The Impossible Dream

 

Last week I read an interesting article by my friend Pam Stanton the Project Whisperer, The Impossible Dream: When Vision Kills Execution. I think we can all agree that it's important to make sure that everyone on the project team understands the vision behind the particular project their working on, but Pam wonders if that can sometimes get in the way.

"Of course, it's important to understand the context for a project, and to have a view of the ultimate goal," she writes. "On the other hand, a team in execution mode needs to focus on the tasks at hand."

She describes a situation where an enthusiastic and charismatic Program Director who, because he could see the larger vision of what they were trying to do, was encouraging scope creep to run amok.

"This team was constantly bombarded and distracted by the desire of the Program Director to "eat the elephant  'in one big swallow,' she continued. "They would just start to get traction in one area, and then would be pulled into discussions and debates about building ancillary pieces before the foundation was even in place."

I agree with Pam's assessment that this was a big problem. "Pretty soon, team members started to passively resist any direction from this leader, and either go off on their on 'skunkworks' efforts, or simply stop all activity," she says. "They desperately wanted to perform and deliver, but were being confronted with what seemed like an 'Impossible Dream.'"

This scenario sounds like a Program Director who didn't understand how distracting the team from the "vision" of the current project with work that should have been planned for "future" projects. "Don't distract the team with tangents, don't disrupt momentum..." argues Pam. I have to agree.

I'm a big advocate of keeping vision and project goals transparent to the team. People want to contribute to something bigger than themselves and are motivated to "perform and deliver" as Pam suggested. We just need to make sure that once a project is underway, we allow the team to execute—otherwise a successful project will be "The Impossible Dream."