magic wand before local context

A sharp move I’ve seen some good leaders make: they write out what a better world would like if they had few of the constraints that face them now. You can think of this as a first principles analysis; you can think of it as the magic wand version. You scrape off the frustrating, frictional, fickle requirements of the way things are and have been and open your thinking more purely to what could or should be.

Sometimes you can run with your magic wand version. The facts you face might not be that bad or that stubborn. You’re in an elastic environment. There aren’t that many personalities to accommodate. Transaction costs are low.

Probably more often, if you’re not in the earliest phase of your project or working with an especially flexible team, you’ll want to write a second version after the magic wand version. This is the version that speaks to your local context. A crystalline, balanced org chart acquires names, histories, asymmetrical exceptions.

The bet, the hope, is that having done the magic wand version will unlock possibilities in the version in context. You anchor your thinking on what’s possible and on a desired outcome instead of on what’s demanding and what.

-Eric