There is an analogy particularly suitable for what is going on with Financial companies: the ideas of the hedgehog and the fox interpreted by philosopher Isaiah Berlin, which he uses to describe two main schools of thought.
The hedgehog: "relate everything to a single central vision, one system, less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel – a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance"
The fox: "pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related to no moral or aesthetic principle; their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision"
To me, those who look at financial companies and see only one main issue, now a days it’s the Fiscal Cliff or more Regulation, are misled. If the executive can operate in such a way that before the event goes mainstream, he thinks like a hedgehog, along "big picture" lines with a single idea that he knows will capture the public’s attention. While subsequent to the event becoming mainstream, change his mental framework to that of a fox, constantly probing, questioning and analyzing, routinely searching for different viewpoints on the evolution of the financial industry, then, he probably would be very successful. "Big picture" issues usually capture huge gains if envisioned timely, while constant post-mainstream awareness they start monitoring along various news fronts provide the best kind of risk management. Somebody I respect once said that the mark of a first-class brain is the ability to entertain two conflicting viewpoints in one's head and function properly with them; the executives who can think like the hedgehog prior and the fox afterwards, would fulfill, this ideal.