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14 CHAPTER ONE
and Machiavelli’s The Prince, to modern treatments like Herb Cohen’s You Can
Negotiate Anything and Scott Adams’s Dilbert: Random Acts of Management.
Things do change some, although I’ve run into many different leadership styles
during my career. Just realize that I’m about to try to compress centuries of learn-
ing and wisdom into a page or two of usable advice.
A PM should lay out, for all concerned, the following major elements needed to lead
a project:
Vision
Mission
Strategy
Tactics

The vision is a dream, a view of how the project will go and what life will be like
when the project is complete. It should serve to create an image in the mind’s eye for
each member of the project. The image must motivate them to act with a common pur-
pose and follow your lead.
The mission outlines the specific goals that your group will achieve during the proj-
ect. Most of these goals will be directly related to the specifications and project plans.
But it would be a mistake to limit your team to such goals when learning, accomplish-
ment, teamwork, and glory are to be attained. Plan for those, too. As the old sales maxim
goes, “sell the sizzle, not the steak.”
The strategies are the methods of positioning and approach by which the group can
achieve the individual goals in the mission. The group does not have to successfully
accomplish the strategies, just the goals. But if the group sticks to the strategies, the
goals are likely to be accomplished. The PM, with the help of the rest of the group, can
determine things such as

How hard everyone will have to work
How to work at the same time on tasks that might otherwise need to be done one
after the other
When it’s worth taking specific risks
Which goals are more important than others
Tactics are the smaller maneuvers used to accomplish the goals of the strategies. They
are somewhat different than strategies in that they can be more easily abandoned in
favor of a different tactic. Several different tactics can be used while following the same
strategy. The PM and the rest of the group can collectively set tactics such as
Who works on what
What order things are done in
What the backup plans are if certain things don’t pan out