Journey before Destination

"Journey before destination," Dalinar said. "It cannot be a journey if it doesn't have a beginning. I will take responsibility for what I have done. If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man." , Oathbringer

"Journey before destination" is a core concept in Brandon Sanderson's epic fantasy series, The Stormlight Archive. It is the first ideal of an order of knights who earn their powers by living and embodying a code.

The entire Ideal reads, "Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination", and it is the first of several ideals that each knight must discover and embrace on their own.

I'm not a Knight Radiant, though I would accept the mantle if given the chance, and I'm not specifically here to talk about fantasy novels, but it is my strong belief that this ideal gives focus to the single most expensive mistake I have watched organizations make for twenty years.

Most transformations fail on the destination. A company decides it needs SAFe, and then everything will click. Or it decides that if it can just get AI working, the problems will dissolve and then, somehow, profit. The framework gets installed, the tools get bought, the org chart gets redrawn, and the results do not come. Not because the destination was wrong, but because nobody was willing to make the journey.

A framework is not an answer. It is an invitation to change, to discover, and to understand, and that invitation is addressed to the leaders first. You cannot delegate the journey. You have to be on it, present and open to what it teaches you, or the destination stays a slide in a deck.

That is the hill I will die on, and it is what this entire publication is about.

Who I am, briefly

I spent more than twenty years at Avanade, and much of it was leading software engineering and delivery transformation for Fortune 100 and Global 500 organizations, across manufacturing, healthcare, the public sector, and financial services.

I led the DevOps transformation strategy and implementation of one of the world's largest Azure IoT manufacturing platforms, engineering and delivery modernization for one of the country's largest cancer research centers and a state healthcare insurer, and leadership coaching and community-of-practice programs that outlasted the engagements. I have been in the room when transformations worked and when they stalled, and I have learned to tell the difference early.

Why now

For the majority of my consulting career I had an accepting and encouraging built-in platform; an organization to test ideas in and a conversation I was already part of. Unfortunately, I am no longer at Avanade, and I stepped out at what feels like a real inflection point for our industry; there is more churn and change around the disrupting ideas of AI than I have ever seen and I know that there are leaders and organizations who are struggling to find their footing in it.

Another thing that we can learn from the Knights Radiant is that it's not the first step that matters, but the next one.

And this is my next step.

Who this is for

I am writing to the technology and delivery leaders standing at that same inflection point who are seeking that next step. The director of delivery, the VP of engineering, the CIO who bought the framework and who is quietly wondering why the destination isn't what was depicted on the postcards. If that is you, this is for you. But the ideas here are not gated by some corporate title. If you are building anything at all, a team, a product, a brand, a business of one, the same principles apply, and you, and your voice, are welcome at the table.

What I will write about

I have distilled my ideals down to a single phrase. Resilient Agility. Big "A" agile has always been about a group's ability to respond to change. Resilient Agility is my premise that people and organizations can learn to treat change itself as a vehicle for continuous self-improvement, rather than a threat to survive.

I see these topics loosely organizing themselves around a few key concepts.

• Delivery and operating models. The discipline of asking better questions about what you deliver and how you deliver it, and never letting either answer go stale.
• The leadership operating system. A team's resilience is not an accident. It is a product of how its leaders show up, and of their willingness to be on the journey with the team.
• AI and automation in practice. Not the hype cycle. The strong foundations that let any organization, large or small, build the strategy and tools that fit them, instead of the ones a vendor sells them.

And underneath all of it, the work of setting the ego aside. Chop wood, carry water. The leaders I trust most are the ones who measure themselves by their team's success, not their own visibility.

The promise

If you stick around, my aim is that you leave with a more resilient, human-centered, growth-oriented way of thinking about and leading change, the tools and ideas to start your own journey of improvement, and a community of practice standing behind you when it gets hard.

Which brings me to the ask

The most important step is the next one. If this sounds like the kind of community you would like to be a part of, I hope to earn your subscription. And then do the thing I care about most: reply. Argue with me. Tell me where I am wrong, or where this landed. I am not here to broadcast. I am here to start the conversations worth having.

The journey is the point. Let us take it together.