Let’s set the stage:  You’re the “big picture guy” in the office.  The employee who scoffs at a leadership team who’s laser focused on meeting quarterly sales goals.    So when sales goals appear to be in jeopardy, there’s a scramble to dedicate more people to selling or offer short-term discounts to drive higher volume.  You watch in frustration because any time you ever presented an approach in the past that addressed the disease (e.g., marginal product quality or late deliveries)  rather than the symptom (sluggish sales), it was rejected in favor of the need to hit the near-term financial target.   You regard your leadership as myopic and they believe you’re unrealistic.  As it turns out, you’re probably both right and both to blame; since by definition, you’re each part of the “system.”

Is there a lack of systems thinking in most organizations?   Do they repeatedly place duct tape or band-aids over problems without always finding out the real cause – let alone actually address it?  Of course.  So what’s a company to do?

Well, here are two certainties:   1) Addressing a problem with only the short-term in mind, offering no systematic fix, only to be confronted with the same problem (sometimes worse) during the next quarter is not a winning approach and it’s expensive to boot 2) People who offer good systems thinking solutions, but fail to address the short-term need, are destined to be regarded as irrelevant  – and deservedly so.

Here’s where we can take a page from the not-for-profit sector.  Specifically, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  To address the challenge of eradicating malaria, the foundation realized that offering medicine to those who had the disease doesn’t address the core problem, but of course one would be hard-pressed to suggest that we should let people die.  (You can’t ignore what’s right in front of you).  So the combination of distributing mosquito nets as a strategy for reducing the number of people who become infected AND providing medicine to those who were already infected, served to lower the number of people who contracted the disease over time and cut the need and cost for medicine down the road.

Companies need to think in terms of systems more often than they typically do.  To understand interrelationships.  To look more broadly and more deeply for answers.  That doesn’t mean ignoring near term sales targets, which provide the revenue to keep a company alive; nor does it mean only applying band-aids when your challenge requires surgery.

So if you’re that big picture person who actually wants to make a difference in your organization, then engage your leaders on both long and short term needs.  Demonstrate that you, too, are invested in what’s in front of you and then look beyond specific departments and across time spans for real answers.  If you do, your leaders would be wise to pay attention.