Cambridge Business Association
How to Be a Long Term Thinker in a Short Term World
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How to Be a Long Term Thinker in a Short Term World

Talks at Google with Dorie Clark

Dorie Clark
Talks at Google, 2022
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Short-term thinking helps you deal with immediate crises. To achieve long-term strategic goals, however, you’ll need to carve out time from your hectic schedule and break free from perpetual crisis management. Only then can you create breathing room to craft long-term strategic change. In this Talks at Google video, best-selling author of The Long Game, Dorie Clark, outlines six practices to help you become a long-range, strategic thinker to advance your business, career and personal life.

Summary

Short-term thinking is valuable in a crisis, but long-term thinking is necessary for strategic goal setting.

The Management Research Group once asked 10,000 senior executives what was most vital to business success. A whopping 97% replied that strategic thinking was crucial. In a similar study, however, 96% of surveyed executives claimed not to have time for strategic thinking. 

Futurist and author Jonathan Brill has said, “In corporate life, the worst thing that we can do, the worst mistake we can make is to take a group of smart, talented, competent people and tell them to win at the wrong thing – because the problem is they will do it.” Though short-term thinking is valuable when dealing with a crisis, strategic, long-term thinking is necessary to get your team focused on the right goal. So how do you go about recalibrating from short-term to long-term thinking after a crisis? 

To cultivate long-term thinking, create some “...

About the Speaker

Dorie Clark teaches at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and has been named one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50. She is the best-selling author of Reinventing You; Stand Out; Entrepreneurial You; and The Long Game.

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