The ability to think far ahead is not a talent. It is a discipline

Most leaders can see the next quarter. Good leaders can see the next year. The leaders who build things that last can see a future that does not yet exist and are willing to take the first small step toward it today, even when that step looks nothing like the destination.

This is the long game.

It is not patience. Patience is waiting. The long game is moving, consistently, in a direction that most people around you cannot yet see, toward an outcome that may take years to become visible and that will look inevitable only in retrospect.

The first step is always small. It has to be. A vision of the future that is large enough to matter cannot be reached in a single move. It is reached through a sequence of steps, each one made possible by the one before it, each one moving the organisation slightly closer to something that did not exist when the journey began.

The difficulty is that the first step does not look like the destination. It looks like a small improvement to an existing process. A slight adjustment to a current approach. A decision that makes sense on its own terms without revealing where it is going. The people around the leader see the step. They do not see the chain.

The leader who plays the long game sees the chain before it exists.

Key Takeaway: The long game is not about patience. It is about direction. The leader who can see a future that does not yet exist and is willing to take the first small step toward it today is the leader who builds things that compound over time.

The first step is small. The chain it starts is not.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 3: The Present · Philosophy 5: The Long Game · Section: The ability to think far ahead is not a talent. It is a discipline

MarvinPro | November 2025

marvinpro.com

Vision before the path

The long game begins with a vision, not a plan.

A plan describes a sequence of actions that will produce a known outcome. A vision describes a future state that does not yet exist and that the current sequence of actions cannot reach. The plan is useful once the direction is clear. The vision is what makes the direction clear in the first place.

Most organisations are comfortable with plans. They are less comfortable with visions, because a vision cannot be validated in advance. It cannot be tested against a business case. It cannot be guaranteed. It can only be believed in strongly enough to take the first step toward it.

The leader who requires certainty before acting will never play the long game. Certainty about a future that does not yet exist is not available. What is available is clarity about direction. The long game begins when the leader is clear about the direction and willing to move without knowing exactly where each step will land.

The vision does not need to be complete. It does not need to be fully formed or fully articulated. It needs to be real enough to make the first step feel necessary rather than optional. The rest emerges from the movement.

Key Takeaway: The long game begins with a vision that most people around you cannot yet see. The plan comes later. The first requirement is the willingness to move toward something that does not yet exist.

The long game begins before the path is visible.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 3: The Present · Philosophy 5: The Long Game · Section: Vision before the path

MarvinPro | November 2025

marvinpro.com

Small steps, large direction

The most important characteristic of long game thinking is the relationship between the size of each step and the size of the direction it serves.

The steps are small. The direction is large. These two things must coexist. A large step toward a large vision is a gamble. A small step toward a large vision is progress. The difference is not ambition. It is risk management applied to a timeframe that most people are not thinking about.

Small steps have two advantages that large steps do not. They can be taken without approval from everyone in the room. And they produce real results that make the next step easier to justify. Each step builds the evidence base for the step that follows. The leader who takes a small step, demonstrates its value and uses that demonstration to earn the next step is playing the long game with the resources available rather than waiting for the resources the large vision would require.

This is not compromise. It is sequencing. The vision remains unchanged. The path toward it is built one step at a time, each step as close to the direction as the current conditions allow, each step making the next step more possible than it was before.

The discipline is in maintaining the direction when the steps feel small. When the improvement is modest and the vision is distant and the people around you are measuring progress in quarters rather than years, the long game requires the leader to hold the direction clearly enough that each small step is taken toward something rather than just away from a problem.

Key Takeaway: Small steps toward a large direction compound over time into outcomes that no single large step could have produced. The discipline is in maintaining the direction when the steps feel insufficient.

The step is small. The direction is everything.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 3: The Present · Philosophy 5: The Long Game · Section: Small steps, large direction

MarvinPro | November 2025

marvinpro.com

Adapting the path without abandoning the vision

The long game is not a straight line.

The vision is fixed. The path is not. This distinction is the most important thing to understand about long-term thinking in real organisations, because real organisations change direction constantly. New leadership arrives. Budgets are cut. Priorities shift. The project that was approved in January is paused in March. The initiative that was building momentum loses its sponsor. The environment changes in ways that make the original path unavailable.

The leader who confuses the path with the vision stops when the path is blocked. The leader who holds the vision separately from the path finds a new route when the original one closes.

This requires a specific kind of mental flexibility that is different from opportunism. The opportunist changes direction when something better appears. The long game leader maintains direction and changes the path when the current one is no longer available. The question is always: does this new path still move toward the vision? If yes, take it. If no, look for one that does.

Adaptation is not abandonment. Changing the method is not the same as changing the destination. The leader who understands this can absorb significant disruption without losing the direction, because the direction was never in the path. It was always in the vision.

Key Takeaway: The long game requires the ability to adapt the path without losing the vision. When the original route is blocked, the question is not whether to continue. It is which new route still moves in the right direction.

The vision survives the disruption. The path does not have to.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 3: The Present · Philosophy 5: The Long Game · Section: Adapting the path without abandoning the vision

MarvinPro | November 2025

marvinpro.com

The courage to start

The hardest part of the long game is not the length of it. It is the beginning.

Taking the first step toward a future that most people cannot yet see requires a specific kind of confidence. Not the confidence that comes from certainty, that the vision is correct, that the path will work, that the outcome is guaranteed. That confidence is not available at the beginning of anything worth building. The confidence required is simpler and more difficult. It is the confidence to act on a direction before the evidence exists to justify it.

