425. Why Leaders Must Agenda Time To Think

The present isn't afraid of consuming all your available time and then some. In order to plan for the future, you must carve time out of your schedule.

Leadership understands the responsibility is to deliver results for today and in the future.

The challenge is not letting the present take all the time from the future. The relentless daily demands often leave leaders struggling to carve out time for this critical long-term thinking.

You aren’t alone if you find it hard to find time to work on long-term planning. In a recent study, 96% of the leaders surveyed said they are ‘overwhelmed with activities’ and lack the time for strategic thinking.

This is why creating deliberate thinking time is not a luxury but an imperative for effective leadership. The most successful leaders make it an inviolable ritual - stepping back from the fray, contemplating the bigger picture, challenging assumptions, and architecting their long-term vision.

During these thinking periods, innovative ideas emerge, and strategies crystalize.

Great leaders find a way to create time in their schedules to plan for the future.

Keep Learning:

“But thinking needs to precede action. Otherwise, action is a shot in the dark by mindless leaders who haven’t thought enough about why they are choosing one path or another.” - Lee G. Bolman & Terrence E. Deal from How Great Leaders Think: The Art of Reframing

“When there are lots of things to do, managers feel guilty stopping to take time to think strategically about the business. After all, most performance reviews don’t include a big box for ‘Thinks strategically for six hours a week,’ with the rating of ‘Exceeds Expectations,’ marked in it. When there is a lot to get done, time to think is often the first thing to go.” Rich Horwath from The Strategic ThinkingManifesto

“You get paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions. Your job is not to make thousands of decisions every day.” Jeff Bezos from Invent and Wonder The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“Having a strategy suggests an ability to look up from the short term and the trivial to view the long term and the essential, to address causes rather than symptoms, to see woods rather than trees.” - Sir Lawrence Freedman from Strategy: A History

“One of the toughest challenges leaders face is resisting the temptation of short-term gains for the sake of long-term growth.” from Great Leaders Outpace Disruption

“True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.” James Clear from Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

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