"Long Game" - In a Corporate World that Rewards Short-Term Results

There's been an positive shift in what seems to be the past couple of years where the focus is being placed more and more on the long game and less on grinding away to merely accomplish the current deliverable. This takes shape through many different contexts, which all work and have been extremely beneficial for me, like "process over outcome", and "sustainable growth", or maybe even "don't be a two pump chump in the game of life". Ok, I made that last one up but I kind of like it and might try and make it stick.

Regardless, we're hitting a world where many people are facing burnout more regularly. This doesn't just effect our own mental health but really all of those around us. Not only that, but when we start considering "butterfly effect" implications, not focusing on the long game or the process sets bad examples and bad culture on teams, driving others to fall into the same trap that churning out short term results means #winning.

Focusing on short term results also creates issues for long term strategies and initiatives if the two end up diverging. Short term results are sexy. We know that. We are addicted to that "nice work" coming from the corner office VP when we get the report out at 9pm. It gives us worth. It fills our cup. But only briefly. Just like this being part of the "short" game, the reward also wears off quickly and over time might not even feel rewarding at all.

However, breaking that deliverable down, figuring out how it ties into strategy, where it fits into the long game, and then deliberately focusing on the PROCESS is how we make institutional change. Change that takes a "long" time but is felt across the entire enterprise and might not even change the outcome or the deliverable itself. These are the changes, that over the "long" term, give you more time, help you learn and understand more, help get you to work more across different teams, and maybe even lead or peer lead others. All things that add value, not just to you, but to everyone around you.

The "long game" can be, and should be, a topic in any of our live's arenas. Today's focus is more on how this plays out in the overly competitive corporate landscape and some of my learnings as I've tried to embed this as a key focus into my day-to-day flow. This is potentially the hardest arena to fully live out PROCCES / OUTCOME, too focus purely on the long-game. But like any of the other life arenas, there are certain things that stay in short-term focus, things that are merely deliverables due at the end of the month that need to be prioritized. But the best see those as opportunities, places to add value. Here are my tips broken down by topic to help you focus more on the long game in your careers and why you may want to make this a priority.

Add Value to Your Company

While focusing on the long-game benefits you and growing yourself into a more optimal person, it also adds immense value to your company and the teams you work with. While the two other core reasons may be more important, at the end of the day we should also care about the trajectory of where we work and who we work for. Being able carry and long-term focus into the corporate world is something every great leader hopes to see, it just becomes a hard balance when shareholders seek short term results. Here are a couple reasons why and how the long game can add value to your employer.

Perfect Processes Produce Better Outcomes

In the personal space, we should be focusing almost solely on the process and let the outcome take care of itself. In the corporate world, this becomes more of a challenge (Wallstreet craves those growth targets....), but we can back our way into better outcomes by improving processes and focusing on the big picture. When we detach ourselves from the narrow scope of hitting a weekly deliverable, we allow our vision to adjust to seeing the long-term benefit of a cleaner and more efficient process. This almost always creates more work in the near-term, but over the course of years, months, or even the next couple of weekly deliverables, this improved process can give us time back. Time back translates into then being able to focus on the outcome (assuming the process is close to perfect) or even pivoting to spend time on projects that have consistently fell through the cracks. Improved process also makes business continuity easier. It's easier to train someone or have a co-worker fill in for PTO when the process is simpler and takes less time. This can show up by consolidating or revamping tools, breaking down and rebuilding workflows, or cutting out unnecessary meetings, emails, or touchpoints.

Cultivate Innovation

Building on a point from perfect processes, when we focus on the process itself (which I find to be synonymous with the "long game") we create an opportunity to innovate and add value. When we get stuck going through the motions of that pesky weekly deliverable, we don't give ourselves a chance to flex our creative brains and find ways to unlock those efficiencies we've talked about. Focusing on the process, we can pick it apart, piece by piece, and understand where the missing value can be added. Maybe for the last five years, there's been a report that gets sent out every Friday showing the leadership team the weekly sell-thru by store. Five years ago that report probably served a specific purpose and need, and today it's just another email people skim through (this is especially true with leadership turnover). What if we took the time to know exactly why that report was created, who it was for, and what decisions were made because of that report, and then looked at today's operating environment to see what the new metric or report might be? Maybe instead of sell-thru, a more specific set of inventory metrics unlocks business insights needed to make better real-time decisions. Now you have the materials needed to build, next is to make sure you have the tools in the tool-kit, and then you can move onto building. Innovating doesn't need to be done by the R&D team. The junior analyst in accounting can be the person that cultivates the change needed to unlock enterprise level value.

80% -> 100%

One question I've gotten often in my career is "what does 100% look like?" We often get so caught up in moving onto the next thing because the next thing usually produces the next best output, or it's new and people love new. If we can consistently reframe our thinking to consider the long term implications of workstreams, projects, etc., it's easier for us to see the incremental value added of taking something to 100% verses stopping at 80% to start in on the next new idea. Sometimes 100% is 80%, but that needs defined at the onset of the work, and even then, taking something an extra 20% past "done" is sure to create change and add value to the teams and people around you.

Career Progression and Personal Value

When we begin seeing the benefits of focusing on the process, the systems, the "long game" in the work we're doing ultimately lead to more success on our teams and for our company, we naturally see benefit to our own careers. If you innovated a new process that unlocked efficiency or a new point of view that drove incremental value AND you haven't been noticed by leaders or other in your organization, I would say you are working at the wrong place. There are way too many companies out there that would love to have you and would value you for the worth your bringing to them.

