THE STORY
Imagine two executives who were told to get from point A to
point B. The first executive wanted to be very efficient in his task. He knew
that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line, so he drew a
straight line between points A & B. “This
straight line,” said the first executive, “will be my path to success.”
Unfortunately, his straight line was drawn directly through
the middle of a large zoo. This posed many challenges to his straight line
approach. Following the line, this executive first had to find a way to break
into a lions’ cage. Then he had to find a way to get around the man-eating lions
in that cage without being eaten. Then he had to find a way out of the lion’s cage
on the other side. This process was repeated as he had to get through the cages
of poisonous snakes, hungry crocodiles, and other wild beasts.
These challenges were very difficult, but each time, the first
executive found a workable solution.
As the first executive reached point B on the other side of
the zoo, he was very proud of himself. He thought, “I’m an excellent executive. I
found the shortest path to point B. Then I successfully found an answer to
every challenge on that path. I overcame every obstacle and reached my
destination without any serious injuries. My boss will call me a hero.”
However, there was nobody waiting for this first executive
when he got to point B. He later found
out that the second executive had gotten to point B days earlier. What she had done was called a taxi and had
the taxi driver drive around the zoo to the other side. It took less than an hour.
The first executive did get a response from his boss, but it
was not to be called a hero. Instead,
his boss called him an idiot, told him he was fired and that he would have to
personally pay for all the damages he made to the zoo.
The first executive considered himself to be a hero because
of all the great accomplishments he performed. He made a quick decision on
finding the shortest path and then found solutions to all of the problems along
that path. And since they were difficult and dangerous problems, his ability to
solve them without injury was that much more remarkable. Yes, he had quite the
long list of impressive achievements.
Yet, his boss called him an idiot. Why? Because it was an expense,
destructive and excessively time-consuming way to get to Point B. The goal was
not to achieve a long list of impressive feats of management, but to quickly
and efficiently get to the other side of the zoo. That could be done with a
quick taxi ride.
I see a similar type of occurrence in the world of strategic
planning. We set a strategic goal to get from point A to point B. Then we set
loose the executives to go down that path. Once the executives get moving along
the path, they lose sight of the big picture and only see the obstacles
immediately in front of them. Then, one by one, they tackle each of those daily
obstacles.
The big picture gets lost while attention moves to the
obstacles immediately in front of us. At the moment each obstacle is conquered,
we may feel like a hero. But all that “heroic” effort is really a waste of
time, because it is unnecessary,
That first executive could have saved a lot of time and
effort by waking around those cages rather than trying to go through them. Or
better yet, he could have followed the second executive’s approach and just
taken a cab around the zoo. It may make for a much less impressive list of
accomplishments, but the big strategic goal is accomplished a whole lot faster
and easier.
The principle here is that the importance of the task is
often correlated to distance. In other words, achieving the big strategic goals
off in the distance are usually far more important to the ultimate success of
the business than conquering the crisis of the day. Yet in practice, we tend to
operate in the opposite direction. We spend most of our time tackling the challenge
immediately in front of us. Like that first executive, we get so intent on
finding a way through the lions’ cage in front of us that we miss the quick and
easy path to the bigger goal on the other side of the zoo.
We can call it nearsightedness, because the executives lose
site of the distant goal and can only see the challenge immediately in front of
them. In the past, I have referred to it as the tyranny of the immediate. The immediate becomes our master and tortures
us into submitting to its wishes rather than freeing us to achieve the larger,
more distant (and more important) goal.
So how can we minimize activities like the first executive
in the story and may our executives act more like the second executive? Here are
some suggestions.
1. Keep the Distance Continually in View
When executives become nearsighted, we need to help them by
giving them corrective vision so that they can see the bigger goal in the
distance all the time. If the only time your company focuses on the distant
goal is at an annual off-site meeting, then the battle is lost. The near-term
challenge will win the daily battle for the limited executive’s time. The
distant goal will be forgotten until the next year’s annual meeting, when
people wonder why they are no closer to the goal.
There are several ways to get the distant goal clearly
visible on a daily basis. For example,
you can change the culture so that a simple question is asked at EVERY meeting
and when important daily decisions are made.
