I've been thinking a lot lately about trying to solve long-term problems with short-term thinking and working in silos.

The biggest challenges facing humanity seem ever more complicated to solve. Every month, another country is split in two, left or right, with the middle ground seemingly nowhere. The same data can be viewed entirely differently whether you are on the right or the left. People vote left or right with little thought about which politician will better deliver to their and their country's needs.

Now add to this our three or four-year election cycle, and how will anything ever get done to solve our long-term problems and maximise our collective opportunities?

We need bilateral teams paired with experts and creative thinkers to create long-term strategies and plans to solve humanity's biggest problems. When governments change, those teams will keep doing what they are doing, ensuring we make progress and not just flip-flop backwards and forwards, getting nowhere, and the problems worsen.

Businesses and marketing teams often work in the same ways.

For one, in many cases, the focus on the customer, delivering to their needs, and communicating about how you can solve their problems and meet their needs seems to be missing more and more; preferring to talk about themselves rather than how they can deliver for the customer and make their lives easier and better.

Accenture Song demonstrated in 'The Brand Experience Gap' that 71% of customers felt the companies they bought from didn't live up to their promises. Ipsos research 'The Empathy Gap' also showed an ever-growing gap between businesses and their customers.

Businesses don't look to and plan for the long term, preferring one short-term thing after another. I appreciate that short-term needs bring about more short-term thinking and actions when times are tough.

But in good times and in bad, businesses work in silos, with internal conflicts, internal politics, games, misaligned objectives, and egos getting in the way.

Even in marketing departments, teams are separated and kept apart: brand, performance (I won't get started on that), Social, Customer, in-store, retention, media, PR, corporate, etc.

Marketing doesn't talk to sales, sales don't talk to logistics, customer services don't talk to sales, and in-store doesn't speak to marketing. Marketing doesn't have a seat at the C-Suite table.

It makes you wonder how businesses will better serve their customers, work seamlessly together to ensure that it keeps happening, attract new customers, build greater lifetime value, and achieve the company's long-term ambitions working this way.

We need connected teams paired with experts and creative thinkers to create long-term strategies and plans to solve customers' biggest problems to ensure we achieve greater long-term business success.