Shaping the Future: Balancing Short-term & Long-term Horizons

Let's continue our review of the 8 "key themes" for driving sustainable organisational performance identified in the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) report "Sustainable Organisation Performance: What Really Makes the Difference." This week we will look at the 6th theme: "Balancing Short-term and Long-term Horizons." 

This theme is encouraging. Although it is once again stating the obvious, it at least suggests that the HR profession is coming to the party and starting to think about issues that concern their executive colleagues.

The report once again defines what this means. However, I think it is sufficiently obvious for us to forego it here. Instead let's go straight to the underlying points. The report identifies these as:- 

• Context determines the length of the 'short' and the 'long term'; 
• Organisations must anticipate and plan for future external and internal changes;
• They (organisations) need to be comfortable with uncertainty; 
• The ongoing communication of the organisation's vision and aims is important; 
• Sometimes the short-term has to take priority, but short-term pressures can act as derailers.

Do you find it hard not to chuckle? This reads like a primer for people just starting out on a career in management. Talk about stating the obvious!  The issues here are the timeless challenges that business people have faced for centuries. Even if they are new for HR managers, there is little here to suggest how they will help you shape the future.

So the question here has to be; "How do you balance your short-term and long-term people needs?" I don't think the report really begins to answer that. Certainly that last point about the short-term having to take precedence has to be a cop-out. It is an appalling piece of appeasement that bows to all that is wrong with the present and makes no contribution whatsoever to shaping the future – let alone a better one.

For starters giving precedence to the short-term justifies and perpetuates the type of exploitation that has contributed to the environmental problems the world is facing. Such attitudes certainly contributed to the recent collapse of the banking industry. It is precisely the kind of thinking that has to be changed.

You could also see it as saying that redundancy and compulsory lay-offs are also an unavoidable necessity. Surely that is something that proper planning and a serious focus on employee engagement should aim to end? Redundancy should be a last resort only when all else fails. Yet there is nothing in this report to say that.

The report says nothing about how you might:-

• Recognise the value of your people;
• Optimise your employee numbers to minimise such eventualities;
• Build the shared purpose of employee ownership and so reduce the risk of surprises and optimise the chance of innovative solutions for moving forward;
• Increase your capability to spread the pain rather than isolate victims when times get tough. 

Thus the report falls woefully short of its stated goal of helping you shape the future and in fact is actually a mechanism for perpetuating the past. What do you think?