My second book Love at First Launch: A Visionary’s Guide to Bringing Extraordinary Tech to Life is out now in hardcover and e-reader formats. Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble online, Bookshop.org, and many other retailers. It’s an exciting moment and I’m thankful for everyone who had a hand in the production of this book.

Let’s look at some common business goals:

• “To get our employees to fill out their timecards correctly.”

• “To get things out the door on budget.”

• “To sell more of the stuff we have good margins on.”

• “To get customers to stick to their action plan instead of abandoning efforts partway through.”

There’s something specific all of these goals have in common: they are all behaviors that can be influenced by giving the user feedback. 

It’s a slightly perverse fact of being a visionary that the more serious you are about succeeding, the more you will have to share creative power.

I say slightly perverse, because taking control of the vision likely got you through the first part of the process. Having a single-minded goal, ignoring inevitable naysayers and nurturing a deep and slightly unhinged passion for solving your problem are often the first steps toward building something meaningful. And about when you’re getting comfortable with your own value as a visionary, you have to start to peel a bit of that off and give it to others.

When I was first introduced to the software world 28 years ago, ‘quality’ largely meant moving, storing and displaying data accurately. There was almost no weight placed on the look and feel of the application, the user experience, or the performance. If it got the bits and bytes where they were going, it was judged to be good. 

We celebrate stories of strong visionaries like James Dyson who had a single-minded commitment to a vision that seemingly only they could see. We’re familiar with this story and the glory that follows. But just as many would-be revolutionaries drive their companies into the ground remaining committed to their own vision in the face of evidence that a pivot is needed.