Short Term Thinking in a Long Term World
Jun 29th, 2010 by David Svet
There is a major intersection that a friend of mine cannot drive through. It isn’t blocked or under construction. There’s nothing technically wrong with the intersection. It is simply that 3 out of 4 of the corners have businesses with horrible logos on their signs. He’s not a design snob. The 3 bad logos are his fault.
It happened when he was a young art director. His firm landed 3 corporate identity projects in fairly short order. They were all great opportunities with high profile clients. But, rather than have a senior designer develop a range of concepts for each client, his boss decided to have a senior designer develop a good concept and an intern develop a highly profitable concept. My friend protested and pleaded to do the right thing and develop strong materials for the clients to choose from. But his boss was convinced that he could persuade the clients to make the right choice. He was wrong.
In the end each firm selected the inferior work of the interns. It really was inferior work, the clients simply didn’t know any better. They had hired a firm to provide them with excellent choices and unwittingly got a loaded deck. The design firm made their minor profit increase but ended up with nothing to show for the effort. The senior designers had concepts for their portfolios but no finished work. The interns had complete identity systems in their portfolios, but the work was clearly entry level. The 3 clients had mediocre corporate identities that went on to negatively impact their brands for years to follow. My friend’s gut still churns over the whole experience, even though he’s really not to blame. The culprit is short term thinking in a long term world.
How often are we blinded by a short term gain only to end up losing in the long term? The world exists in the long term. It was here before us and will be here after we are gone. Taking the time and making the effort to do the right thing to keep your customers’ best interests at the forefront will always win out over short term gains. Have you considered the long term impact that your business has on its customers and their lives? Are you doing everything that you can to provide them the best possible products and services based on the long term impact of your efforts? If so, congratulations, but if not you probably have some changes to make in the near term. In the long term everyone will win.
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