Views From The Hills of Kentucky :: More on wearing those bifocals of business

March 6, 2005 - by Robert E. Stevens, GENESIS II (The Second Beginning) E-Mail: views@aol.com

One of my Views of last November was titled "Corporate Management Should Wear Bifocals." In response, one of the readers sent me the Forward to Ken Blanchard & Terry Waghorn's book Mission Possible. She thought I would be interested in the words used by Jon Madonna and Ruud Koedijk in the forward. Following is a portion of that Forward:

Companies need to establish and maintain a healthy balance between continuity and innovation. Concentrating on the present with scant regard for the future is akin to driving forward while looking into the rear-view mirror. Eventually you're destined to hit something. Similarly, over investing in tomorrow's opportunities without first protecting and shoring up your current businesses can be disastrous - you're likely to run out of steam before tomorrow arrives. Getting to the future first is essentially a two-step process: improving the present while creating the future. Neither step takes precedence over the other. Both are critical.

Difficult as it may be, developing bifocal vision is only one of the challenges facing today's leaders. Another is the need to find a balance between the opposing interests of the company's different stakeholders. Shareholders seek a quick return on their investment, employees want security and increased benefits, and customers want your product or service to be high in quality but low in price.

I should add that Mission Possible is another book I believe to be well worth reading.