Leadership and Business Wisdom - Harmonize the Immediate Long-range Future.

Byline: S. Kamal Hayder Kazmi

A manager must, so to speak, keep his nose to the grindstone while lifting his eyes to the hills-quite an acrobat feat.

A manager has two specific tasks. The first is creation of a true whole that is larger than the sum of its parts, a productive e more than the sum of the resources put into it. The second specific task of the manager is to harmonize in every decision and actions the requirements of the immediate and of the long-range future. A manager cannot sacrifice either without endangering the enterprise.

If a manager does not take care of the next hundred days, there will be no next hundred years. Whatever the manager does should be sound in expediency as well as in basic long-range objective and principle. And where he cannot harmonize the two time dimensions, he must at least balance hem. He must calculate the sacrifice he imposes...