Breaking the obsession with the short term

A report from GGi’s main February webinar

GGi’s February webinar was a lively discussion on the topic Breaking the obsession with the short term, chaired by Aidan Rave.

Our speakers, Fenella McVey of Charterhouse Consulting and GGi chief executive Professor Andrew Corbett-Nolan addressed a persistent governance dilemma: how to escape the gravitational pull of the immediate and focus on the long term.

Aidan framed the debate as a challenge to the ‘tyranny of the short term’ and the dominance of operational pressures over strategic intent. The question was not whether boards understood the importance of long-term thinking, he said, but why, despite good intentions, they struggled to prioritise it.

Andrew approached the issue through a governance lens. Drawing on the Three Horizons model, he argued that boards must consciously govern across three timeframes: Horizon 1 (the here and now), Horizon 2 (the known, emerging future), and Horizon 3 (the longer-term, uncertain future whose seeds already exist within organisations).

While Horizon 1 cannot be ignored, its utility inevitably declines. High-performing boards therefore adopt what he called a ‘value-creating, forward-thinking mindset’, shifting assurance discussions away from retrospective explanations towards prospective action.

Andrew referenced the Walker Review of corporate governance after the 2008 banking crisis, highlighting its critique that risk oversight had become overly backward-looking.

Risk governance, he suggested, should be primarily prospective, scanning for emerging exposures rather than simply interrogating past control failures. Using GGi’s quadrant model of board focus (see attached slides), he noted that many public sector boards cluster in the ‘inward-looking, past-orientated' quadrant. The aspiration is not to abandon conformance but to rebalance towards an outward, future-facing stance.

Beyond good intentions

Fenella built on this by challenging reliance on good intentions alone. In a show of hands, most participants admitted they wanted to spend more time on the future yet found that life gets in the way. The solution, she argued, lies in redesigning structures and processes rather than exhorting greater discipline.

She advocated an agile mindset in which short-term problem-solving becomes part of a learning loop for long-term improvement. Instead of merely fixing an overspend, boards should ask what underlying capabilities, relationships or system features allowed it to occur.

Fenella also encouraged reframing risk as ‘risk and opportunity’, adopting leading as well as lagging indicators, and being explicit about what organisations will not prioritise in-year. Agenda discipline, delegation, and reducing unnecessary meetings were presented as practical levers for freeing strategic capacity.

The discussion that followed revealed deep frustration with regulatory churn, unpredictable funding, and centralised performance regimes. Several contributors questioned whether boards still felt they had real agency, particularly in heavily regulated systems. Others warned that when organisations are ‘in trouble’, short-term pressures crowd out strategic space. There was also a note of caution: strategy can become an escape from operational accountability if not tightly connected to delivery.

The webinar chat echoed these themes. Participants highlighted the “constant change of regulation” and “shorter and shorter horizons” in central government and the irony that firefighting basic safety needs can stifle strategic ambition. Risk appetite was described as “so unpopular in the public sector”, even though it may be central to innovation and future readiness.

In closing, Andrew urged boards to make explicit collective decisions about mindset and risk appetite and to measure where they currently sit before attempting change. Agency, he suggested, is not simply granted by the centre; it is also exercised locally through conscious choices about time, focus and courage.

The webinar reinforced a powerful message: breaking the obsession with the short term requires more than aspiration. It demands structural redesign, cultural confidence, and boards willing to claim their role as custodians not just of present performance but of future generations.