by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

“Have we built a society of historians or visionaries?”

    A recent client discussion opened with him sharing how he and his senior colleagues had just made individual presentations, within a group setting, about their respective domains. He declared that he and another individual had shared honors by giving the best overall showcases. With that vote, it dawned on him that he and his other favored colleague were the only two who gave forward-looking briefings. The remainder had given rear-view mirror ones.

Just think about this for a minute: there’s pretty much nothing we can do about past events other than learn from them. Quite frankly, we often don’t learn so well from past lessons either, even though we can use such insights to do better in future. Where we do choose to learn from past errors or successes, we can become so obsessed by them that they overwhelm our desire to progress.

Investigators spent countless hours and $millions researching backward what went wrong on 9/11. For many reasons there is unlikely to be an exact replica of that scenario; mainly due to future circumstances being quite different. Therefore a good chunk of that tedious 9/11 research money could’ve been better spent on forward thinking ways to better position ourselves to combat future terror events…like more effective leadership coaching, to allow staff to speak out about potential security failings,  and breaking down inter-department barriers that prevent synergy of information. Money has been pretty sparse on investing in the latter two ideas.

It’s frustrating to think about the traditional huge emphasis that’s placed on reporting – what we’ve done? how did things go last week? how many widgets did we sell the year before last? and so on. Journals and newspapers love to dwell upon what’s happened rather than what’s likely to happen. For that reason journalists are primarily historians. They leave politicians and government leaders to work out future intentions and then spend their time second-guessing the outcome of those intentions through the privilege of historical hindsight.

Looking backward through a rear-view mirror is unlikely to get you very far. Recording history, second-guessing, and accounting for resources already utilized, is always interesting and has become a huge part of a manager’s job. Report writing is perceived as one of a manager’s most important skills. Spending a lot of time on it, at the expense of ignoring their people, is all too common place. It reminds this writer of hospital visits, where highly trained senior nurses spend most of their valuable time shuffling paper and writing reports; rather than attending to chronically sick patients or training other nurses. Efficiency drives have only added to the report writing syndrome. Some people, unfortunately too many in the managerial ranks, prefer dealing with paperwork and accounting over working their team member relations.

Oddly enough, those leaders who are brave enough to minimize their time shuffling reports or manipulating data, are the ones who obtain the best overall results. Instead, they spend much of their time looking through their venture’s windshield. They’re looking for what comes next rather than what happened yesterday. They appreciate that their people are sparked by pursuing opportunities, rather than reviewing what happened last week. Such forward -looking possibilities are why their people are much more motivated and engaged.

       “Leaders spend much of their time looking through their venture’s windshield.”

Leaders spend considerable amounts of time thinking about tomorrow and how they can work even better with the people around them in order to get a future edge. They know that new challenging adventures are what engages their people in order to make progress.

Such thinking is not intended to overlook shareholder or owner interest in recent results. Even so, historical thinking doesn’t have to be an obsession in the mistaken belief that it drives motivation. In fact, it’s a form of extrinsic coercion, which invariably causes resentment rather motivate people. People are more fascinated by realistic opportunities, being engaged in decision-making, team accomplishment, and having the tools or resources to execute what is required.

Looking backward is an ingrained habit of going over past results and potentially playing “gotcha.” It’s a way of asserting control over people- which they hate – to the point where they feel small and demotivated. Maybe 30% attention

toward past events is valid and then let’s move on.

Could this be why we seem to have a dearth of strategic thinkers within our midst? We are bound-up and reflective about past events and showing our credentials as historians. And, yet, it has still not been proven that past performance will clearly predict future performance. Even though this writer finds history fascinating, he finds it downright frustrating to spend inordinate amounts of time evaluating or second-guessing the past. Any intelligent person can do that.

So what’s the way forward on this issue?

» Kick the Historical Habit – Our schooling turned pretty well all of us into historians. Academics are primarily historians because they focus their students on what has been achieved up until now; on the basis that we can learn from the past. That is clearly true, but maybe it is over-valued when it produces graduates more grounded in what was accomplished years ago rather than how they can impact their situation today and in the future.

» Tools that will help Future Contributions – For long enough we’ve used planning as a way of handling the future and then done our best to execute that plan as faithfully as possible. But if those plans are designed to create certainty or dragooning people and events in a certain direction, they are highly likely to fail. It’s usually predicated on where we were yesterday and how will that help us to reach tomorrow.

A much more valuable tool is “positioning.” We can position things to succeed knowing full well that we cannot make them succeed. Positioning focuses on where we wish to be tomorrow and ensuring you have the people talent, resources and know-how to take you there. This is coupled with a guidance mechanism called “human outcomes” to know you are on track. Associated Strategic Frameworks have the inbuilt flexibility, purpose and ingredients necessary to guide likely success.

»Ratio of Time Devoted to Yesterday and Tomorrow – This writer would like to propose that  no meeting, or paper, or report, or discussion should have more than 30% time/space devoted to yesterday. The remaining 70% would be devoted to today, with the majority time focused on tomorrow. After all, we have much more influence over what happens today -although even that’s too late – with the majority of that 70% spent on tomorrow thinking.

All the indications to this writer are that we have way too many historians rather than visionaries. Clearly there are many potential visionaries out there but they have been usurped into becoming historians. Most people start out their young lives full of restless imagination, but this is squeezed out of them in order to make them conform. Why do we want them to conform? Maybe because kids will push us out of our comfort zone. “There’s no expedient that man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.”

You can change that all tomorrow, so why don’t you make a shift in your organization? Give it a go for 3-6 months, since your people don’t turn on a dime. Cut the yesterday-devoted-time in meetings, briefing papers, discussions and reporting to a maximum of 30%. Devote the remaining 70% mostly to tomorrow. Start similar events with a focus on where we’re going, because that’s what your people are primarily interested in, and then figure out how you’re going to get there. Pretty much forget the other way around. See how things look in about 6 months. A number of die-hard, yesterday-thinkers may already be gone – but they are often naysayers, anyway.

To encourage more “tomorrow”  thinking, talk with: