When serendipity strikes, I know it’s something I should try to write about. At least three times in the last week I’ve had discussions about vision, tactics, and the necessary balance needed between the two. Without vision, your daily work is just work – a grind that takes you in no particular direction at all. There’s nothing wrong with this approach for many roles. For example, when I was a bicycle messenger, my entire job was to pick up stuff from point A and bring it to point B. It was different every day, and I had fun – but there was no vision. The only goal I was working toward was paying my rent. On the other hand, you can certainly have vision (e.g. “to be the world’s greatest tight-rope walker”), but without a tactical plan to get you there, it’s probably not going to happen.
Here’s another example. During the summer, I usually have a chance to run more. Usually, I just run when I can, and run whatever distance I have time for on that day. I could do the same thing this summer and achieve all of the benefits one gets from exercise. I don’t need a vision – I can just run.
This summer, I have a goal – I’d like to run 10k in less than 65 minutes by the end of August (I’d love to go for an even 60, but not sure I can reach that goal). I have no reason for the goal other than personal motivation, but the presence of the goal changes my tactics. In order to reach the goal, I can’t just run. The goal dictates that I need to work on pace, and distance, so I need a strategy for both. I know my 5k pace ~33 minutes), and know I can run 10k (I don’t have a current pace, but know it’s slower than my 5k pace).
When coming up with a strategy, I’m fond of the Current State / Desired State format – e.g.:
There are a lot of details hidden in the arrow pointing from Current State to Desired State. I need to work on increasing my pace and distance, so I’ll have to make sure I have longer runs every week, as well as interval training to help increase both my pace and strength. And, because I’ll be running more (and in some cases harder), I’ll need to take precautions to avoid injury (and at my age, do my best to avoid general aches and pains). Even with those details, aligning the tactics necessary to achieve this goal aren’t that complicated. More or less, I’ll still just run – I’ll just have a few different variations this year that will help me achieve my goal.
Of course, goals and visions on software teams are a bit more complicated. Team-wide changes require technical changes as well as people changes. If, for example, you want to move your team to using more agile practices, you may choose to deal with tdd/bdd frameworks and new project management, but you also have to deal with a web ov concerns and hiccups as you guide team members through change. In a situation like this, your Current State->Desired state diagram may look more like this.
It’s ugly, but expected. I’ve seen many people with “visions” fail to succeed because they spent their time looking for shortcuts through the system rather than understanding that navigating the system is the key to achieving a vision (conversely, I’ve seen many others fail because they focused on navigating the system rather than their initial goals).
Bottom line is that both tactics and vision are easy. The challenge facing leaders is balancing execution and the vision and showing results.