I’ve thought of yet another reason why ‘he/she who gets the vision gets the job’ is a terrible way to work.
Not only does it push back against the brilliant idea of working in motivated teams of invested people, not only does it strengthen the notion that the person who said it doesn’t actually want to do it themselves, not only does it pretend to empower people while setting them up for solo failure, not only does it do all these things, but ‘he/she who gets the vision gets the job’ also inextricably links all the work with all the heart. In other words, the visionaries end up doing everything themselves.
I’m having to let a project fail in order to let others figure out how to pick it up. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s all part of that transition from artist to chef. An artist remember, works alone in a studio, crafting, painting, sculpting, writing until the vision emerges. A chef recruits a team who between them, construct a restaurant experience that could only work because they all got hold of the vision and worked hard together to achieve it. I’m on a journey somewhere between the two.
My project won’t succeed with me filling in all the gaps. It won’t succeed when I soon stop doing that either, but just beyond the kitchen-failure, just the other side of the Gordon-Ramsay-meltdown, there’s a win that’s bigger than anything I could ever have done on my own.
I just wish I could relegate the phrase. As I said before, it’s us who get the vision, and part of the job is sharing it, shaping it, and letting it grow until it starts producing some succulent fruit. And if it really is only you who has the vision for a thing, the only job that matters for now, is sharing the vision with others and dreaming out between you how to make it fly, long before you get the job.
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