WHEN YOU DEAL WITH A SHORT-TERM THINKER

Short-term thinkers— these are the people who focus on the short-term benefits, gains, and results when going after a goal. This would be a good thing except that they are so focused on the short- term, they do so to the exclusion of including the long-term goals, objectives, consequences, and symptoms. This is what, in turn, creates some really significant problems. The way they evaluate things are premature. Consequently, they fail to consider what else is and will occur due to the actions and/or choices that they are making. They evaluate by this quarter’s results or return-on- investment and fail to balance that off against the longer-term results.

In business this results in an organization constantly changing procedures, plans, and strategies and this makes the organization susceptible to the sarcastic criticism of going after yet another “fad of the month.” Now a key assumption behind short-term thinking and one which promotes it is linear causation thinking. This refers to seeing the world as comprised of simple cause-effect relationships. Oh, that the world was that simple! And that assumption then seduces us into another assumption—that of thinking that we can predict the future. This is where so many middle-managers fall short.