Introduction

Abstract

In your organization, do you focus on streamlining Current Performance—squeezing more output from your resources, shaving costs, or pressing for speed—or do you step back from the day-to-day and consider the future of your business, including what kinds of products and services your team or business need to provide in the future? Clearly, attention to both is necessary, but each is a distinct pursuit: They require different skills and resources, different ways to evaluate success, and even different time horizons to know if you are on the right track. It is a challenge to focus on both daily and future needs, and especially to have to constantly switch your attention between the two. Often, in the battle between daily needs and future concerns, it is the consideration of the future that suffers, as we dwell on unending firefighting in the present, but this puts an organization at risk of being unprepared when the environment or market changes and current products or services no longer suffice.