Virtues and Sins

In my management practice, I sometimes come across people stating emphatically: “I am not really a detail guy; I am a big-picture kind of person”. What that translates into my ears is: “I can’t be bothered with the responsibility of the end result, I prefer to remain in the clouds, by looking at things from above, with a pretense of seeing into the future, expressing my idealistic dreams and pretending they make up for a vision”. Does it sound familiar? Here is my take on such individuals:


We all despise truth distortion, or narrative spinning, mainly when it’s done for the perverse gain of the story teller. But I have to admit, I am mesmerized by the ability of some speakers to pretend that a sin could be construed as a virtue. Most of the time these are people that are, otherwise, failing miserably at either getting anything done, or articulating a plan of action, or managing the execution of any enterprise. And yet, they are trying to repackage these shortcomings by branding them as a superior quality.

When you are a true leader of an organization, this attitude needs to be discouraged and the promoters put in their place through a reality check. They need to understand that they are not living in a heavenly cloud, and that life is made out of details that are important. If the details are neglected – most of the time because we don’t know how, or just not comfortable dealing with them – those high-level ideas will amount to nothing more than a series of unfulfilled prophecies.

No High-Tech star has been more visionary – in the recent past – than Steve Jobs; imagining new devices and technological features, way before any consumer or user would have been able to formulate such need, was really genial. Other players in the filed may claim an equal or greater creativity, but what made the difference was also his ability to focus on details and be very specific and selective about the characteristics embedded into such devices. That’s how the novelty of his ideas materialized into concrete, successful applications, adored by the fans and valued by the masses.

If you ask any pilot, which part of the flight is the most challenging, and therefore more probing of true pilot qualities, they will all tell you that it is not the cruising at high altitude, and is not even the take-off, but it is the landing. There is where you are confronted with multiple variables at play, with most adverse circumstances and critical conditions. The ability to always put a plane on the ground smoothly and safely is what distinguishes amateurs from professionals. Dreaming is easy when there is no direct accountability test. Implementing a vision into a solution is what separates doers from talkers.

So in the enterprise management arena, next time you hear somebody communicating a 10,000 ft picture of things, ask them to provide a more concrete, down-to-earth, step-by-step vision of their idea. If it makes sense to you, ask them to take charge and carry it onto the implementation phase, and then measure and interpret the results. Upon analysis, some will be successful due to real qualities and comprehensive capabilities. But many will fail and disappoint, and such you’ll learn a lesson on how to recalibrate credibility, by recognizing the value of facts versus words, or of real virtues versus disguised sins.