The Power of Long-Term Thinking: Insights from an LIS Salon on Longevity

Longevity is just one of many profound shifts reshaping our world today. From the rise of artificial intelligence to the mounting ecological crises and the evolving nature of institutional trust, we find ourselves navigating an increasingly complex, interconnected landscape. At LIS, we believe that understanding these major shifts is essential—not only to avoid potential pitfalls, but also to identify opportunities for meaningful change and help steer the world in the right direction.

In response to this rapidly changing terrain, LIS is designing an MBA programme, set to be announced in early 2025. This programme will be built to equip future leaders with the interdisciplinary tools they need to understand and respond to these global challenges.

Our recent LIS Salon on longevity, where students, faculty, and industry leaders explored the implications of extending human lifespans, is just one example of the conversations we believe are critical to future leadership. In this article, Mark delves into key insights from the salon, showcasing how interdisciplinary thinking can illuminate new paths forward for leaders facing the uncertainties of tomorrow.

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My post-graduate alma mater, The London Interdisciplinary School (LIS), is designing a new MBA programme that exposes its students to the profound ‘shifts’ that are reshaping the economy and society - and so the places that will be most fruitful for creating value. 

For example, the shift towards recognising problems as complex phenomena, with interdependencies, feedback loops and path dependencies. Or the shift towards a world in which human and machine intelligence are combined, or where politics and good-business is rejuvenated through new ways of earning trust. 

In order to create a sandbox for inspiration and collaboration, they’ve been hosting contemporary versions of Parisian salons - a gathering for discussion between the interested and interesting. 

Foolishly thinking that I fall into one of those categories, I was fortunate enough to be invited to an LIS Salon on the topic of longevity. So, imagining myself as Proust leaving my cork lined bedroom, I went along to King's Cross in order to augment an awesome gathering of a biologist, an artist, a civil servant, a venture capitalist, a linguist, a political ecologist, and a CEO. 

Expertly facilitated by the wonderful Nikita Khandwala, we tackled the longevity prompt from two angles:

1. What are the implications if the prospect of a significant extension of human life span becomes a reality? 
2. What would enable those with power to better allocate their influence and resources between the short and long term?
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On the first question, for me it was the prospect of extensions in a healthy life (we are talking about a decade or two) that is the exciting thought. This reflects the human drive and desire for vitality. It can be seen, for example, in Picasso’s final (and filthy) etching series where, in the words of the art critic Leo Steinberg, Picasso is expressing a desire to be “paced, sustained in tension, at work.”  Maybe something like this is also what is driving an ageing Rembrandt to demonstrate, by painting two perfect circles, that he has lost none of his virtuosity.

Who wouldn’t want more of that?

My hunch is that most people also care about what comes after our life -  even if we believe that after death there is no other form of existence. The same, I think, is true when we think about a career, or a role, or what we are building and making. We want to leave something behind that lasts and that is of long-term value. 

For example, the great architect Richard Rogers had printed on his office wall the Hellenic oath 'I will leave the city more beautiful than I entered.' In a different profession, the ex-politician Ed Balls advises new government ministers to always ask ‘am I taking the opportunity, now I have it, to make the big long term decisions for the country?”

But, he goes on to couple that advice with a quite different task: to be always scanning for mistakes or issues that could end your political career right now. A political version of thinking fast and slow, at something like the same time. This is a tough ask and one that gets at the central question: if the urge to act in the long-term is a part of human nature, and is a force for good, how can we help it flourish alongside the pressures of the here-and-now?

Fortunately, some strong ideas emerged at the Salon. It did its job well.

One insight is the importance of institutions whose very role is to take a long term perspective and with the funding arrangements (such as endowments) and skills to do that reliably and seriously. In the UK, the work of the What Works Network, and especially the Education Endowment Foundation, example that approach. But what if it could be extended to other fields - for example, our cities could do with both a long term plan and some entity to look after it. It could do much worse than adopting a variant of the motto on Richard Roger’s office wall.

The second thought is the power of making visible what is hidden. What if, for example, Londoners were meaningfully engaged in the future of their built city through models, scenarios, and modelling? Or, what if the implications of cuts in capital spending, or spending on the early childhood years, were made much more apparent in the forecasts for the national accounts.

The third idea is to force a focus on the long-term by allocating a percentage of a budget to that purpose. For example, in government a % of the budget would be allocated to initiatives whose pay-off period is anticipated to be 20 years from now, another % where the pay-off period is double that. An example of the latter could be a smoking cessation initiative.

Under immediate pressure, human nature is to act in the short-term: our reptilian brain is triggered. The trick, I feel, is not to ask too much of any one brain or function. Any decent CEO needs someone whom she can call on to fix immediate issues as well as someone who is thinking seriously about the business in ten or twenty years hence. One benefit of a salon approach is that it enables thinking like the latter. There, surrounded by different perspectives, you can be invited to do what we often don’t do enough: thinking seriously about tomorrow.

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