I was surprised today, when I saw this graph on the XKCD blog earlier today. I did some search about the claim and lo and behold, I could find more information about the work of Arvid Högbom and his colleague Svante Arrhenius around the effect of greenhouse gases (not named such at that time) on the climate.
As the graph claims, we have known about the harmful effects of the emission of carbon in our environment now for more than 128 years, yet haven’t done much to address the issue. When I think about this a but more, I realise that the fundamental reasons for this are two fold:
1. Inability to think in long term:
I have come to realise that as a species it is very difficult for us to think in the long term, specially when we are looking at any time horizon longer than 5 years. Hence the 5 year plans. Hence the maximum duration for any elected government is about 5 years.
We need to be intentional and learn how to think in long term. There is a foundation, The Long Now foundation that was set up to help us start thinking in terms of centuries and even in 1000’s of years. So, anything that requires us to think longer than 5 years in time horizon requires special thinking and scaffolding that could enable us to think in long time horizons.
2. Bystander Effect:
The second issue is the presence and the impact of the bystander effect or leaders thinking that someone else will solve this problem and it is not their problem to solve. When everyone thinks that it is not their problem to solve, the problem never gets solved.
What complicates the matter further is that no one is immediately affected by this adversely or there is no imminent danger to anybody, so nobody does anything about it.
3. Too Big to Solve:
The other effect is that it feels like it is too big a problem to be solved by a single individual or even an organization. And since we can’t solve it by ourselves, it is better to leave it to those who can.
And since everyone feels the same and everyone leaves it for the others to deal with the problem, the problem is never solved.
So, what does all of this has to do with a leadership blog about business leaders and leadership you ask ? It has got to do everything with what we as leaders deal with.
Short term thinking:
These are exactly the same challenges that we face when it comes to our businesses. Most businesses suffer not because their markets are limited but because their thinking is limited.
The reason why we find that the average duration that any business stays on the top 500 business list is because the incentive across the organisation is aligned to promote short term thinking and actions. Most CEO’s are living quarter to quarter or at most rolling 4 quarters.
This short term thinking also stops leaders from investing in and developing ideas that could have significant long term benefits but have a long gestation period before they can start giving returns.
Bystander Effect:
This is almost pervasive across most businesses. In businesses, this shows up as “Not my job” syndrome. Anything that doesn’t directly improve the chances of them achieving their KPI’s or OKR’s or whatever it is that they are being measured on, is something that no one wants to spend time, energy or resources on, even if it is beneficial for the organisation as a whole.
Working to create an inclusive culture or to help a colleague when they are under the water in escalations or simply swamped with work or talking about a problem when we see one brewing up, specially, when it is not part of your job role. All of these are more prevalent in businesses than we would like. All of them are the same bystander effect in its various avatars.
Too big to solve:
This is also an issue that pops up everywhere in our businesses. This manifests in the tendency of all teams to go for the low hanging fruit when trying to solve any problem. It is alluring because it is easy to solve and creates an illusion of progress being made, while the real problem is never really addressed as no one goes beyond the proverbial low hanging fruits.
By the time this is done, there is something else that has taken over as urgent and has everyone’s attention. Again, the teams go after the low hanging fruit and the cycle goes on and on. This is one of the reasons, why no challenge in a business is ever addressed in its totality and breakthrough performances are so rare in businesses, as we don’t get to breakthrough performances by taking the low hanging fruits.
In conclusion:
In conclusion, all I can say is that, as leaders it is our responsibility to not fall into these traps. It is our responsibility to show up and tackle the biggest elephant in the room, be confident in our abilities to address the big problems, balancing our thinking with both short and long term thinking and create a culture, where people do what is the best for the business and not just those that improves their individual performance.
All of this is only possible, if we live this out through our actions and decisions. If all of us leaders start working like this, we can chip away and create breakthrough performances, not only for our businesses, but also for our environment as it is only a collection of all of us.
