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Geci Karuri-Sebina clip from the Long-Term Strategic Planning Conference

Name: Geci Karuri-Sebina clip from the Long-Term Strategic Planning Conference
Uploaded: 2024-06-17T03:32:11+00:00
Duration: 1 min 21 s
Channel: Francis Wade
Description: In a conference dialogue, Speaker A highlights that leaders often overlook a language gap when communicating with staff, despite having an empowering…

17 Jun 2024 · 1 min

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1:21

In a conference dialogue, Speaker A highlights that leaders often overlook a language gap when communicating with staff, despite having an empowering vision. Speaker B expands on this by using a cartoon of a tipping boat: staff at the bottom are frantically bailing water while executives at the top relax with cocktails, symbolizing the disconnect in urgency and perspective. The discussion points out that executives operate on a longer horizon, but many officials are trapped in a constant crisis mode—dealing with immediate budget concerns, meetings, protests, and deals. This environment, reinforced by quarterly key performance indicators, fosters short‑termist behavior, further widening the communication and priority gap between leadership and frontline employees.

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So when they think of communicating to staff, they don't realize that there's a different language and that there's a language gap, even though you might have an empowering future, no?
Yeah, I think that's really true. You remind me of an image I've seen, another cartoon—for some reason cartoons are in the head today—where there's a boat that's tipping. And at the bottom end of the boat, the staff are busy with buckets trying to put out the water. At the top end of the boat, the executives are still, you know, having cocktails and in their sunhats and saying everything is okay. And of course, that's because they're quite far from drowning with the ones on the bottom end of the boat. And I think what that image is about, among other things, however, which may also be why the executives can have a longer horizon, is that for many officials, the horizon they function in, that they have to function in, is in constant crisis. I mean, you're constantly dealing with challenges of now, this year's budget, next week's meeting, the protesters at the door, you know, this client or landing this deal. And so to some extent, you know, key performance indicators, which are very much about, you know, this quarter and next quarter and next quarter, all of these sorts of things drive short-termist behavior.