Long-term vision and intergenerational commitment are essential for success.
By Luis Vives, Professor in the Department of Strategy and General Management at Esade
When Antoni Gaudí took on the construction of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia, he knew he was embarking on a project that would outlive him. “My client is not in a hurry,” he would say, referring to God. More than 140 years later, the Sagrada Familia remains unfinished, but Gaudí’s vision stands as a powerful testament to long-term thinking.
This is what we can call Cathedral Thinking: a mindset that can guide executive leadership in an era of unprecedented complexity and accelerating change. This concept, signifying long-term vision and intergenerational commitment, has been popularized by authors like Roman Krznaric and invoked by climate leaders such as Greta Thunberg.
This generation-spanning mindset is exactly what modern leaders need to meet today’s biggest challenges head-on. From decarbonizing our economies to eradicating extreme poverty, the defining problems of our era demand cathedral thinking from leaders that have been trained in quarterly thinking.
The Quarter-Century Crisis: Short-Termism’s Steep Price
Today’s corporate landscape suffers from what researchers call “temporal myopia”– an obsession with short-term metrics that often undermines long-term value creation.
The numbers tell the story: average CEO tenure has shrunk to 7.4 years globally, with S&P 500 leaders clocking in at 8.3 years median, while activist investors demand immediate returns. Yet the companies that consistently outperform the market share one trait: they think and act like cathedral builders.
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Jeff Bezos operated Amazon on “Day 1” principles for more than two decades, consistently sacrificing short-term profits in favor of long-term market dominance. Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever, decided to stop reporting quarterly earnings and turned his focus to creating a long-term, purpose-driven organization. Tesla invested a full decade in battery technology before most legacy automakers took electric vehicles seriously.
These weren’t lucky bets. They were calculated long-term (cathedral) strategies – investments in foundations that others couldn’t see but would eventually transform entire industries.
McKinsey’s longitudinal Corporate Horizon Index revealed that publicly listed firms managed for the long term (2001-2014) delivered 47% faster revenue growth and 36% higher earnings growth than their short-term-focused peers. Yet despite this overwhelming evidence, the tyranny of quarterly capitalism persists.
Five Pillars of Cathedral Leadership
Cathedral Thinking is more than patient capital allocation. It is a leadership mindset that recognizes that true success demands a generational perspective. Here are its essential components:
Lay Strong Foundations First: Medieval cathedral builders spent years on foundations that would never be seen. Similarly, successful companies invest in culture and capabilities that may not pay off right away, but fuel long-term growth. This means prioritizing talent development, research and development, and organizational systems over flashy initiatives that boost quarterly numbers.
Design for Successors: Cathedral architects designed detailed plans knowing their successors would execute the vision. Modern executives must similarly create robust succession planning, knowledge transfer systems, and institutional memory, not just to perform well during their tenure, but to set up the next generation for success.
Stakeholder Integration: Medieval cathedrals served and integrated entire communities across generations. Cathedral-thinking executives understand that success requires balancing shareholder returns with stakeholder impact. This stakeholder capitalism approach is increasingly essential as ESG considerations impact investment decisions.
Adaptive Resilience: While cathedral builders planned for centuries, they also adapted and embraced changing technologies, materials, and circumstances. Similarly, long-term thinking doesn’t mean rigid adherence to original plans. It means building and maintaining strategic flexibility while staying true to the purpose, core principles and long-term objectives.
Legacy Integration: Cathedral builders worked for something greater than themselves. Executives practicing Cathedral Thinking ask not just “What can I achieve?” but “What will remain after I’m gone?” This, shifts focus from personal achievements to institutional building and sustainable value creation.
The Competitive Advantage of Time
Companies embracing Cathedral Thinking consistently outperform their peers, though this long-term vision comes at a price that is measured squarely in short-term metrics. While competitors may chase short-term results, cathedral companies invest in emerging technologies that won’t pay off for years. While others may cut training budgets during downturns, they double-down on talent development. While market pressures demand immediate cost reduction, they maintain strategic investments that position them for the next cycle.
This approach requires courage. Cathedral-thinking executives must resist the temptations (and pressures) of quick wins and maintain conviction when markets reward short-term thinking. They must communicate long-term vision effectively to shareholders that are used to quarterly updates. Most importantly, they must build organizational cultures that value persistence and purpose over speed and short-term results.
Building Your Cathedral Strategy
Implementing Cathedral Thinking requires systematic changes to how executives approach strategy, innovation, and leadership. Start by extending planning horizons beyond traditional three-to-four-year cycles. Develop 10-to-20-year vision statements that guide decision-making across multiple CEO tenures. Create metrics that balance short-term performance with long-term impact, including employee retention and satisfaction, customer lifetime value, and the strength of your innovation pipeline and the organization strategic renewal.
Invest in institutional systems that can capture and transfer wisdom across leadership transitions. Build scenario planning capabilities that prepare your organization for different futures. And cultivate patience as a strategic capability.
The most successful cathedral companies also embed long-term thinking into governance structures. This might include board compositions that balance quarterly oversight with generational strategy, compensation systems that reward long-term value creation, and communication strategies that educate the different stakeholders about the value of patient capital.
The Cathedral Legacy
The executives who embrace Cathedral Thinking today are setting the foundations to build tomorrow’s market leaders. They understand that in a world of increasing complexity and accelerating change – a world wrestling with climate crises, technological disruption, and fractured trust – the ability to think beyond the next quarter or fiscal year has become a core competitive advantage. They are not just managing businesses, they are building institutions that will thrive for decades and serve stakeholders across generations.
Many great cathedrals of Europe still inspire wonder hundreds of years after their completion. The companies being built by today’s cathedral-thinking executives will similarly stand as monuments to the power of long-term vision, patient capital, and generational stewardship. In an age of quarterly capitalism, they are making decisions for the long run.
The question for you is simple: Are you managing for the next quarter, or building a cathedral? The companies that survive and thrive in the decades ahead will be those whose leaders choose to think like architects of the future, even as they navigate the immediate demands of a rapidly changing world.
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