In this quarterly series, Bright Wire Leadership shares firsthand insights into the future of leadership and practical ideas to help A Players Find Their Plus.
Building for the Long Term: How Future-Oriented Leaders Shape Your City
You will make decisions this quarter that will take years to show results. You might move your organization into a space sized for the team you expect to have in five years, or hire a leader your company will need five years from now. When you make calls like these, you are leading with the next decade in mind.
The Short-Term Trap
There is constant pressure to deliver quick results, whether it’s quarterly earnings, election cycles, or the next funding round. Research based on surveys of CEOs and board members found that 83 percent of companies operate within a five-year strategy horizon or less. Even if you look further ahead, that pressure remains. Long-term decisions still require money and attention now, and you have to justify them to people focused on this year’s outcomes.
What Future-Oriented Leaders Do Differently
Three habits help you carry a long-term decision through that pressure.
Build in room to change course
When you plan for conditions that will shift, design ways to adjust. You might choose a building that can convert from offices to homes or set a date in a partnership agreement to revisit the terms. That flexibility takes more work at the start, but it gives you a way to respond when conditions change.
Develop the people who will lead after you
Some of your most valuable work will pay off after you have moved on. You see this when a CEO starts preparing a successor years ahead of a transition, or when a board chair recruits members who will still be serving a decade from now.
Explain the Long-Term Decision and Keep Coming Back to It
The people who fund or approve your decision often see only this year’s cost. Tell them what the decision is meant to build and when they should expect progress. Then report back on what you said you would. This type of work sits at the intersection of strategy and leadership. A long-term decision holds only when the people funding it and the people carrying it out understand why it exists.
Long-Term Decisions That Affect Your City
You can see these kinds of long-term decisions in every city. For example, in 2024, the Calgary city council approved rezoning that made a denser style of housing the default across residential neighbourhoods. The public hearing was the longest in the city’s history, with more than 730 speakers. A newer council voted to repeal it, but properties with approved permits kept them, and density in some neighbourhoods is forever changed.
Whatever your view of the policy, the example shows what a long-term decision needs: sustained explanation to the people who will live with it. Business owners who hire and train ahead of demand, and non-profit boards that commit to programs their successors must fund, make the same kind of call.
In the PLUS Leadership Framework developed by Bright Wire Leadership, the capability behind these decisions is called “Future Orientation.” It describes the proactive future-oriented thinking that involves anticipating challenges and preparing for the unseen future. Like any leadership capability, you can develop it with practice.
Start With One Decision This Month
Start with one decision you need to make this month and write down what you want the outcome to look like in ten years. Decide who will take it forward and what you will say to those funding it now. The people who live in your city a decade from now will feel the impact of decisions made this quarter – including yours.
Next in Leadership, Reimagined: the January BRAND100 issue looks at the qualities of leaders who steward strong brands.
Bright Wire Leadership helps A Players Find Their Plus. Based in Calgary, Bright Wire works with organizations across Canada and globally through coaching, team development and leadership programs. Its credentialed coaches draw on the PLUS Leadership Framework, developed by Bright Wire, to help leaders strengthen four connected capabilities: Courageous, Coach-Like, Disciplined for Results and Relational leadership. Founder and CEO Christine Dagenais, MBA, PCC, ICD.D, leads the team and is the author of The Intentional MBA. Learn more at brightwireleadership.com.
