Without short-term potential, very few will do long-term good (duh)

In the grand scheme of writing this blog, one of the most interesting things that I think I’ve ever written is this whole idea of “micro” vs. “macro.” Basically, you can get consensus among one group (say, a senior leadership team) and that’s at the macro level. When that team breaks up and goes back to their individual teams and communicate the idea, you need success at the micro level (the day-to-day). Those are often not aligned. So “macro” — big picture — is often set, but then it falls apart when we need to actually get it executed at the “micro” — granular — level.

Phrased another way and going in the other direction, there’s a very real concept whereby daily deliverables (the micro) murdered strategy (the macro) in most organizations. This essentially happened because everyone is allowed to run around believing how busy they are. As such, no one can think long-term; everyone just wants to knock out what’s currently on their plate. That’s most people I’ve ever worked with, honestly.

So far we’ve been talking about this idea of “short-term” vs. “long-term” or “micro” vs. “macro.” This factors in to another concept called “inter-temporal discounting.” Essentially, that means you focus on the short-term and immediate things, even if you know it’s bad for you in the long-term.