{"id":82,"date":"2018-01-29T09:06:24","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T14:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/?p=82"},"modified":"2018-02-15T09:49:49","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T14:49:49","slug":"leading-for-the-future-as-well-as-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/2018\/01\/29\/leading-for-the-future-as-well-as-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading for the future as well as today"},"content":{"rendered":"

Surveying the economic landscape in 1930, John Maynard Keynes opined<\/a> that \u201cthe permanent problem of the human race\u201d would be resolved in two generations. \u201cThe struggle for subsistence,\u201d then our \u201cmost pressing problem,\u201d would fade, replaced by affluence unimagined before the 20th\u00a0century.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Whatever we think about the financial situation today relative to Keynes\u2019s time, leadership scholars and practitioners should consider Keynes\u2019s general argument: leading for today is fraught with the danger of potentially ignoring the effects that steps taken today will have on future generations.<\/p>\n

Of course any individual can ignore the effects of their choices on the future\u2014consider the popular bumper sticker \u201cWe\u2019re spending our children\u2019s inheritance.\u201d Whether we approve of that sort of consumption or not, we generally allow that the decision is a private matter, and we mostly leave it alone. (Interestingly, while we reserve judgment on whether a person should save for the future, we often express approval for those whose choices signal that they care about the future environment.)<\/p>\n

But leaders have a wider influence when they design and implement policy. First, there is the impact that a shock today can have on the future. Second, there is a lethargy associated with policy. Once in place, policies create winners and losers and it becomes difficult to convince the winners that a policy should be unraveled.<\/p>\n

Leaders\u2019 influence thus spills over to future generations without the agreement of the future parties (and, sometimes, without the agreement \u00a0of the present parties). The problem may be exacerbated because leaders\u2019 time horizons\u2014e.g. an election cycle\u2014are often much shorter than those of ordinary people.<\/p>\n

How do we fix this?<\/p>\n

We need a future-minded orientation, including self-leadership. Deirdre McCloskey and others have written about the significance of \u201cprudence,\u201d the ordinary but extraordinarily important virtue of looking after one\u2019s self and loved ones. Perhaps prudence will again become fashionable, and we shall virtue signal by conveying our prudent decisions! And just as important, we need leadership from journalists, intellectuals, and politicians, to assess and report what our leadership (policy) choices imply for the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Surveying the economic landscape in 1930, John Maynard Keynes opined that \u201cthe permanent problem of the human race\u201d would be resolved in two generations. \u201cThe struggle for subsistence,\u201d then our \u201cmost pressing problem,\u201d would fade, replaced by affluence unimagined before<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":592,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,72455],"tags":[72448,72447,72450],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-leadership-theory","tag-deirdre-mccloskey","tag-john-maynard-keynes","tag-prudence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/592"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}