Military Leadership Lessons: Time Horizons

Just like my last article, I have another great piece of leadership wisdom wrapped up in an easy-to-remember story from my first commanding officer. Sea-stories, anecdotes, and tall tales from experienced officers and senior enlisted are a great way to pass leadership skills from generation to generation. Little nuggets of important concepts can be tucked into easily understood pieces like this:

If the captain is worried about today…

A Leading Petty Officer (LPO) should be worried about today and tomorrow.

The Chief Petty Office (CPO) should be worried about this week and next week.

The Division Officer should be worried about this month and next month.

The Department Head should be worried about this quarter and next quarter.

The Captain should be worried about this year and next year.

If there is any time where the Captain is worried about what is happening today, then there is something very wrong.

The routine flow of activities - personnel assignments, maintenance, training, etc. - should be happening without rising to the attention of the captain. Even when there are issues, it is normally handled by the leaders immediately involved. For example, if there were not enough fully trained and qualified radio operators in today’s duty section to cover all of the watch rotations, the CPO would be the one to shuffle personnel assignments between duty sections to get the issue straightened out.

So what would the problem be if the captain was involved in an staffing issue like that?

The running comparison of “this week, next week”, “this month, next month”, etc. matched to each level of a shipboard organization is describing the leadership horizon for each level. This is my term as a metaphor for how far each level should see: the higher you are, the further you should be watching.

While each organization will vary, there will be team leaders with a tactical, detailed, and relatively short-term focus. Different leaders will be expected to have a strategic, big picture, long-term view. The military assigns this by rank and location in the chain of command and many organizations use the same theme.

Director, Senior Manager, and Vice President are some of the titles regularly attached to leaders who are supposed to have a wide, “far seeing” leadership horizon. These leaders have been asked to set the path and set the pace of the organization as it grows or changes in response to the business environment.

But getting back to the story, why would the captain focusing on today’s problems be a sign of trouble? There are two reasons:

1. ?The captain’s involvement in someone else’s area of responsibility could lead to “un-delegation” which was discussed in a previous article.
2. The captain is the primary person for future planning and has the widest leadership horizon. If he is not performing that function, then no one is, placing the overall strategy at risk.

If you have a strategic leadership role for a particular topic, you too might be the only one even thinking about it. For example, if you are the senior event planner for a couple of key annual events, you probably have a team already executing the plan for this year but who is thinking about next year? Not the details but someone should be reviewing strategic topics - Should it be in a different city next year? Is this the right time of year? What local holidays might interfere? etc. - and you might be that person.

When you notice that you are been absorbed into more short-term, tactical management, should take time to:

• Review Your Leadership Horizon: Take a look at your own role and responsibilities, decide set the best leadership horizon for yourself, and then check to see if your work style matches your target.
• Check Team Delegation and Their Leadership Horizon: Discuss with your team about their work style in comparison to the leadership horizon that would match their activities. You may need to make adjustments in delegation style as I’ve talked about in a previous article as delegating ownership instead of delegating tasks should reduce the need for detailed management involvement.
• Schedule Strategy Time: In a 2018 article published by Harvard Business Review, Dorie Clark highlights how time pressures can interfere with strategic planning. As noted in If Strategy Is So Important, Why Don’t We Make Time for It?, you need to find, set aside, and protect the time needed for creative strategic thinking.

Always remember that senior management exists to steer the organization – to tell it where to go – and not to be bogged down in the details of how the organization will get there. Determine the “correct” time horizon for your role and monitor how you spend your time. If you find yourself intensely involved in dealing with a “crisis of the moment” over and over again, you need to find out why and correct it. If you are not looking ahead like you should, there may be no one to steer around the rocks and shoals you are navigating through.

This is the third in a series of articles on the civilian applications of military leadership concepts I learned during my enlistment. Please contact me if you have any questions or comment below.

Side Note

During the story, you may have thought, “What about the Executive Officer? They aren’t mentioned” This is an intentional set up for a small joke in the reply:

The XO should be worried about everything - that is their job!