Andy Raynor - Beyond the Brief |
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Andy Raynor's blog Why Short-Term Matters
Is that short-termism at the window? At the London Stock Exchange last night to experience a contradiction in terms – an interesting presentation on corporate governance. Before your head hits the keyboard, I’m not going to do a piece on the theme of how thick the tinfoil needs to be in the seat of your non-executive directors’ trousers. This is about a comment made by a speaker, on behalf of long-term investors. The comment was basically this. If you’re investing to fund pensions that will be paid over the next few decades, you’d think the City would be full of investors that have a value range over a similar timespan. Right? Wrong. Or if not wrong, they’re very shy. The experience of many public companies out hawking with their Powerpoint slides is that investors are short-term punters. You can listen to only so much PR about medium-term investment and growth while you’re being kicked around a room at Egobank for being at the bottom end of this half’s expectations. The truth is – and keep this between us – that many fund managers don’t give a monkey’s about results that are too late to affect the values in this year’s bonus calculation. Call me cynical, but.......well, can you be called cynical if you’ve seen it? But here’s a secret – or at least a fundamental that few dare say. There is a really important reason for not burying the importance of the short-term. Whether or not we are public or private businesses we should resist the cheap shots that a short-term view is bad, full stop. Don’t misread me. Short-term focus is pointless if there is no vision or strategy created to follow-through, to carry the enterprise on to the next level. There have been plenty of businesses that have sorted out the short-term only to sleepwalk into a zombie state. Inbetweeners who have neither high enough profits to be a solution or low enough to make people do something more creative. But the reason the short-term is important – vital – and the reason no-one can doubt, is simple. It’s because.... .....without the short-term, you don’t ever get to the long-term.
PS – on the radio just now, pet office hates: management speak, emails to a wide range of people to show you’re doing something, and not making the tea. So to be clear, in a partner-led,
client-focused business providing service with
personality I am too busy engaging with clients to
get the char this morning, even if we do believe
our people are our greatest assets. Did you all
get that?
Tell me what you think at andy@andypraynor.com And see what's been said before by looking in the archive:
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© Andy Raynor 2013 |