If You Don't Plan for the Long Term, Plan on Failure

The pandemic made stars out of a few companies, which got a rush of sales and a rush of blood into their corporate brains. They thought the present was the future. It rarely is.

VERYTHING YOU NEED to know about doing business you can find in Aesop’s Fables. Don’t believe me? Then consider Fable 373— The Ant and the Grasshopper,” in which the foolish grasshopper fiddles the summer away, rather than putting aside food for winter, and is forced to beg for crumbs from the industrious ant.

It’s all here: the importance of setting priorities and planning ahead, and the dangers inherent in short-term thinking, the single greatest obstacle to long-term success. And, as we’ve all learned, nothing fuels humanity’s tendency toward shortterm thinking like a worldwide crisis.

We saw it early in the pandemic with widespread layoffs at companies that could have easily afforded to keep staff, and the panic-buying of everything from flour to toilet paper. At our office, we heard from a variety of people pitching shortterm propositions for short-term gains. We sent all those flimflammers packing.