Of Accountants, Project Managers and Long Term Thinking

During the past week I was asked to sit in a value management workshop for the design of a new facility for emergency management. While sitting in the workshop I was struck by the short term viewpoints which seem to dominate our thinking as a society. As discussed elsewhere in this website, the design of new working environments needs to incorporate human considerations in its design. There is a fine balance between form and function and the need to provide work environments in which humans can act and work effectively for sustained periods of time. This is no more evident than in the context of emergency management centres where high information workloads are combined with long hours and high impact decision to create difficult working environments.

During the workshop I was struck, however, by the dominance of short term thinking which seems to dominate our present modes of thinking.