That question is this: Does your decision get us closer to achieving our
big goal or not? Or perhaps it can be
worded like this: What decision gets us
faster to where we want to ultimately be?
Another way to do it is by linking the goal to a position or
philosophy. For example, if your goal is
to win via innovation, you can look at daily decisions about what to tackle as
a choice to focus on those activities which most support innovation.
I was very impressed when I recently visited the Walmart
headquarters. When I listened in on how
daily decisions were being made, it was obvious that the long term goals, positions
and philosophies were deeply ingrained into the process. Every decision seemed to go through the same
filter: Is this going to help Walmart
bring lower prices to their targeted consumers so that they live better lives
on their limited incomes? The challenge
of the day did not seem to overpower the drive to spend time on what was most
critical to their long term success.
So be a pest and make sure the big vision become imbedded in
the daily grind.
2. Watch What You
Reward
We like to reward “heroic” levels of effort which overcome
huge challenges. It’s human nature. But often times, that effort is just
foolishness in disguise. That first executive in the story overcame numerous
challenges in that zoo. But it was all
an effort in foolishness that kept him from achieving the important goal.
Spending a lot of time and effort to overcome a huge
challenge is huge mistake if the challenge can be avoided. You don’t need to
fix problems if you can avoid them in the first place (like going around,
rather than through a lions’ cage). And some problems aren’t worth the effort
to fix them (the cost benefit ratio is wrong). And then there are the opportunity
costs…all that effort to fix that problem is effort that was unavailable for
more important tasks.
Therefore, don’t automatically reward great effort which
overcame a challenge. First, find out if the problem could have been avoided or
whether the problem was worth the effort or whether the effort prevented more
important accomplishments. If this is
the case, then perhaps punishment is more appropriate.
People do what gets rewarded. If overcoming challenges is what gets
rewarded, then people will find (or even create) lots of challenges to work
on. They will be like the first
executive in the story—busy on the wrong things, but looking good while doing
it. That second executive didn’t look all that heroic (all she did was take a
taxi). But she was the one who got the
important big picture stuff accomplished. That is what should be rewarded.
The more you link rewards to achieving the big picture, the
more likely folks will focus on that.
Remember, standing on your head while juggling may take more effort and
look more impressive than walking, but it will never get you to your
destination. Those who just keep walking
towards the goal are the real heroes, not the jugglers of the inconsequential “crisis
of the day.”
3. Just Say No
Although it is tempting to want to roll up one’s sleeves to
tackle the challenge of the day, it may be more heroic to just say no. Don’t spend any time focused on it at
all. This can be done in two ways. First, one can set up rules in advance for
how issues are to be handled. That way,
the old crisis of the day is no longer a crisis because we have established the
protocol in advance for how to handle it.
Instead, the old challenge requiring executive effort becomes a routine
event that just goes through the system based on the established protocol. You’d
be surprised at how many crises are just routine events that are merely missing
a protocol.
Second, one can delegate the problem to someone else lower
in the organization. This will free up
your time to devote to more critical long-term issues that only you can
solve.
I’m reminded of what management guru Peter Drucker said in
his book “The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right
Things Done.” In the book, Drucker says, “Effective executives concentrate on the few major areas where superior
performance will produce outstanding results. They force themselves to set
priorities and stay with their priority decisions. They know that they have no
choice but to do first things first—and second things not at all. The
alternative is to get nothing done.”
This is what my second executive in the story did. She ignored the zoo entirely and only did the
important thing—getting to point B quickly and effectively by taxi.
Although the challenges immediately in front of us may
appear at the moment to be the best use of our time, that is rarely true. Instead, it is getting to those more distant major
strategic goals which is the most effective use of our time. To help get executives focused on the bigger
picture, we need to a) keep the distance in view on a daily basis, b) stop
rewarding great effort focused on the wrong thing, and c) just say no to the
crisis of the day.
If you look at a newspaper from a week ago, you may find
that what seemed important enough to put on the front page then no longer seems
all that critical if read today. The
same can be said about most of the crises of the day. A week later you may wonder why it seemed so
important then.
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