There are forums filled with employees complaining about how long things take at work. Approvals that take a day or a week, that prevent them from doing the work they actually want to be doing.
While I understand the frustration, there is something lacking in most of their approaches. A long-term vision. Perhaps that’s because upper management doesn’t share that with them. Or that they simply don’t think in those terms because their tasks don’t last that long.
My life improved dramatically, when I got comfortable with the long-term. Many employees propose internal improvement projects while failing to take up the mantle for the year or years that it will take to go from an idea to a service, product, or offering. The difference between upper management, and workers is the timeframe both are worried about. Upper management doesn’t care approvals take 3 days to turnaround because their focus is on 5 year timelines. The worker is upset the approvals take 3 days because the task itself only takes 1.
No one is sharing the view from the same spot.
The irony here is that to tell CEOs, especially Fortune 500 CEO’s, that they need to focus on shorter timelines would be comical. Most of them are already making short-term decisions based on stock prices. If they looked longer-term at items that mattered, like hiring better workers, better pay for those they have to increase retention, better training to produce better workers, better work from home options, healthcare, and all sorts of other things that go into making a strong company the world would be a better place for workers.
That means that it’s likely you, as a worker or even a small business owner that has to adopt the longer-term vision. You don’t have the resources to make things happen on short timelines by throwing huge amounts of capital at it. That’s okay because patience, generosity, and creativity can outstrip that in the long run, if you stick to it.
Think in years or decades, small additional efforts sustained over those time periods accomplish a lot.
None of this is Right 