Vision and mistakes

For me the concept of vision is associated to the duo Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse – please pardon me for not using their formal names. An excellent leader and manager (Sitting Bull) needed a strong medicine created by a wonderful wizard (Crazy Horse) for winning the spell cast by the industrial revolution and their pale Sorcerer’s Apprentices.

It is not a romantic vision of a European grew up with John Ford movies. Leading by example requires a lot of work on us, finding good models offers the chance of measuring how long it our way will be, and in the same time some catching ideas for communicating and shaping our decisions.

The importance of vision

Projects can be considered company’s progenies. They are the result of mating the company’s resources with something external. It could be the customer or the vendor. However, in order to respect the true nature of the project, it shall be something new and unique. Like any other descendant, in its genetic code there are substantial traces of both parents, which have to nurture the creature and supply it with the necessary pedagogy (processes) and dowry (technology).

The project vision cannot be the same of one of their parents. A lot of problems are brewed by an unbalance presence of one parent. Especially, when the project lacks of its own vision. The reason for which resources are allocated and much more important people spend their energy for delivering what has been approved.

From vision to mission

Once the idea can be easily explained to all stakeholders using the vision, leaders and managers have to work out the mission. “When ideas coming to the earth, they spend some time in a brothel” said Mark Twain.

Ideas, by Plato’s definition are pure and perfect. Human nature is far from this, including our understanding of the surrounding environment. Therefore, the project must start with the “political” work of translating the original concept into feasible targets.

Flexibility as value

The mission’s reason to be consists in charting a possible route to reach the target within the given tolerances (money, time and quality – all these values are part of a commercial agreement that forms the reason sustaining the vision). Defining the estimations as the art of gazing in the crystal ball is just nonsense, assuming that the project manager is able to work out the correct terms.

In the “Iron Triangle” where quality remains the  Silent Guest, the balance among the values (scope, time and money) shall be reached and maintained through the entire project’s life.
In a playground it could easily become a tug of war between producers that want to reach excellence and customer who want something more (than agreed) for his/her money.
This is a childish viewpoint, perhaps based on some George Grosz cartoons.
Flexibility is not pliability. There is nothing to do with anatomy and the spine’s stiffness. Flexibility is the ability to change (in response to “external” pressure) in order to maintain the same form or output.

Vision and errors

“errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum” (‘to err is human, but to persist (in the mistake) is diabolical. The only way to define a mistake is done through an honest reference to the truth (or the common perceived reality).
Vision helps us in two complementary ways. What we are doing and why.
Everything that does not match with the vision (duly translated into the daily reality) can be labeled as error. Without a clear and shared concept of what is needed for reaching the target, there is no way for defining, measuring and repair the damage.

Time

Time has just only one direction (at least in philosophy). It is forward; therefore, there is no chance to “physically” modify what happened in the past. However, vision lives in the future and, once it has been infused in the outcome, it starts a new life in the final users.
In the middle, between the past actions and the future plans there is a lot to do today.