I once worked for
one of the world’s largest
beverage companies.
It had been
in existence
for over a hundred years,
planned to be
in existence
for at least a hundred more.
Every decision we made
considered, of course,
the short run
but also the very long run.
In a hundred years,
would this be a good decision
for the company
and for the world?
(And yes, we did get it wrong
sometimes.
We were humans
and we made mistakes.)
In contrast,
one of my Romance Novel business
pen names (brands)
was an experiment
I didn’t expect it to last long.
My decision for that brand name
only took into consideration
the short run.
“Loosen the constraints
on a system
and the system will almost always
do better in the short run.
That’s if we define better
as the visible outputs
of what the system does.
And short run as,
“the stuff that happens
before we have to live
with the side effects.”
So…
if you remove
environmental regulation
from a factory,
it will probably make more stuff
faster.
For awhile.
But then the river is sludge
and the workers are dead,
so in the long run,
not so much.”
What time frame
is your business
operating under?
Note:
If you want to leave
a legacy,
it is the very long run.