Where do you best “fit” in society? When you fall into order in your workaday world, in which layer are you positioned? When a crowd forms to do something meaningful, into what role are you nominated by those who know you best? Are you a Follower, a Manager or a Leader?

      The vast majority – I’d say + 85% – are Followers: people ready to do what they’re directed to do. The Managers – usually about 10% – are directing the Followers as they execute the plans handed down to them from “upstairs.” In that top-tier are the Leaders, the source of vision and strategy: they know where they’re going, and they determine how they’re going to get there.

      For vision and strategy to be aligned and effective, you start with a set of assumptions. One of those is foundationally critical: determining the planning horizon is in the collection of crucial determinations. Recognizing the time frame within which outcomes will be achieved is necessary to sift between the momentarily urgent and the ultimately important in one’s current agenda.

      Short-term horizons allow you to plan the next 30 days. Medium-term horizons can frame your efforts for the next 60-120 months. Long-term horizons are, for most people, hard-wired as retirement related; the most distant chronological consideration – for them – lands after they leave their career assignment and cash-in on the American Dream. They stretch beyond the current decade.

      Followers live for the short-term. Managers find their footing in the medium-term. Leaders – real leaders – live in the long-term as they stretch their imaginations into the future while wrestling with their sense of legacy. As you navigate your life and ponder your position, which of these future finish lines dominates your highest thoughts?

      Allow me to quote one of my personal heroes. For Saul of Tarsus – you might know him as Paul the Apostle – his personal target date was powerfully persuasive in his thinking. From his second letter to his friends in Corinth: “So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad (5:9-10).”

      We’re coming up on our mid-year milestone. Q2 will wrap in a couple of weeks; the second half of a never-again year will fire the jets toward yet-another year-end. The constant demands of short-term initiatives can become unrelenting. How do you break out of the Follower crowd and climb into the loft of Leaders with an intent to live the exceptional life that’s possible?

      It starts with your determination that the mainstream models are to be challenged. Short-term thinking may be pervasive, but it’s always wrong. Manager status is certainly superior to the pedestrian alternative, but it’s still less than best. How do you, as a Leader, break from the pack?

      If you claim leadership, that’s great, but the proof is in the plan, and the plan is dependent on the vision. Vision stretches beyond the seen and hovers over the unseen: the future is, by definition, out of sight for the vast majority. Fixing your sight on a target beyond your view is the stuff of visionaries…

      The difference between cultural leaders and Kingdom leaders is marked by dissonance in target definitions. Cultural leaders want to end their life with their legacy status determined by the metrics used here, on Earth. Kingdom leaders want to begin their next life with their eternal status determined by the metrics used There, in Heaven.

      Here’s the rub: the Boss says that “…many who are first (here) will be last (there), and many who are last (here) will be first (there) (Matthew 19:30). Where do your aspirations point your allocations?

      Vision begets strategy. Strategy frames dedication of scarce resources to accomplish what’s most important. Those allocations ultimately determine outcomes. The imperative determination you have to make: where – and, when – do you want to be “first?”

 — Bob Shank