This is not recklessness. The long game leader is not ignoring the evidence. They are acting before the evidence catches up with the vision. By the time the evidence exists, the first mover advantage is gone and the step that would have been a differentiator has become a standard.

The courage to start is also the courage to look wrong in the short term. The first step toward a distant vision often looks unnecessary from the outside. It produces results that are modest relative to the size of the investment. The people who are not playing the long game will question it, because from where they are standing, the return is not visible. The leader who needs external validation to continue will stop before the chain becomes visible.

The long game is played internally before it is visible externally. The conviction must exist before the evidence does. That is what makes it the long game and not just good planning.

Key Takeaway: The long game requires the courage to act before the evidence justifies it, to look wrong in the short term and to continue without external validation until the chain becomes visible to everyone else.

The first step toward a vision nobody else can see yet requires more courage than any step that follows.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 3: The Present · Philosophy 5: The Long Game · Section: The courage to start.

MarvinPro | November 2025

marvinpro.com

A real example

In a large automotive mobility operation, the cost of providing customers with rental cars while their vehicles awaited parts on back order had grown to a level that required attention. The stays were long. The costs were compounding. The process that governed them was reactive, the rental continued until the car was fixed, and nobody was actively managing the duration.

One person had a vision.

A customer experiencing a breakdown would press a button in the car. A replacement vehicle would be delivered to their location. The faulty car would be collected at the same time. The customer would experience no disruption. The organisation would control the cost and the timeline from the first moment.

The vision was seen as not viable by leadership and stakeholders and laughed off.

So the first small step was taken instead. And even that first step required building something from nothing.

A car swap process did not exist. Before a single customer could receive a replacement vehicle, a fleet assignment system had to be created. Dealer delivery logistics had to be designed and agreed across a network of local partners. Cleaning, servicing and vehicle clearance protocols had to be defined. A provisioning process had to be built. The customer needed to be logged in, agreements had to be accepted, and the replacement vehicle had to be aligned to their profile before they could drive it. Before this, provisioning had been handled by a dedicated last mile team. Now it had to be standardised and repeatable.

None of this was visible to the customer. All of it had to work before the first swap could happen.

The proposal for a three-week car swap was bold. Most people in the room thought it could not be done at the required standard. It was approved and took nine months to build and go live. When the first swaps were completed within three weeks, that was not the beginning of the improvement. It was the first proof that the vision was pointing in the right direction.

Moving from three weeks to two weeks required stretching the same infrastructure further. Every step in the process, fleet assignment, dealer coordination, vehicle preparation and provisioning  had to be tightened. The same stakeholders who had taken nine months to align had to be brought back to the table. It took another six months. Most of them still did not believe the original vision was possible. They agreed to two weeks because two weeks was in front of them and they could see it.

Three days was different in kind, not just in degree. To reach three days, replacement vehicles had to be pre-positioned at dealerships before the customer needed them. The provisioning that had previously been handled centrally by a last mile team now had to be done by the dealer. This was extra work for the dealer network with no direct commercial incentive. Getting consistent agreement across that network, to a standard that made three days reliable rather than aspirational, required negotiation, trust-building and time. It also meant accepting that the customer experience at the point of handover was now outside direct control, it dependended on dealer behaviour rather than a central team.

The three-day model worked. Then the model changed entirely. The rental car was removed. When a customer experienced a breakdown, they received a replacement within three days and a refund for those three days without a vehicle. The cost structure changed. The customer relationship changed. The process was now predictable, controlled and measurable in a way the original rental model had never been.

Three years. Nine months to build the first swap. Six months to reach two weeks. More months to reach three days. A completely new model in the third year.

The button press vision was not reached. But the direction it set was never wrong. The organisation that once could not imagine a car swap within three weeks can now deliver a replacement vehicle within three days through a dealer network that provisions it on arrival. The next step, the one where the customer presses a button and the car comes to them, is closer than it has ever been. The work that was done did not fail to reach the vision. It built the foundation that makes the vision reachable for whoever takes the next step.

One person saw it first. Most stakeholders did not believe it was possible. The steps that were taken proved it was.

The vision that most people could not see was the reason every step was taken in the right direction.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 3: The Present · Philosophy 5: The Long Game · A real example.

MarvinPro | November 2025

marvinpro.com

Chapter Outcome

The long game is not about thinking slowly. It is about thinking far.

The leader who can hold a vision of a future that does not yet exist, take the first small step toward it, adapt the path when the environment changes and continue without external validation until the chain becomes visible — that leader builds things that compound. Each step makes the next step possible. Each outcome creates the conditions for the next outcome. The destination that seemed distant at the beginning becomes, in retrospect, the inevitable result of a sequence of small decisions made consistently in the right direction.

The first big idea may not survive contact with the organisation. Leadership may not believe it. Stakeholders may laugh it off. The vision that drives the first step may never be fully realised in the time available. This is not failure. The steps that were taken still moved the organisation further than it would have gone without them. The chain that was started still runs further than the point at which it was handed over. And the next person who picks it up will not start from zero.

Play the long game. Start before the path is clear. Adapt without abandoning the direction. Have the courage to look wrong in the short term.

The future you can see but cannot yet reach is the most valuable thing you have.

The long game is not about how far you can see. It is about being willing to move toward what you can see before anyone else does.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 3: The Present · Philosophy 5: The Long Game · Chapter Outcome.

MarvinPro | November 2025

marvinpro.com