Leadership and Time Span thinking

I chanced upon an HBR article on leadership, which argues about how our brains undermine our ability to be a good leader. While the article describes 3 aspects, the one that caught my eye relates to the Time Span of Discretion theory by Elliot Jaques.

The abstract of the theory states that the higher you go in an organization, the further out you need to think. For e.g., an assembly line technician needs to think about maintaining the line output daily, a line manager must maintain a plan for a quarter, while a CEO needs to think about where the business will be in 10 years. I found a LinkedIn article by Ruth Malan which explains the details of the theory.

While the idea of thinking further ahead seems intuitive, it may not be the case with many. And hence learning about and practicing this concept can help in various aspects of leadership and management.

• Better feedback: A manager’s feedback, in tune with the future needs of the business, can help direct the team towards its goals better. This is because the manager can weave motivation with the future roadmap better.
• Better team development: Lack of thinking ahead can lead to short-sighted decisions with respect to hiring, learning and development, and, possibly promotions within the team.
• Better Solutions: This is probably the most obvious. Be it architecture development of new technologies, product strategy or hustling, a solution thought out keeping a longer timeframe in mind, can help managers and leaders make better decisions and guide the further course of action accordingly. ????

The challenge, though, is that thinking about the future is difficult. The more people have to think about, the harder it is to filter the noise and gain insights about possible futures. Human brains also battle distance bias, which causes them to prioritize decisions closer in time over things further in the future. However, research suggests that regular practicing of future thinking can help master this cognitive leadership skill.

Apart from leadership this concept is also applicable, and probably used without explicit reference, in other fields of business and life like financial investments, medical decisions etc.

So, expand your time span of discretion and observe the changes in your leadership style.

I would be glad to read your comments on what you think of the concept of timespan thinking, how it has helped you and in what other fields can it be applied?

This post is also available on substack at https://open.substack.com/pub/tejvohra/p/leadership-and-time-span-thinking

References

• https://hbr.org/2023/07/3-ways-our-brains-undermine-our-ability-to-be-a-good-leader
• https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/time-span-discretion-scope-complexity-ruth-malan/