Hooray! Success!

Do you have a "defeat" mentality?  Is perfection the only standard of achievement?  Sometimes, we just have to recognize that success has happened.

We live in a complex world.  Achieving everything that may have been part of an original vision is rarely possible.  And, many of us accumulate new bits of vision as we go along, making completion virtually impossible.  As managers, constantly communicating "not-quite-there-yet" to our staff is de-motivating, probably to ourselves as well as to them.

Try rearranging your own thinking to create more success and less vision-creep.

1. The simplest way of having more success is to reconfigure a large vision into smaller projects with shorter timeframes.  Consider the completion of each project a success and celebrate it that way with staff.  Use a physical or on-line graphic to show how each project fits into the overall vision.  One of the benefits of this approach is that future projects can benefit from the learning achieved in completed projects.
2. Either stick to the original vision, or formally redesign it.  By protecting the integrity of the original vision, development and implementation will be completed much faster.  Then the new concepts can be worked into a new vision.  Or, if circumstances have changed sufficiently that the original vision is no longer valid, declare a halt.  Celebrate what was accomplished.  Then create a new and valid vision.
3. Be satisfied with "most".  Just because the creators of the original vision thought certain things should be accomplished, the natural evolution of work over time will erode the importance of some aspects of the vision.  The more months or years since the original vision was stated, the less likely it is that every single thing is still relevant.  As the manager, you must decide when success has occurred.  Congratulate all involved and schedule the next visioning session.