Overview

Sometime ago I heard someone describe an effective CEO as a person who was able to see the future that will exist in twenty years. Clearly, if the leader can see the future, the company can be successful. Or can it?

For a moment assume that the CEO is a visionary who knows what will exist twenty years in the future. Now assume that everyone but the CEO is focused only on today. There would be little or no benefit to the CEO's vision. For there to be a benefit, each level of the organization would need to be translating the vision into tangible plans for successively closer intervals of time. Senior executives would need to lead changes required for the ten-to twenty-year time frame. The middle level manager would need to be leading changes required for success in the ten-year time frame. And so on and so on, down through the organization. If senior executives are micro-managing today's activities, then who is worrying about tomorrow? It is impossible for a person's mind to be focused on today and tomorrow at the same time. Tomorrow will always suffer because of the urgent issues needing to be addressed today.

The same kinds of problems exist in most plants. If you assign the person responsible for managing day-to-day issues with responsibility for long-term activities, like implementing projects, the long-term actions will never get done. The...