"Performance now!"

I get nervous when I see proclamations of getting immediate performance. In the right hands (with a robust delivery system in depth), this can result in great things. However, in the wrong hands (and a weak delivery system), this can create major issues for a long period of time.

It all depends on the maturity of the people involved in the delivery process. In an immature environment there are probabilities of people will taking short term, short cuts and narrow decisions to achieve the performance goals. In a worst case scenario - integrity could be compromised, especially if personal rewards / gains are at stake.

Our institutions and culture should encourage people to think long term, and deepen our capabilities. We must be careful with an over usage of short term targets - and reduce the linkages of these short term targets to rewards and personal gain.

Our education institutions should encourage our children to look at a long term view on various issues. The education system should measure children's performance over a long term, as opposed to exams. Children's performance should be the outcomes of daily progress and achievements, coupled with the rate of improvements demonstrated. We need to create this mindsets from young.

In organisations, the performance management systems should de-emphasise short term targets and rewards: the collapse of several established financial institutions can be attributed to a culture of greed and short term personal gain over and above integrity. There will be no amount of controls, rules and regulations that can effectively keep these unethical behaviours at bay, as long as employees are incentivised or being tempted by money to push these moral boundaries. We need to remove these temptations.

With a culture and environment that encourages long term thinking, people will be given more freedom (space) to think through matters thoroughly. This will allow more time to capture that spark of creativity and innovation that could make a significant impact to the issues at hand.