Francis Wade | The immediate effect of an invented, faraway future

Unlike others in top positions, you want to be a long-term leader who has his or her eyes fixed firmly on a destination far in the future.

But what can you expect from fostering such a vision? Should it do more than give you good reason to beat your chest when it is accomplished? Or is it a matter of waiting indefinitely for something to happen?

New research shows that such thinking is wrong. Leaders disempower themselves when they think in these ways. Why?

In corporate life, high-performing managers are held accountable for immediate results. As they progress, they gain a reputation for being agile and acting decisively to meet short-term targets.

However, while they busy themselves with daily urgencies, they can also, unwittingly, deprecate long-term thinking. How? By deciding that long-term thinking is a luxury reserved only for later, more profitable, relaxed times.

Until then, they won’t waste a moment star-gazing. Unfortunately, this habitual reasoning is flawed. Here are two reasons why your investment in an invented future has an immediate impact.

Deep inner motivation

You understand the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Most of your managers probably believe in the former, arguing that all people want is more money.

But you want to believe differently.

Yes, folks always act in their own self-interest. And if the relationship is framed by the company in monetary terms, they will think first in terms of cash payment. Why? When it comes to our jobs, we are transactional – I give you this (pay) in exchange for that (work).

Yet, individuals you admire the most are different. They invest in activities that appear to have fewer immediate benefits. Such as having children. Or giving to charity. Or getting a degree.

In some parts of our lives, we are comfortable delaying gratification.

But most companies don’t know how to ask for anything different from the transactional norm. As a manager, if you make the mistake of asking for a sacrifice, you receive blank looks. Why? You have trained your staff to expect something tangible in return.

Consider another possibility.

Until now, you haven’t made it clear where their long-term interests are the same as yours. But I don’t mean in terms of abstractions such as ‘a healthy balance sheet’, or ‘the benefit of our customers’ or ‘the good of our country’. Those are too vague to break through the noise in employees’ heads.

Instead, together with your staff, you must craft a joint picture of the future into which everyone can step. Want local examples? Check out the GraceKennedy 2020 Vision and Vision 2030 Jamaica projects. These joint futures were crafted with hundreds of others and spanned 25 and 21 years, respectively.

However, regardless of their timeframes, they were able to prompt immediate action. You should expect no less. In other words, if your future vision isn’t having an immediate impact, it is not working.

For example, in one company, staff became so energised that they volunteered to sell products on weekends – on their own time. To the surprise of their leaders, they were willing to pitch in when they had a shared purpose.

Focus during emergencies

In the post-COVID world, many companies are pushing staff to be agile. You want workers to be nimble and flexible in anticipation of the next disruption.

But the more you push for them to be responsive, the closer you approach the limits of this behaviour.

In other words, you fear that getting people hooked on a harum-scarum, high-adrenaline, panic mode will burn them out. Ultimately, you want to avoid creating a culture brimming with pointless problem-solving.

Therefore, you need to provide people with a bigger context than ‘get through the day’, or ‘survive the season’, or ‘ride out the emergency’.

In other words, even when crises are doing their worst, you want them to be two-headed and stay focused on long-term objectives. When you do so, they solve immediate problems in alignment with your overall vision.

For example, it’s easy to equate customer service with ‘making all unhappy customers happy’. However, a real strategic plan does not treat all customers the same.

Instead, it calls for a focus on some and the relinquishment of others. As Michael Porter said: “Strategy is about making choices, tradeoffs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.”

Staff who can’t tell the difference can easily run you out of business.

However, when they understand the invented future, it shapes each customer interaction as a choice. Not an obligation, but a conscious decision to advance your strategic plan.

These are just two ways in which a long-term vision affects immediate performance. Consider them to be a test of the clarity of your leadership.

Francis Wade is a management consultant and author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity. To search past columns on productivity, strategy and business processes, or give feedback, email: columns@fwconsulting.com