I recently read a quote attributed to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men and women to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
The managing of open source projects is often described as “cat herding”, but I’m hard pressed to think of a single instance where standing behind and attempting to goad contributors into moving towards a specific destination has ever worked. The best work we’ve done has come from storytelling, from saying “beyond the horizon is a thing and it is wonderful and will you take us there?”
Quote Investigator believes the Saint-Exupéry quote is really a modernization of a statement from his “Citadelle”, and while certainly not as succinct, this original version feels far more appropriate:
“One will weave the canvas; another will fell a tree by the light of his ax. Yet another will forge nails, and there will be others who observe the stars to learn how to navigate. And yet all will be as one. Building a boat isn’t about weaving canvas, forging nails, or reading the sky. It’s about giving a shared taste for the sea, by the light of which you will see nothing contradictory but rather a community of love.”
Or maybe the cat metaphor works if you just use a laser pointer.
