The relentless pursuit of short-term wins might feel good in the moment, but it’s a recipe for irrelevance

I’m here to share a radical insight I discovered after taking my kids to the science center one day: Don’t make the Formula One race car simulator your last stop before driving home.

We exited the complex and piled into the minivan. I pulled out of the parking lot then turned down the freeway on-ramp. A few moments later, I puzzled over why all the cars around me were driving so slowly. That’s when I noticed I was topping 85 miles-per-hour in my Dodge Caravan. Even that speed seemed leisurely after rocketing around the virtual track at 150 mph.

Needless to say, the cars on the highway weren’t going any slower than usual. It was my excessive speed that created the sense that they were barely moving. Which was fortunate, since it alerted me in real time that I needed to slow way, way down. It also brought to mind a curious phenomenon that finds its way into the Ethical Lexicon:

Retrograde motion noun

The illusion of backward motion caused by objects in our solar system orbiting the sun at different distances and speeds.

Here’s an example of how it works: The Earth circles the sun every 365 days; Mars takes 687 days to do the same. Just as other cars on the freeway look like they’re going backward when you pass them at high speed, nimble Earth overtaking sluggish Mars makes the red planet appear to move backward, or retrograde, relative to the stationary backdrop of space. As Earth moves ahead and gains more distance, proper perspective is restored and we once again perceive Mars moving in the right direction.

Although retrograde motion is merely an illusion, it is largely responsible for the discovery that the planets revolve around the sun and not vice versa. Despite the efforts of astronomers before Copernicus and Galileo to explain the deviant phenomenon, the established model placing Earth at the center of the universe ultimately proved unviable.

And that’s a lesson that can be applied in many ways to our own relentless journey around the sun.

As Teddy Roosevelt purportedly said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” In other words, when we evaluate our progress relative to others, we will likely come away with either a false sense of progress or the misperception of inadequacy.

One of the most instructive examples of this principle is former General Electric CEO Jack Welch. Hailed by Fortune magazine as “Manager of the Century,” Welch led GE to become the highest-valued company on the planet.

However, his overarching strategy dehumanized employees while generating disproportionate benefits for stockholders. In the process, he created a culture of fear and insecurity, ultimately betraying pensioners whose retirement packages deflated and earning him the epithet Neutron Jack, after the fabled bomb that kills people but leaves the landscape intact.

But even that moniker turned out to be inaccurate. Seventeen years after Welch left the company, GE was delisted from the Dow Jones average and is now described as “irrelevant.” His relentless pursuit of short-term wins built a monolithic company on an unstable foundation that eventually crumbled away.

In his business classic Good to Great, Jim Collins explains that the measure of genuine success is the degree to which prosperity continues after a leader has stepped away from the company. There are many pathways to producing revenue, but true greatness is revealed in a cultural legacy that survives the test of time. Otherwise, the appearance of spectacular growth is as illusory as the retrograde motion of those dogged competitors who ultimately overtake flash-in-the-pan success.

The Vaderesque influence of Jack Welch may extend beyond the deflation of General Electric. Many blame him for shaping protégés and inspiring leaders who have followed in his footsteps, contributing to increasingly toxic workplaces and an ever-widening wealth gap that endangers the stability of American society. The result is a culture that is not only less ethical, but also less successful.

In a recent article, Business Insider chief correspondent Aki Ito describes how employees have grown increasingly disgruntled by their employers’ violation of the psychological contract implicit in the employer-employee relationship. By attempting to squeeze every ounce of productivity from employees with no concern for mutuality and reciprocity, employers’ efforts to increase efficiency and productivity have boomeranged:

“What we have now is a vicious circle of broken promises. The result is a workplace that none of us wants: one where no one feels they owe anyone anything.”

The Welchian model that sacrifices culture on the altar of valuation inevitably turns profitability into profiteering. The either-or mentality that demands choosing between people and profits is as deceptive as the retrograde movement of the heavens.

The more any society invests in binary thinking, quick fixes, and short-term gains at the expense of long-term goals and vision, the more pressure mounts on leaders in all industries and fields to do the same by conforming to a conventional wisdom that is anything but wise. When leaders pursue small-minded strategies that short-circuit sound decision-making and sustainable growth, they may appear to get ahead for a while, but they will end up falling far, far behind.

Incidentally, there is no evidence that Teddy Roosevelt actually observed the comparison attributed to him. But if invoking his name makes us more mindful to avoid unhelpful comparisons, it might be in our interest as a useful mythology to let him have the credit.