TAKE THE LONG VIEW

We live in an age of the immediate, which can govern our thinking and doing.

We can, however, take a different perspective and ‘play the infinite game, rather than the finite game’. A finite perspective focuses on only the immediate result, whereas an infinite mindset is open to countless possibilities.

What is your long-term view?

Nikolai Kondratiev was a Soviet economist during the time of Lenin. Sadly, he was one of the millions of casualties of Stalin’s regime and was executed in 1938.

He is known for his theory that Western economies have long-term waves or cycles of boom and depression. He calculated these as around 50-year cycles, although there is some evidence that the cycle is accelerating to around a 30-year cycle, boosted by disruptive information technologies. But whether 50 or 30 years, each economic cycle has four stages, corresponding to the seasons: innovation and expansion in the spring, boom through the summer, recession in the autumn and depression in the winter.

While some economists challenge Kondratiev’s long wave theory, for those of us who live in a society and economy where short-termism rules, it challenges us to think about the longer term.

Think

● What have been your best long-term investments, whether personal, professional, relational or financial?

● What have been the benefits for you and others?

● What is the long-term view for your business?

Do

● Invest in something with a long-term dividend that is very important to you

● Focus on quality growth and not growth for the sake of growth. You will then be more resilient to a downturn

● Plant a tree!

THE KONDRATIEV WAVE is one of the 50 models in my new book LEAD: 50 models for success in work & life co-authored with my friends Andy Blacknell and Andy Coombe.

Go to www.LeadWorkLife.com to download The Kondratiev Wave and all 50 models from LEAD, in colour, for FREE.

Illustration by Visual Thinkery.