Starting the Journey 15software application, building a high-performance team or
launching a new business project. It comes down to a simple
question: what’s worth doing?
Another question is, how long will the journey take? This
depends on what you want to accomplish. Too short a jour-
ney and people are not stretched. They will not be interested
if the end goal is too easy – no one needs a leader for an ex-
pedition to the corner shop. Too long a journey and there is
too much tension – people will not even try, if the goal seems
impossible. A leader skilfully stretches the distance just far
enough to set up the right tension, but not far enough to
strain or snap the link between the present and the future.
Suppose the journey has to be a long one? No business
goes from sinking to soaring in less than a couple of years
and if your vision is social change, that can take decades.
The larger and more pervasive the change, the longer it
takes. A long journey must embody something very impor-
tant and be truly compelling for people to sign up.
Alternatively, present conditions have to be very bad to get
people moving. The leader must break a long journey into
stages so it looks more manageable. No one climbs a moun-
tain in one unbroken expedition, they welcome the resting
points on the way to the top. The higher the mountain, the
more breaks there are and the more comfortable they will
be. Imagine looking up at a huge mountain and knowing
you have to climb it in one trek. Your heart will sink to the
bottom of your mountain boots. There have to be interme-
diate goals along the way or no one will even want to start in
the first place. The leader will be left marching off into the
distance on their own.
Exploring Mental Perspectives 1: Vision
It seems natural to represent time as distance in our
minds. We talk of events ‘far in the future’ or ‘close to
the present’ and the law of perspective operates in our
minds as well as in the outside world. The longer a goal