“I don’t understand,” Roger shook his head. “If Brad would just start earlier on these longer projects, things would be under control, and he wouldn’t be cutting unnecessary corners which compromise project quality.”
“Why do you think he procrastinates until the end?” I asked.
Roger shook his head.
“Because,” I continued, “he cannot see the end until he is two months away. On a project with a nine month deadline, Brad cannot see the end. It is too far away. There is so much uncertainty between now and nine months from now, that he cannot see it.
“So he takes no action.
“Of course, the pressure of the project builds, because now things are getting late, but even that is not what finally kicks Brad into action. With sixty days to go, Brad can now see the end. And when Brad can see the end, he starts to act. It is frustrating for us, because we saw this nine months ago.
“Everyone has a story. And every story has a beginning, middle and an end. When you listen to someone’s story, you will hear the Time Span of their story. They cannot take action in their story until they see the end of their story.”
Tom,
You presented at the Vistage meeting in Albuquerque and we brought back the time span thinking to our Leadership team. I, and our president, also read a couple of your books, as the idea of “time span”, and that people have certain innate time spans to their thinking, made sense.
Subsequently, we have also incorporated “growth mindset” into our leadership thinking. I assume you’re familiar with the basic idea. My question is how the idea of a growth mindset, where someone can always learn, grow and improve, reconciles with people having a fixed time span? The growth mindset would say if we have a supervisor being promoting to manager, who we need to longer-term and more strategically, that with the proper thinking and training they would be able to achieve this. My understanding of time span would say this is not setting the person up for success if we ask them to think longer term than they have the time span to process. I would like to get your thoughts on this