It is easy to become distracted by the long-term plans and strategic visions that dominate popular sentiment.  This is especially true in the midst of ’100-year business plans’ that were made popular during the 1980′s as companies rushed to emulate competitors from Japan that were realizing success.  This isn’t to say that strategy, vision, and long term plans aren’t important, but rather to say that their importance is held within the extent to which they guide decisions and actions in the present tense, and stay focused on the next step.

In both the realms of government and corporations, long-term plans are the cause de-jour that is the favorite topic of leaders and intellectuals.  In these situations, the most frequent use of a long term strategic vision is to distract attention away from the current deficiencies in performance that are plaguing the business or government institution.

Another way that planning problems can manifest themselves is when there are so many plans going on simultaneously that nothing can be done with any degree of focus.  In this situation, the important part is less about figuring out what needs to be done now, but deciding what does NOT need to be done now.  In many cases, defining what will be left undone or delayed until later is the link that brings priorities into focus so that they are not drowned out by other things that are urgent, but not necessarily important   Steven Covey made the observation that people’s effectiveness is destroyed by the ‘tyranny of the urgent’ where things that are important but not urgent are dismissed in favor of things that happen to be urgent, but not important.  This leads to an unfortunate situation where people become extremely busy, but never seem to get anything accomplished.

In order to span the achievement of both long-term strategies and short-term effectiveness, it requires that we tune our thinking in terms of what needs to be done in the short-term that is supportive of both long-term strategies, and representative of your most important priorities.