Where are you going? – Defining the Project’s Purpose

‘If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there’

Lewis Carroll

The above off-cited but not-quite-accurate quote is from Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s tale, Alice in Wonderland. In Carroll’s altered reality, the conversation between the disoriented Alice and the mysterious Cheshire Cat actually went like this:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where – ” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go” said the Cat “- so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh you’re sure to do that” said the Cat, “if only you walk long enough.”

At some point in life, most of use feel like Alice – standing at a crossroad without a clear sense of direction. We know we’re on a journey, but the destination is blurry. It’s a deeply human experience – and not just in our personal lives. Projects too can begin this way: uncertain, undefined, hopeful but ungrounded.

That’s why the very first principle of project management is clarity of purpose. If we don’t know what we are trying to achieve, any path will do – and that rarely ends well. Without a destination, teams wander, budgets blow out, and time slips away.

I want to start this series of posts describing the project steps with an analogy that was told to me when I started on my career in project management. The story of the train journey…..

Next time on The Pieces Fit…

Once the destination is clear, the challenge becomes staying on track….