Keeping your eye on the peak, while watching the path is a nice skill for leaders, followers and entrepreneurs.
If you aim to start a business, there is every need to do just that. Dream of profits, but monitor your cash flow.
Top managers have a hard time balancing command and control systems, while at the same time being social architects to enable the performance they dream about. Good social architects create the means through which the ends can be achieved.
It is all too easy for CEOs–of one person enterprises as well as multinational corporates, to keep attending to the rocks in their shoes as they stumble on. In the corner office or at the kitchen table, isolation tends to drive you towards the matters of the moment rather than the goals of tomorrow.
Just as it is with someone sitting cross-legged on a cushion trying to meditate, without (you would think) distraction, the neurons are firing on all sorts of interruptions and diverting ideas. An experiences meditiator concentrates on an ‘object’, like the breath, staying in the present, aims never to lose sight of the distant peak of enlightenment.
For the meditator and the executive, the brain is wonderfully good at distractions. The pebbles on the path ensure the peak stays elusive. Our strategy should be to focus on both peaks and paths at the same time. Strategies are hopes and their implementation is a struggle–but what’s so different about life?