SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 190,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter.
Last week, we asked: How visionary are the leaders in your organization?
- Very — they routinely see far into the future: 16.07%
- Somewhat — they can see the future but focus on the present: 47.91%
- Not very — they spend most of their time in the day to day: 24.42%
- Not at all — they can’t see past tomorrow: 11.59%
Pick your head up. A leader’s job isn’t only to ensure things go well today. You need to be mindful of tomorrow, too, because you’re probably one of only a few people looking in that direction. Create some “think time” for yourself (at least a few hours per month) to step away from the day-to-day operations and look at what challenges and opportunities are ahead of you. If you don’t, you run the risk of getting out of balance, focusing too much on your core business and not finding the next growth opportunity. Building in “future think time” on your calendar is a helpful way to prevent this from happening.
Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS and author of “One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership.”