The Art of Project Management

4.10. The vision sanity check: daily worship

One of the original copies of the U.S. Constitution sits in a vault, behind thick panes of Plexiglas, in a museum in Washington D.C. Although it's safe and secure, I'm certain few people read it in this format. When ideas aren't accessible or kept in the light, they fade away (unless they're important enough to get their own exhibits at museums). Even on short-term projects, it's easy to lose track of how daily decisions fit back into the larger whole, and the lack of visibility of the core ideas promotes this kind of entropy. People might be very busy and feel good about the modules and pieces they are constructing, but without frequent and common points of reference, it's hard to know whether it's all still going in the right direction. The vision, or the core ideas and goals that are part of it, must be kept alive in the hallways and offices of the people doing the work.

To keep the vision visible, a few core goals should be up on posters in highly trafficked parts of the hallway. They should be discussed openly in weekly or monthly meetings, read aloud to the entire room before the meeting starts. Slide decks or other materials used within the team should have those few core points on the first slide or the first page. Most people on the team, most of the time, should be able to name most of the goals of the project, certainly at least the ones that they are directly contributing to or are responsible for.

But this visibility doesn't ...