A friend, talking about running a project, said to me last week "it's like the partially-sighted leading the blind". Ian Jack, talking about his dad, wrote in the Guardian at the weekend: "[As a child] I had no idea how new this was ... I imagined he had always known how to do these things ... of course he had to teach himself, listening to the helpful hints of [others] and reading books" Yep, implementation in an environment where tasks are not simply rote reproductions is often like this, e xploratory . You'll feel your way, based on what advice, experiment, evidence, research, intuition and experience you have. If you're sensible, and able, you'll set up feedback systems to help you know when you're going off track (and hopefully you'll know what on-track looks like). When leading others through it too, I find that I want to be up front about the extent to which I feel like I know what I'm doing and be prepared to outline...