In a time of heightened economic uncertainty, many of us feel tempted to start thinking and acting with near-term goals in mind. But being a good leader means staying attuned to the chaos while thinking beyond the horizon.

It can be tricky to keep this balance—and to keep calibrating as new information comes in—but strong leaders know that the answer to the question, “should we be managing the short term or the long term?” is inevitably “yes.”

Today, we look at a new article by Kellogg professor and former Baxter International CEO Harry Kraemer on maintaining that balance.

Plus, how peer influence can change our decisions in the workplace.

Keeping a balanced focus

For Harry Kraemer, being a good leader means keeping a balanced perspective on your information diet and a laser-like focus on the long-term outlook for your company. But this doesn’t mean tuning out the day-to-day chaos.

“Having a multi-year strategy, with milestones to be achieved and accountability for results, keeps an organization moving forward,” Kraemer says. “At the same time, leaders cannot become so focused on the future that they fail to navigate the rapid change and turmoil that’s happening today.”

So how can leaders manage for the long term while responding to the rapid changes of the short term? Kramer advises keeping a focus on both time frames.

“​​Managing for both ends of the spectrum can be challenging,” he says. “For one thing, human brains appear to be wired for short term gains, a kind of primal instinct of survival that puts a premium on what could be captured today. The long term, meanwhile, can look like an easy pass—just keep kicking the can of accountability down the road.”

Most companies’ planning—in R&D, staff development, budgeting—looks beyond the horizon. But a balanced perspective will allow you to check in on a rolling basis on how short-term uncertainty may be affecting the milestones you have set out along that longer view.

“Being accountable for and managing both the short term and the long term will enable leaders to avoid becoming derailed by the chaos happening in the moment.”

Read more in Forbes.

Under (peer) influence

Peer influence is a concept that hearkens back to schoolyard days—picking which sport to play or which genre of music to listen to or which style of clothes to wear based on the choices of classmates and friends.

​​But peer influence doesn’t stop at childhood. It extends to the workplace as well, shaping how professionals make decisions.

Indeed, a growing body of research shows that professionals in a variety of industries are influenced by those around them. Physicians, for example, are influenced by their peers when writing prescriptions; sales teams become more productive when working alongside productive peers; and biomedical scientists are shaped by their peers’ innovation and entrepreneurial choices.

So, which factors in the workplace are driving this peer influence?

Jillian Chown, an associate professor of management and organizations at Kellogg, teamed up with Carlos Inoue of Gies College of Business to answer this question in the context of a high-stakes work setting: the maternity wards and operating rooms of Brazilian hospitals. Specifically, they examined how medical doctors trained in obstetrics and gynecology make the call to perform a birth via Caesarean section versus vaginal delivery—and investigated how much peer influence shapes these critical medical decisions.

To that end, the researchers analyzed detailed data covering more than five million births performed by 16,500 physicians across 915 public hospitals in Brazil.

They found that when doctors worked alongside a peer who tended to perform more C-sections than expected, their own likelihood of performing the procedure also increased. Furthermore, doctors were more susceptible to a peer’s influence under two circumstances: if they had similar work responsibilities to that peer, and if they had a greater variety of day-to-day responsibilities than most doctors in the same role.

Read more in Kellogg Insight.