Transcript
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Welcome to Leading Organizations that Matter, a podcast about leadership and how we find impact, integration, meaning and joy in our work. I'm Ray Spadoni and today's topic is Delayed Gratification. Social scientists describe the fact that one of the key signs of maturity in children is when they begin to accept delayed gratification. In other words, will put off immediate pleasure and gratification for some bigger and better goal that comes later. We see this all the time. Young children want what they want when they want it. If you deny them the food or the toy or whatever they're grasping at, they can get upset. They can cry, throw a temper tantrum. But as they grow up and begin to understand and accept parental mandates, such as if you clean up your room now, we can go get an ice cream tonight, or if you share your toys with your younger brother, I'll let you play a video game with your friends this weekend or something like that. You get the picture. I'm going to liken this to the notion of organizational maturity. There are some organizations that have contended with tremendous amounts of cultural toxicity or weak leadership or long standing financial losses or some other chronic problem and as a result have become extremely fixated on the here and now. All decisions are based on whether it will help us get out of this mess today, that sort of thing. As a result, longer term goals are sacrificed or at least significantly diminished considering the longer term implications of decisions that become secondary and probably an afterthought leaders will think to themselves. You know, if this doesn't help me immediately, I can't even think about it. As a result, this type of a return on investment mindset and I would even say skill set never truly develops. I've seen this happen in organizations that are so hyper focused on the current chaos that any type of systematic long range planning, it's just not in the mix. It's not a priority. Of course this backfires because once the future arrives, little has been done or invested in or prepared for that helps them succeed at that point. This then of course continues the problem, forcing a renewed hyper focus on the present conundrum. This is self perpetuating and it's a problem that denies the organization and their customers or clients or patients all the benefits that are associated with good pre game planning. The organization always acts like the football team that's thrown out onto the field without a game plan. So does this sound like your organization? If this is you, the number one thing you can do is to help build awareness that this is your your company's current predicament. I've had good luck working with organizations that just never thought much about this. I guess that's the result of being so mired in today that you don't even notice that you haven't done anything to plan for tomorrow. Thanks for listening. Leaving a positive review and letting others know about this podcast will help a great deal. My mission is to help empower organizations that matter by supporting those who lead them. I offer coaching, mentoring, and consulting services. You can learn more about me and my work@racepadoni.com.