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| Air Car Roadmap to the Future - Stakeholders |
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In this month's article: The Future: According to Air Car - and Friends, we began laying out a Project Plan and Roadmap of how we might be able to implement a number of great advancements for mankind.
To construct the list of advancements, we looked to many great retro-futuristic ideas from the past - like Warp drives, food replicators,George Jetson's flying car and robot maid, and some very attainable advances like an effective synchronized Traffic Light solution - to name just a few. Are Air Car's on our list of deliverables? Such silly questions - yes of course they are. I would be very happy to see myself running about in a car driven by ever-cleaner air - and I am more than just a little bit annoyed that I don't have the option to buy one in North America today. Although the deliverables list for the Air Car Future Roadmap might seem like whimsy to a first time reader, the science of these future technologies is often less removed from our grasp than you might think At Air Car, we've consistently suggested that our last 40 years of technology development should probably have advanced well farther along this advancements list by now. Clearly the future is not going to happen without our active intercession now. The following section is a snippet of one discussion concerning Stakeholders. Who should be leading the programs, and who should be running the projects, needed to deliver this future ? If you have something to add, or revise, just visit our forums and contribute your views on this - or any of our other Roadmap for the Future component discussions. Who are our Stakeholders?Owners - Heads of State for the G8 countries? The United Nations? Kings and Queens? Or a smattering of representives from Science and Politics? Organizational and Government Owners - Scientific community leaders, Governmental Departments including Space Agencies, Transportation Agencies, Energy Agencies, Community Representatives?. Who would you pick to be on this list - based on track record? Or other... Steering Committee Members- Again, this is a tough one. For this group, we need to find the brightest and most experienced "builders" on the planet. Personal Track-records count here and each member of the Committee should be in a position to bring resources to the table as required to achieve targets in keeping with the timing and other needs of the working project teams. Naming names ... So - who are going to be our Stakeholders? First come the Program Owners. Its certainly true to say that humanity - the public - are the group most dramatically affected by the delays, failings, and successes of our project. Sure, everyone wants to be invited to a "party" but its not practical for everyone to disrupt their lives to attend weekly or monthly status meetings either. Fortunately, in democratic countries, we have elected leaders to represent our interests in this way. Unfortunately, in many democratic models, these elected politicians are confined to defer to what I call an "Operational mindset" - and not "Strategic" or 10+ year goals. Put plainly - in many democratic systems, politicians are obliged to vote for changes that improve conditions for special interests, corporate sponsors, and campaign contributers first - and to voters second. Without the monetary contributions of the first group, there would be no way to afford the advertising costs required to convince the second group - the general citizenry - that "they" are the best leaders to vote for. I just finished watching Robin Williams in a recent hollywood film "Man of the Year" - if you watched it and didn't get that his script is a rant of simple truths about the US democratic system - watch it again - until you do. Where the G8 leaders should be the easy choice for our Program Owners ordinarily, I find I'm not so certain because of their Operational Mindset and short-term focus. The United Nations? There are a lot of cooks in this kitchen - too many really. Huge organizations seem to muddle the simplest tasks - building processes that are nebulous and all-to-often ineffective. The United Nations isn't the resume of the team I am looking for either. I've got to head off in my Hemi again soon, so I'll put all of this pre-amble into a conclusion now ...
Steering Committee Members - this list is a little bit easier for me. I think that there are enough Space Agencies worldwide to represent the scientific and project management best-practises required to keep our Program on track. These organizations - with my previous caution about NASA - have probably got the resources required to keep Project Teams outfitted as needed to get the job done.
How tough is it to find the right team leads? Its tough. I rarely meet, in my professional career, individuals with the process know-how to get a really complex job done in a consistent and low-stress manner. I'll apologize to Program Managers of substance that read this - but bravado without substance is no recipe for successful project leadership - and its much more damaging when poor leads are left to build a program of this magnitude and importance.
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