RSSVisionariness
It strikes me that there is sort of a scale to being a visionary, and there is also much to it that lies within the eye of the beholder. One man's visionary is another's Don Quixote. The proto-visionary runs the risk of being judged later as a schmuck who did exactly the wrongs things at the wrong time, or perhaps just an ordinary sort who only did what would have been obvious to anyone. There's a relatively narrow range for the successful visionary, which I suppose precludes a lot of us from trying it on.
These aren't exactly the thoughts Ade McCormack is getting at in his post "Are you a business visionary?" but they were thoroughly provoked by it, and his concise advice to those answering in the affirmative: "If so then stop it."
He softens the blow by going on to allow that perhaps, after all, you are allowed to be a visionary if you can first sell your staff on your vision. Until that happens, keep it well away from the business, implying you're otherwise bound to be seen as just another wild-eyed tech evangelist out solving problems no one has.
I'm even more skeptical than Ade, though, at least in some respects. I think it's critical that the CIO be visionary, of course, but I think it has to be a different sort of vision, one less involved with technology and more with developing and running an IT department that deals primarily in realizing business visions. Helping business leaders and staff become visionaries; now there is a job for a truly visionary CIO.
