Leadership Corner: Map or Compass?

Seth Godin has given us a little nugget of truth when it comes to the priorities of a leader in this changing, technological age:

The map has been replaced by the compass
The map keeps getting redrawn,
because it's cheaper than ever to go offroad, to develop and innovate and remake
what we thought was going to be next. Technology keeps changing the routes we
take to get our projects from here to there. It doesn't pay to memorize the
route, because it's going to change soon.
The compass, on the other hand, is
more important then ever. If you don't know which direction you're going, how
will you know when you're off course?
And yet...
And yet we spend most of
our time learning (or teaching) the map, yesterday's map, while we're anxious
and afraid to spend any time at all calibrating our compass.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/02/the-map-has-been-replaced-by-the-compass.html

- T Durham