In this excerpt from the Long-Term Strategy Conference, Speaker A questions whether a one‑year horizon is sufficient for a truly inspiring long‑term strategy, arguing that merely extending existing short‑term meetings fails to generate excitement. Speaker B responds by highlighting the "plausibility gap" that arises when trying to envision a discontinuous, inspirational future: the need to make such a vision both compelling and believable despite its break from the present. They use evolutionary analogies—humans evolved from apes, but we will not become birds or robots—to illustrate the limits of plausible transformation while still encouraging bold, evolutionary leaps in strategic thinking.
Chapters
Yes. Question then, is it— does it require more than just a long time frame? Because a long time frame is required because otherwise it ends up not being inspiring and it ends up being, you know, it's a continuation of their usual weekly meeting, just a couple more years longer and solving the same problems that they've always had. It really just is a, you know, short time frames or continuation of
what
you've already
done.
Is it more than the year though? So, the year is essential because here we are at the Long-Term Strategy Conference. And we're— so, they do pick a year. What else do you bring to the party that makes the future or allows them to create the future in a way that's compelling?
So, once you have made this decision to create a discontinuous inspirational passion-inspiring future, the second problem is the one I referenced before, which is this plausibility gap. All right, so how do you ensure that that thing they create is plausible even while it is so discontinuous with the present? And that's the distinction between, no, we're not going to be astronauts on Mars, we're going to be some, some evolved version of what we are, right? So, you know, once we were all apes and trees, say, you know, we're not going to become birds. We're not, you know, we're not going to work like that,
robots,
but we're going to become like something a little less ape-like and a little more human-like. And, you know, so there's got to be a missing link in there, um, or a link. That is to say, there can't be complete absence of any connection.
