Managing by a constant state of emergency

A thought drifts through my head as I consider the Dubai debacle and the high-traffic/low-sales results from the semi-sinisterly named Black Friday retail festival:

Seriously, wasn’t that just a few months ago that everything was green, since the price of oil was driven so high by speculation?

Then September of 2008 arrived and suddenly things were about ethical business. After all, it was that nasty greed that ruined everything – and a lack of transparency! That’s it, now all business needs to be ethical and transparent…and green, too, of course!

Yet today, we’re thinking about just how many world banks were up to their knees in can’t-miss Dubai real estate projects and hoping that the world’s currencies don’t catch fire.

This is why leadership needs to be about long-term structural trends. The media can’t hype up the Boomer retirement, it can’t negotiate with the oil present in Brazil, nor deny that most of the world’s young people live in Latin America, Africa, and Central Asia. When we build our plans around real trends rather than hype, we don’t have to re-write our strategies every few months. Real leaders will find that comforting.