Almost everyone knows the importance of vision for a leader. The problem is most leaders don’t properly articulate a vision. “Unity,” “growth,” or “a brighter future” are not visions. Nor is some financial target to be delivered by the year 2020. The latter is a goal, the former is nothing more than nice words and will not inspire action.
A true vision paints a clear picture of what the future could look like if everything goes well. It is an ideal. And for it to inspire people to act, that vision has to describe a future that would benefit an outside population. It is not simply a reflection of a company’s aspirations (“to be the biggest,” “the best” or “the most respected,” for example).
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs talked about The Revolution, a time in which individuals would have the power to stand up to The Corporation. The personal computer was the tool to advance towards that vision. It was a vision for the people, the future users.
Too many leaders think the plan is more important than the vision. The reality however, is the complete opposite. A plan is uncertain, changeable and sometimes flawed. It is the vision that must be immovable, fixed and inspiring.
In Sebastian Barry’s novel, A Temporary Gentleman, Jack McNulty, protagonist and narrator of the story, sits in a house in newly-independent Ghana and writes a memoir of his life. It is not a happy tale, there are more regrets than happinesses, there are chances lost forever, moments that will never be redeemed, hurts that cannot be healed, but McNulty never drifts for long from a mood of optimism:
Our greatest trouble and our saving grace is that we have a soul. Time may seem like a great flood dragging with it all the debris of the past and catching you at last running through your own fields. Where there was once a great fire may seem only an ember now in the palm of your hand. But the ember is the soul and nothing on earth can rescind it.
-Sebastian Barry’s novel, A Temporary Gentleman
Our greatest trouble? That sense that life can never be entirely abandoned, that our failures and wrongdoings remain with us?
Our saving grace? That opportunity remains for failures to be corrected, for wrongs to be righted?
And indeed that we have a soul. (She too, I would hope.)
Without Jack McNulty’s ember, without a soul that cannot be rescinded we live lives of very little meaning and hope.
Last Friday it was twenty-eight degrees in the shade, or thirty degrees, if one was to believe the car thermometer, but it always exaggerates. Rewe was an attractive place around which to meander for an hour or so, not to buy much, but to enjoy the air conditioning. Browsing DVD's and car cleaning kits, neither of which would normally be of much interest, passed some minutes. Then I saw the large book selection.
It is over forty years since I developed an aspiration to become a writer, not a famous writer, not a wealthy writer, it would be enough to be able to write bad novels, making just enough to get by. A regular money flow that would enable the purchase of a small cottage somewhere, a place within walking distance of a village which had a bread shop and a cafe.
The flaw in the plan was the inability to write in any way that might earn an income; writing commercially is an extraordinary skill, to be able to write the sort of fiction that people might buy really is a rare talent. Of course, there have been ideas for plots and characters, some storylines that might have been developed, it’s just that when the words are typed, they fall apart, sentences become badly formed, paragraphs have to be forced into shape, there has never been a complete page. Bad novels required considerably more ability than anticipated by someone who would have casually dismissed such literary efforts.
Perhaps the attractions would quickly have paled, perhaps one winter would have been enough. Anyway, without the freedom a writer’s life might have offered, a life in the countryside never became a possibility, though one can still dream.
“It’s a non-trivial amount of work” = I won’t be able to copy and paste
“This is a temporary solution” = This is a permanent solution
“I’ll be finished by Monday” = I won’t tell you which Monday
“Do you want it done fast or do you want it done right?” = It will be neither
“Just report a bug” = I have no idea what you’re saying right now
“We can’t test that” = We can but we won’t
“I fixed the bug” = It started working again and I have no idea why
“I can’t realistically estimate that” = I don’t know how estimates work
“I don’t think users will care about that” = I have dinner reservations at 8
“This is an Alpha release” = It doesn’t work
-Thanks to Murphy.
