The 10 Year Objective

In the Sierra Diablo mountain range in West Texas, there’s a group of engineers, designers and big thinkers that are building a giant mechanically engineered clock that will track and mark the hours, days, years, centuries, millenniums and planetary rotations of the next 10,000 years.

The point of this clock, they say, is to restore in us humans the idea of the ‘future’ and to get us thinking, visioning and creating again with the long term in mind. The people at The Long Now Foundation believe that we’ve lost our desire and our ability to dream, think and envision what a future in a few millenniums could be like.

They describe our definition of time as what we call ‘now’ (today, yesterday and tomorrow), what we call ‘nowadays’ (the decade we’re in, the previous decade and the next decade) and ‘the long now’ (the past 8000 years, and the future 12000 years ahead).

This shift in perspective on time and deep long term thinking really got me thinking…

How would you think about your work or your business if your measurement of success was the impact it will have on the world in 100 years time?

Would you lead your team differently if you were conscious of the leadership qualities being absorbed and learned by 2 to 3 generations of future people leaders, business owners and human beings?

What would change if you set 10 year objectives for your team? What would they look like? Feel like? What behaviours would they instil? What would be lost? What would be gained?

It’s hard to silence out some of the noise (and often the angst) of ‘now’...the 24-hour news cycles, daily share price fluctuations, quarterly reporting and bi-annual performance reviews...even 4-5 year political cycles...but what would change if we did?