Ever since I experienced how the quarter-by-quarter mentality of the stock market can completely mess up an organization, I am fascinated by organizations which take a long term view on their business. The moment you apply a long lens on your activities pretty much everything changes. A lot of your decisions become highly strategic and leveraged bets instead of short term tactics. Competition doesn’t matter even remotely as much anymore. Instead you focus heavily on building out customer value.
Last night I finally got around reading Jim Cook’s excellent blog post on It’s All About the Long Term — Amazon Shareholder Letter(s). Go read it. It’s incredible food for thought. Plus Jim is one of us — early employee at Intuit, built Netflix’s first distribution system, Mozilla’s CFO and an incredible mentor to me.
After reading Jim’s post ask yourself: What would I do different if I applied a 5 year horizon to my organization? The answer might surprise you.