Personal Brand and Career Potential

The first main point when we start to focus on the benefits of a long-term focus on ourselves is purely our own brand and the unlock to our career trajectory. Like we talked about in the company section, it can be truly a long time in order for the long game to pay off, but I don't believe it's as long as we think. When we do run into leaders or companies who don't want to value our efforts in process or system improvement, it's nine times out of ten driven by they themselves not understanding the importance of the long game. Or they are just like everyone else and have been caught up in the outcome, the weekly deliverable, the churn and burn environment we've all grown to live in. Back to the point, it's pretty easy to see that if we can add true value to our teams, tangibly quantify that value (time, money, headcount, etc.), and rinse and repeat, we'll start to build a name for ourselves. Leaders will start to notice, they'll be more likely to mentor you, sponsor you, or even connect you with their peers. All of this compounds and pays immense dividends in the, you guessed it🙂, long run.

Leadership Development for Non-Managers

As someone who's main passion revolves around leading and developing others, I'm always trying to find ways to flex and build leadership skills when I don't have any direct reports. While I love where I work, an extremely flat hierarchy doesn't make developing people leaders very efficient. One thing we can do when we take a more long-term approach is find opportunities to peer lead or mentor those who are more junior and looking for guidance. Getting caught up in the outcome, the short-term hustle and bustle, we leave little time for career development and focusing on our strengths and core values. Slowing down regularly to see if what you're doing aligns with where you want to go is some of the best advice I can give.

As it relates to adding long-term value through innovation, process improvement, etc., we can use these as opportunities to develop our peers and cross-functional leadership skills as well. Most longer term projects will require more than just yourself, giving you the chance to form a task force of peers that YOU GET TO LEAD. It might not seem like leadership, but it is. You're driving the boat, you're empowering your peers to also grow and add value, and at the end of the day it's your idea and you're the decision holder. Bringing others along on the journey is also an amazing habit and makes the team and workplace culture even better.

Embrace Change -> Change Leaders

Change leadership is all the rage and is something of large focus in the business leadership research world. To start, change is inevitable, and if it isn't happening now and being driven by you or your team, it will happen in the future and be because you fell behind and now you're playing catch-up. Detaching yourself from the current outcomes and processes and being able to have a long-term view naturally fosters an attitude of change. Yes, change for the sake of change is good for no one. However, in the world we're in today, constant change is something we need to live with. The best leaders embrace change, they lead through change, and they do so with courage. By embracing change we acknowledge the long-term is more important and allow ourselves and our teams to see the big picture, the future, and distance themselves from the short-term outcomes we've been talking about. Being known as a strong change leader is invaluable to your career. Own it!

Time, Health, and Relationships

Outside of purely career or company benefit, focusing on the long-game in the workplace also pays off in our own personal lives. In life, our core focus on living should be to pour into relationships and give as often as we can, very common personal values. When we focus on the outcome and the short-term, we often get tied up in production and lose sight of our values. As we transition into focusing on the long game, we create opportunity to fill our cups and shine our light even brighter.

Mental Health and Anxiety Reduction

One of the most important points on focusing on the long-game is sustainability. In the workplace, when we get in the cycle of producing output, we get caught in a never ending circle of deadlines, meetings, questions in - answers out, all which add up to equal stress. As Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness have coined, Stress + Rest = Growth. We know this is true for our muscles, but it's even more true for our brains. Long-term focus in our careers shores up time to "rest". It might seem counterintuitive, but we've already understood how this works. Our ability to "rest" is what takes the stress we built up doing the work and levels us up. Rest is also where we unplug, do more things we enjoy, and give ourselves time to improve our mental health.

Stripping out the focus on deadlines and outputs also has a slight different impact on our mental health. We reduce anxiety by moving our focus down the timeline. Yes, some deadlines are hard and fast, but if we can reframe our thinking to grasp that most our deliverables aren't saving the world, we give ourselves some slack. Slack is anxiety. The tighter the line, the more tension, both figuratively and literally. So, the next time you're stressing over something that needs done by the end-of-the-day, I urge you to ask yourself if that report is saving the world, or filling your boss' inbox. Maybe in that moment it does need done, but use that as fuel to figure out how you can make that process more efficient over the long-haul.

More Time to Build Relationships

Like noting on mental health, the more focus on the long game means more time for rest. While rest is important, more time is more time. Circling back to our core focus as humans being on relationships, more time gives us more opportunity to love and be loved. In relation to this article, we can use the time to be mentored or mentor others, we can grab coffee with an old coworker we haven't seen in 18 months, or we can ask our peers if there is anything they need help with. While you might argue that your an introvert, there is still plenty of research pointing to how much better we live and feel when we are in good relationships. Outside of work this means SO MUCH more. We have more time to be a better parent, partner, friend, etc.. Long game focus might not provide the time you want in the beginning, but the goal is to get there, you got it, in the long-term.

SHINE BRIGHTER

I've touched on this once, and as you'll get with all of my messages, the point of ALL of this is for us to be able to become brighter. To me, becoming brighter means harnessing new habits and ideas that make me smarter and therefore also make me better in the workplace. But it also means my light shines brighter. It illuminates more space and it helps people in darkness see more clearly. Our vocation is important, and luckily I work for a company and in an industry I'm passionate about. Personal growth "hacks" or habits usually miss the point in this world as everyone assumes that to be their best self it isn't tied to a desk. However, I know that everyone's best self is their own definition of their best self. We can lead, love, and be happy sitting at a desk eight hours a day, but it sure as hell makes it a lot more enjoyable when our light is bright enough to see the keyboard in front of us.