starting today. It’s grueling work to brainstorm, plan, and project, figure the odds, develop the people and resources that you will need. 

Once you do all that, you’ll find that there is a real surge of endorphins every time you meet a short-term goal or objective. This excitement at completing tasks seems to be part of the human condition, probably something to do with when our tasks had to do with catching our food. But it affects us so much that you’ll go looking for more short-term goals. And maybe you’ll get impatient with the longer-term goals, bringing me back to my point. We have to find a way to allow for both things: the mental high of getting something done right now, versus the need for some parts of our plan to work their way through a long process or system.

We live in a world where we expect an answer to a text as soon as we hit send on our questions, and we are unwilling to wait more than FOUR seconds for a webpage to load, according to websiteoptimization.com. This is down from 26 seconds of patience just a few years ago, by the way. So, how in the world are we supposed to wait five years for the completion of any part of our business? And why should we?

It should be easy. Many of us spent 12-16 years in school in pursuit of graduation. We wait months for a new child and then years for their graduation. Basic and cherished parts of our lives often come with long “engagements.” Perhaps something happens when we move to the business world and different pressures take over. So how do we maintain the right level of patience so that our business thrives today and tomorrow?

The fun answer goes with the old joke asking, “How do you eat an elephant?” The punchline, of course, is “One bite at a time.” Putting that concept into play is anything but easy (and maybe not so fun). When the project is five years long, and the target strategy is that large, breaking it down into manageable, measurable steps is hard work.  It usually takes the whole team to move from Board level strategy down to day-to-day work by staff. Someone must figure out which steps we’ll take annually, quarterly, monthly, or weekly. Not everyone can be a part of every step even in the planning stage. This may be part of the problem. Managers and board members set the longer-term strategies but the short-term checklist items are (read: should be) planned by committees and task forces and line staff. Boards and senior managers often don’t get to actually check much off a list every day or week or even every month. They are the ones setting the vision and mission and strategy, but they don’t see the result on a continuing basis. Quarterly board reports by committees or staff can’t possibly provide the senior managers and board of directors that same rush of having your hands in the dirt or on the keyboard and getting something done!

Having some patience with the process means we need some flexibility, especially these days. We have to be willing to adjust timelines and short-term goals due to changes in technology, personnel, and demographics of our industry or our customer base. This is a nice parallel to that morning: the roadblock, construction or accident that causes a bottleneck for our plan could be because a staff member leaves us, a technology isn’t released in the time frame we needed, a budget isn’t approved, or a simple teleconference missed delays the approval of a project step that is critical to moving forward.

But we should also answer the question of why we should be willing to wait. What could compel us to want to be patient? We could talk about how we’ll have less stress, and we’ll live longer, and we can enjoy our “real life” outside of work more if we are more patient. We might want to think about how much more money we’ll make or the fancy cars and vacations that money will bring. We can consider that we are employers of many people, and they count on us to bring good sense to bear when it comes to securing their futures. Our businesses help millions recover from various problems the world over, and the better we are at it the more we can help.

The answer though, for our audience of leaders, might be more suited to a conversation about leaving a legacy. The owners I know are laser focused on leaving a mark on the world around them. They are driven, conscientious employers, partners and friends who want, more than anything else, to leave their industry better than they found it. Some industries are old and large, and change comes slowly. But change does come, and our patience will ensure that the change is good, and that the legacy will last. Let’s raise a toast to lasting impressions that live longer than we do.