You’ve heard this refrain before, the need to take the long view instead of the short view.  It’s equally valid in both business and life.  It’s equally difficult in both realms as well.  But taking the long view in business, marketing, social media, etc. is essential to success in any of those areas.  But if that statement is true, why then do so many people insist on looking at the immediate future?  The answer, of course, is that the short view is the easy view. And it’s the one that most everyone else is focused on.  Their focus forces you to make it your focus, and that makes it even harder to keep the long view perspective that is essential to growing a great business, a brand that matters, or a loyal community that will support your company.

Why is the Long Term so Much More Valuable?

Because the long term view is about relationships and lasting value.  It’s about creating something that matters to people, that people care enough about that it becomes important to them.  It’s about creating something amazing that the world never knew it needed. It’s about creating lasting value for shareholders, customers, employees and the larger community.  The short term is about profits, P/E ratios, earning calls, year-over-year performance, short term stretch goals and bonuses based on those short term metrics.  The value in the short term is ephemeral. Short lived, shortly recognized, and easily dismissed by people who feel sacrificed to it.

When you invest in the long term you invest in things like people, communities and culture. When you invest in the short term you place those items as secondary to the quarterly P&L.

Advocating for the Long View

As a marketer you’re challenged from internal and external pressure to spend a disproportionate time on the near term future.  Designing and managing campaigns and plans to maximize short term output. ROI. Adding to the bottom line.  You may or may not be given aggressive short term goals which you need to stretch for.  And it is in this cycle that the long term view, the view with the value is at it’s most delicate and defenseless state.  These are the key moments when you need to step back and evaluate whether what you’re doing is for the short term or for the long term.

First of all, what is the long term view?  And how long is it?  I did an interview at SXSW ’09 with Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com about what makes their company so unique.  The video is below.  At about the 1:15 mark, Tony starts talking about the decisions they make that are driven by the long view rather than short term.  He gives the example of Zappos not having call center scripts because they want the employees invested in the happiness of the customer.  It’s a long view of the employee’s time at the company vs. the short view of standardizing the system to the point where people don’t matter, anyone can do the job.

Protecting Core Long View Beliefs

You can’t protect and advocate for something that you can’t articulate and share easily with your co-workers and superiors.  It’s important to document what the core beliefs of the company are.  Without those accessible and available constantly it’s easy to lose sight of them or ignore them in the quest for the short term.  So it starts by documenting what the core beliefs of the company are and making them available to everyone.  These don’t come from HR or the marketing department; but rather are a collective expression of the best intentions and goals of the company as expressed by the people that work there at all levels.

Core Beliefs can consist of anything but ideally they’d address:

• What difference the company is trying to make in the world
• How it will make that difference
• What it’s responsibilities are to it’s shareholders, employees, customers and the greater community
• What are essential values of the organization

These can (but don’t have to) come in the form of a mission statement, for example Zappos core values are:

Deliver WOW Through Service

Embrace and Drive Change

Create Fun and A Little Weirdness

Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded

Pursue Growth and Learning

Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication

Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit

Do More With Less

Be Passionate and Determined

Be Humble

When you get to core values, it’s impossible to see Zappos as merely a shoe store.  Once you have these articulated and agreed upon, then they can be defended when the siren song of the short term makes it appear easy to compromise and bend on those long term values to get a little short-term boost.  This is where you have to remain true to the core and ignore those short term temptations.

What are some examples of short-term temptation?

• Sending an unsolicited email blast
• Sending generic offers to your user list (both of these, spray & pray tactics are long term losers)
• Making managing communications with you difficult
• Making returns, fulfillment and customer service cumbersome
• Sacrificing quality for cost and speed considerations
• Making it difficult for customers to communicate with you
• Inauthentic gimmicks and tricks to gain temporary awareness
• Using social media as another one-way bullhorn
• Failing to talk like humans and respond in an authentic and caring way to issues

This list can go on and on.  But it’s easy to see how under the pressure of the short term goals these options look more reasonable.  What’s one more email going to do really?  People won’t care, right?  When held up to the long term view the answer is clear.  Short term gains that abuse customer trust and relationships always lose in the long run.

So What Can You Do?

Help construct the core values of the company and promote them both internally, and when they’re ready for prime time, externally.  Let the world know what you stand for – and don’t make it lip service.  Stand up to poor decisions that are clearly short term thinking that damage the core values of the company.  You might not always make friends, but protecting the core values will always earn you respect.  Engage with your community and customers regularly (constantly!) to ensure that your core values come through in your product, service, support and messages.  And lastly promote the long term view.  When there’s a chance, a debate, a conversation about an approach, a tactic or a plan, ask “How does this synch wih our core values?”  or “What the long view on this?”  Just one simple question can be enough to get people to stop and think and reasses their decisions.

What do you think? Any thoughts or tips to add?

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