The Need to Spend Time Living in the Future
“I very rarely get pulled into the today. I get to work two or three years into the future, and most of my leadership team has the same setup … If I have a week with no brainstorming meetings, I complain to my office, like ‘Come on, guys, help me here.’”
— Jeff Bezos
One of the hallmarks of a truly great organization is that it delivers today while constantly preparing itself to thrive in the future. In weak organizations, the Today-Future Division (TFD) is presented as an either-or-choice. “I wish I had the time to think”, laments the leader of a weak organization. “But everything around me is a mess. I don’t have time to think about where we should be in the future”. Some leaders even wear this lament as a badge of honor — “I don’t have time to think because I am too busy doing things”.
True, the leader of a weak organization or a weak division within an organization does not have much, if any, time to spend in the future. The TFD for leaders in weak organizations is very heavy on the T and very light, if any, on the F. But what happens when leaders of organizations are always in the here-and-now? What happens when leaders of organizations for years — for years — can still only wish they had time to think?
It is not too difficult a story to play out. Organizations that cannot do the Today without constant drama are certainly not going to be able to do the Future well, if at all. Absent conscious change, the Future of an organization will not build itself into something better than it is Today. Most especially if the leaders of that organization are always — always — stuck in Today. Being stuck in Today means you are in a weak organization. And being in a weak organization is not something you should wear as a badge of honor.
What’s your TFD ratio?
It’s About Resource Allocation
Becoming the new head of a weak division or a weak organization is daunting, as it means you begin with more weaknesses than strengths on the organizational or divisional ledger. But it also means something further, and that “something” is that you have control of resources .
What are those resources? The simple answer is time, people, and money. And leaders in weak organizations constantly lament — notice that word again? — that they don’t have enough of any of those.
Does that mean their time in that position is doomed to never be anything but a constant stream of exhaustion entailed in fighting the endless battles and fires of Today? A constant stream of lament that there is never enough time. Never enough money? Never enough people?
Maybe.
But after a period of time, if there remains nothing but lament and exhaustion, nothing but an adrenaline charged high-wire act to get you though another Today, then fundamental questions have to be asked. Yes, it was thus when I arrived. But why is it still thus? Why can’t I materially move my TFD ratio in the right direction?
Leadership is many things, but in organizations, titular organizational leadership is also about resource allocation. The capacity to allocate resources is what titular leaders in an organization are charged with doing. There are — and must be — leaders in an organization that do not have resource allocation responsibilities. But titular organizational leaders — they have care and control and custody of organizational resources. Titular leaders are resource allocators.
Resource allocation made by an organizational or division head is best understood as a constant stream of decisions related to things you institutionally control, rather than things that institutionally control you. Generally speaking, the higher you are within an organizational structure, the more you have control of institutional resources. The lower you are in that structure, the less is within your domain of resource allocation decisions.
The key resource allocations that division and organizational heads have relate to the constant stream of decisions concerning the interface of staff hiring, budgets, priority setting, and organizational structures. If an organization is a weak one, senior institutional leaders also have to “fix things” that should work without them. Why is purchasing slow — do I have to go and take care of it myself again? Why is our supplier late — do I have go and take care of it myself again? Why is our biggest customer unhappy with her latest shipment of our product — do I have to go and do take care of it myself again? Why is our call centre down — do I have to go and do take care of it myself again? Why did our best data people quite this month — do I have to go and do take care of it myself again? Why is the network down — do I have to go and do take care of it myself again?
The TFD ratio is stuck. It will never move.
By contrast, in strong organizations, the things above work. Sure, once in a while something happens. A purchasing order gets lost. A customer is unhappy. A good employee leaves. But when it happens more than once in a while — pay attention. Pay very close attention. But beyond the occasional blip, things in your organization should function as designed on a day to day basis. Your organization, on a day to day operating basis, should be able to function without you. In fact, even better — on an operating basis it should work so well that when you try to help in a daily task of your organization, things get messed up. Your team should be better at all their jobs than you are at any of their jobs.
In strong organizations, organizational leaders are obsessed with things like hiring great talent, using time effectively, and constantly seeking new opportunities or better practices to improve current operations. Strong organizations live their values daily. They do not design a statement once a year at a “visioning exercise” or at a “planning retreat”. Strong organizations are always planning. They are always visioning. Strong organizations are always moving organically towards the future.
How do you break out of today and live in the future? There are many ways to do this. Here is a simple formula that works. Like all things simple, its success lies not in its articulation, but in its execution. Not in designing it on paper. But in living it every day in your organizational world. Every day. Thinking about these principles without practicing them leads to nothing but frustration and lament (that word again — it seems to very popular).
