The Journey is the Prize

When the final status report is filed and the war room goes silent, what remains?

The Last Light

There’s a moment that every project leader knows but rarely discusses - that peculiar twilight when a major initiative concludes. Stakeholders sign off, the team disperses, and the urgent channels that once buzzed with crisis and breakthrough fall permanently quiet.

In the stillness comes a strange emptiness. Not the hollow disappointment of failure, but something more complex: the melancholy that accompanies the end of something that mattered deeply, even when it succeeded beyond all expectations.

The sun has set on this voyage. The Crew that weathered impossible storms together, that solved problems no one anticipated, that celebrated victories in the face of institutional doubt... that constellation of human possibility will never exist again.

And in that recognition lies a truth our metrics-obsessed world struggles to admit: the journey was the prize.

The Heresy of Intrinsic Value

In boardrooms, this sentiment sounds almost heretical. Projects exist to deliver outcomes. Teams are assembled to generate ROI. Resources are allocated to achieve measurable business value. The journey is overhead - necessary friction in service of the destination.

But ask any seasoned project leader in an unguarded moment and they’ll tell you another story. The late-night breakthrough when the impossible suddenly became inevitable. The insight that shifted a major assumption. The moment a disjointed group found its rhythm and became more than the sum of its parts.

Projects are exercises in beautiful contradiction:

• They create lasting change through temporary means.
• They build permanent capabilities through finite teams.
• They generate enduring value through relationships designed to end.

Unlike the permanence Corporations project, initiatives are honest about their temporality. From inception, they’re designed to conclude. We gather skilled people, unite them around shared purpose, navigate uncertainty together and then - inevitably... disperse. The specific alchemy that made this Crew capable of achieving the impossible will never be replicated exactly.

That temporality doesn’t diminish the experience. It intensifies it.

When Humans Become Resources

Too often, however, that alchemy is flattened. Talented individuals are reduced to “FTEs.” Motivation becomes an “engagement score.” Growth is measured as “utilisation rates.”

Organisations that treat the journey as overhead create cultures where people hide problems, avoid risks and deliver minimum viable commitment. They get compliance, not excellence. Presence, not engagement. Deliverables, not breakthroughs.

Efficiency tools can optimise schedules, but they cannot replicate the alchemy of human growth through shared challenge.

The Alchemy of Shared Purpose

Something transcendent happens when talented people unite around a challenge that matters.

Not just the work accomplished, but the transformation within each person. Skills sharpen. Confidence builds. Perspectives expand. Leadership emerges in unexpected places.

Watch a high-performing project team in flow: the rapid-fire problem-solving, the intuitive coordination, the way individuals stretch beyond their usual limits because the mission demands it. These moments arise from the chemistry of this team, facing this challenge, at this moment in time.

Years later, what do veterans remember? Not the final presentation or the go-live celebration. They remember the crisis that nearly broke them. The breakthrough that changed everything. The relationships forged under pressure.

These memories become part of their professional DNA. The journey doesn’t just deliver value.
The journey changes who we become.

The Compound Legacy

Sailors have always understood this truth. The point of a voyage isn’t merely to reach port; it’s to become the kind of sailor who can navigate any waters.

Master mariners speak of certain voyages that shaped them; not the easiest or most profitable, but those that demanded everything and revealed capabilities they didn’t know they possessed. These expeditions become treasured memories not despite their difficulty, but because of what they called forth from everyone aboard.

So it is with projects. Every difficult initiative builds capability that compounds across the future. Every relationship forged under pressure becomes part of a network of trust. Every skill developed through necessity becomes permanent capacity.

Organisations that grasp this principle build cultures where people compete to join the most challenging projects. They recognise their most valuable asset isn’t technology or methodology, but the accumulated wisdom of people shaped by meaningful journeys together.

The Choice Before Every Leader

Every leader faces a choice:

• Treat the initiative as a transaction to be optimised - or a transformation to be stewarded.
• See the team as resources to be deployed - or individuals to be developed.
• Measure only what ships - or also what grows.

James Carse distinguished between finite games (played to win and end) and infinite games (played to continue playing). Projects are finite by design, but the best leaders understand they serve the infinite game: developing people who will create value long after this initiative concludes.

The Sun Sets, The Wisdom Remains

The sun sets on every project. Teams disperse. Achievements are superseded.

This is not cause for despair but for attention. If time is finite and journeys temporary, then how we travel together matters immensely. The quality of experience, the growth that occurs, the relationships that form... these are the true treasures worth pursuing.

When you understand that the journey is the prize, everything shifts. You stop rushing toward artificial deadlines and start creating conditions for meaningful experience. You stop optimising people like resources and start developing them as humans. You stop measuring only outputs and start noticing the transformation happening around you.

The system you built may be replaced. The process you improved may evolve. The metrics you achieved may fade. But the wisdom gained, the relationships forged, the capabilities developed... these endure.

Standing at the edge of that twilight when another project completes, the truth emerges: the sun has set on this voyage, but what this Crew created within each other endures.

The ships may change. The waters may vary. The destinations may shift.
But the journey - that magnificent, messy, meaningful experience of humans united in purpose, growing through challenge... is always the prize.

For leaders ready to sail by different stars.