We have quite a cast of characters in the Republican presidential race this time around. Newt Gingrich is especially intriguing to me because he is a historian bytraining. He states that this skill allows him to know how Washington works and that is an advantage for us all if he gets elected. I have given some thought to this because Newt is clearly a smart person with a great command of the past, the facts, and the realities of Washington. The question that comes to mind for me is, as aleader, how much does the skill of looking backwards help a leader?

There are really only three timeframes any of us can spend time contemplating– the present, the future or the past. All of us tend to be stronger in one of these than another. Where a leader spends time will be critical to their ability to lead successfully. I believe there is a perfect recipe for this investment of mindshare where each of the three timeframes gets the perfect amount of attention. I also believe that the further from this recipe a leader gets, the more dangerous they become. Let’s look at some extreme examples before we got to that recipe.

1. If a leader only focuses on the present, they will not have learned any lessons from the past, nor have any vision of where things might go on the future.They will be a fantastic listener because they are always “in the moment.”They will also be very tuned in to what they can do today to make things better – today. They will also likely lead their team right off a cliff at some point.

2. If a leader focuses only on the past, they will be well schooled in what has been tried before and how it worked out. They will constantly be driving thecar by looking at the rear view mirror. This is possible, but can be fraught with danger when a new situation occurs that they have never seen before in the past. It brings to mind the engineers that plan for a 10-inch maximum amount of rain in a 24 hour period because that is the most they have seen in their lifetime. They do zero planning for the fact that a 15-inch rain ispossible so when it comes (and it eventually will) their town is destroyed.

3. If the leader focuses only in the future, they will have learned nothing from prior events and will ignore the present where they could be impacting people that need help now. They will simply lack a foundation to ground inreality the future vision they so desperately seek to refine. This results in either a flawed vision of the future, or little ability to accurately time when the correct picture they have in their heads might actually come to fruition.

Based on this line of thinking, there must be an optimum recipe for how leadersinvest their brainpower. Yet, I suspect it gets more complicated from here because the recipe would need to change based on the industry the leader works in and the specific position they hold. The faster changes are coming in a specific industry, the more a leader would need to focus on the future because the a high volume ofchange translates into opportunity/danger. The position in the company wouldchange the formula in that a CFO legitimately should spend a little more time beingforensic in their viewpoint than a CEO. With this in mind, I am going to generalize amodel that I believe is best for leaders with the understanding that it should change somewhat depending on these two factors.

After much thought on the matter, I have come down to the following formula:

Study of the past: 15%
Living in the present: 60%
Envisioning the future: 25%

So back to Newt Gingrich… I love that he is knowledgeable and a student of thepast. I worry that he has not expressed an exciting vision of the future. Too oftenin the political world we hear lots of promises about the future actions candidates PROMISE to take. We hear very little about what they think the future will be likefor us. We also hear lots of rhetoric about everything that is wrong with today. Wein the USA will certainly have to feel the pain of some changes because we cannot continue to run up the national debt, or continue to see 15% increases in healthcare costs every year. Either we accept that we will not be able to fund everything that any small block of citizen wants funded, or we will implode financially from the interest on our debt. Or we will simply default on the debt and will then face decades of forced living within our means. I yearn for the day that a candidate comes along who is willing to mix the experiences of our past with a lucid vision of where we must go in the future (and what it will be like for us to get there.)

It is the same with our business leaders. We need leaders who can paint clear and accurate pictures as to where the organization must head. And, have the courage to make the changes and investments to get there. In the end, looking backwards and commenting on what should have been done, is a heck of a lot easier than looking forward and accurately knowing what needs to be done in a world we have yet tolive in. Maybe we should amend the old saw, “hindsight is 20/20” by also pointing out that foresight can be quite fuzzy. A shame because it would make charging forward with velocity so much easier!

How do you feel about the formula I presented? Would it work for you?

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com