It is in the execution of today where organizations start the process of moving into the future. When you start to fix the T is when you can start to move to the F. But talking about the F without fixing the T is like dreaming — the F will always just be a dream.
RESOURCE ALLOCATION: Hire Great People
You cannot have a great organization without having a preponderance of great people. Period. Organizations and divisions are great because they have great people. Organizations and divisions are weak because they have weak people. There is no way around this. Consider it math — have you ever tried to fight math? Have you ever won?
An organization can have great wealth or great value or great responsibilities and still have weak people. It can have deposits of gold or patents or real estate that make it valuable. But a company with gold or valuable patents or great real estate cannot be a great organization without great people. It is simply a truism.
How do you hire great people? Much ink has been spilled on this. But it basically comes down to giving great people an environment that they want to spend their time in. Great people love great environments. Great people are luckier than the rest of us — they get to choose their environments. Give them reason to choose you and your division and your organization.
Hire great people. Stuff your organization with talent.
RESOURCE ALLOCATION: Communicate Uncompromising Vision
Huh? How is this “resource allocation?”
Great people love to know what they are working towards. If you don’t know what you are collectively working towards, they won’t stay. Also, if what you are working today isn’t consistent with your vision — if your T does not make sense with your vision towards F — great people get that too. If you say you are committed to building a modern organization but you keep replacing the fax machines instead of buying computers, great people see this. If you are committed to having your employees work in an agile environment but every time you have the opportunity to fix an irritant you let it slide by, great people get that too. And if your great people see that what you say is not what you do, then they will not be your great people for long. They will become someone else’s great people instead.
Communicate uncompromising vision. Over and over and over again. And mean it.
RESOURCE ALLOCATION: Get Your Organizational Structure Right
Huh again! How is this “resource allocation”?
Too many people take their organizational structures to be a given. Once established, they are never to change. Never to evolve.
This is a terrible mistake, and a terrible mistake of resource allocation. When you hear things like “it takes too long to make decisions around here”, or “everything is broken”, or “why doesn’t stuff just work like it is supposed to in this place?” — generally speaking, those come down to only two things — your people and your organizational structure. You can have great people but a poor structure. Or you can have a great structure with poor people. But unless you have both you will only have — you guessed it — lament.
Your organizational structure is how your organization faces the world. Is it top heavy? Is it bloated? Is it fast? Is it slow? Is it efficient? Is it effective? Is it simple? Is it complex?
Whatever it is, it is how you face the world. It is how you interact with money, with people, with customers, with stakeholders. It is how you chose to filter the world. It is how you are structured to execute your mandate.
Organizational structures have to evolve constantly. Constant tweaks. Constant adjustments. Is the world you interact with slow and lumbering? Lucky you — then your organizational structure can be static, if it works to begin with. But most of us interact with a world that is constantly changing. Sometimes a little. Sometimes a lot. Organizational structures should be evolutionary — always making small tweaks to counterbalance any needs you can’t efficiently and effectively meet. If needs can’t be effectively and efficiently met over long periods of time because your organizational structure hasn’t changed in long periods of time, then eventually evolution is replaced by revolution — you have to be dramatic at a point in time. But it is better to incrementally boring rather sporadically revolutionary. Or become organizationally obsolete because you cannot interact with the world efficiently and effectively.
Take your organizational structure seriously. And change it if it is not efficient and not effective to what you need. And tweak it always — don’t let it get so out of date that it requires a radical revolution in the future.
When the Lament Stops
When you start getting the TDF moving in the right direction, magic starts to happen. Cascading magic. You start to feel better. Your team starts to feel better. People start to live in the future. You no longer lament today.
Living in the future is fun. Living in the future is also important. If you always live in today, your organization will eventually not live to see tomorrow.
Think of where we would be today if some of our predecessors didn’t start living in the future and started seeing the possibilities for broadband and WiFi and wireless and pacemakers and insulin and airplanes and satellites and antibiotics and and and ….
Those — and virtually everything else around us that we have made, for better or worse, but mostly better — are there because someone lived in the future. Someone had a good TFD ratio. Yes, some of these things began as sparks of brilliance and imagination and lucky happenstance. But none of those things would have possible to scale across the globe without organizations to give form to the brilliance and imagination and happenstance.
Are you working on AI, or are you trying to get the email system to work?
Are you obsessed with finding new ways to get insight from your data, or are you trying to get procurement back on track (again)?
Are you exploring 5G deployment options, or are you trying to get cheap androids from two tech generations ago to your employees?
What’s your TDF ratio?
Where should it be?
How are you allocating your constant stream of organizational resource decisions?
