Incremental Cathedrals

Thoughts on "moonshots" and when we should take them

As a follow-up on my last post, where I described Blake Scholl’s critique of the Apollo Project, and expressed skepticism of “moonshots,” I want to try and draw a distinction between different kinds of major projects and different approaches to projects.

Utilitarian vs. Inspirational Projects

Whether a project is worthwhile depends on why we’re undertaking it.

The majority of projects are utilitarian in nature. We’re doing them because we want to achieve some concrete outcome. In that case, the success of the project is a question of whether we achieved the outcome, and whether the cost of the project was less than the value it generated.

But some projects are different.

For the last 140 years, the people of Barcelona have been erecting the Sagrada Família. The basilica, envisioned by Antoni Gaudí in the 1880s, is expected to be completed next year. If you’re not familiar with the project, this video gives a sense of the work, and the significance of what should be the final generation of construction.

Majestic as the basilica is, you could imagine skeptical critiques. Four generations to complete it? Can you even imagine the budget overruns? But those critiques are missing the point. How would you measure “return on investment” for a building that is meant to last for millennia?¹

The building’s purpose is to stretch the upper limits of art and beauty. When you’re building something for the glory of God, then it doesn’t really matter how long it takes. Spending generations to build it is an act of worship.

Sagrada Família isn’t a utilitarian project, it’s an inspirational project. It demonstrates what humanity can achieve when we commit to do work for its own sake.

Returning to Apollo: Scholl’s criticism, that the program was not a viable path to opening a sustainable age of space travel, still stands. If you consider it as a utilitarian project, it failed. But that’s not why we did it. Apollo was pursued for its own sake, as an inspiration and a challenge, and presented to the world as such.²

The Accidental Cathedral

Truly inspirational projects starts with a monumental design that exceeds current capacity to deliver. Whether that’s building a majestic cathedral, or a literal moonshot, we’re aspiring to do something remarkable, at the very limit of our capabilities. For an inspirational project, the challenge is the point. But there’s a risk here: when we dream grand dreams of progress, sometimes we mistake a utilitarian project for an inspirational one.

Consider the mega-project that has become the butt of all jokes: California’s High-Speed Rail. Planning started in 1996. Voters approved substantial funding in 2008. Construction of a small portion began in 2015. The dream is to connect San Francisco to San Diego, but Californians are currently hoping they can ride from Merced to Bakersfield by 2032.

California HSR started from a monumental design that exceeded the capacity of the state to execute, so it’s not surprising that it has struggled. But passenger rail is not an inspirational project to be undertaken for its own sake; the goal is to achieve a concrete, operational outcome that has already been proven around the world. A smarter approach would have been to develop a series of smaller, utilitarian projects as steps toward the long-term vision, building capacity along the way. As capacity increased, the complexity and ambition of subsequent projects could increase.

Critically, that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be an ambitious vision. But grand visions are easy; a viable plan to deliver the vision is the difference between successful projects and science fiction.

As a real-world example, consider the incremental modernization of the Italian railways. Rather than try to engineer a massive system to a finished state, the Italian approach was to consider the many bottlenecks in their rail system every year, and to improve them one by one as funding allowed. There was no magical moment when Italy rebuilt its railways, the system just got a bit better every year.

Taking the monumental approach doesn’t mean that California HSR won’t be finished. It might mean that it will take 140 years.

The Incremental Cathedral

Sometimes I get pushback on incremental thinking, that our problems are “too big” and that we need mega projects to address them. But I think that pushback reflects a misunderstanding. Incrementalism is not an outcome, it’s a strategy to actually deliver outcomes.

First, even inspirational projects tend to be incremental in execution. Construction techniques and aesthetic details evolved throughout the construction of the Sagrada Família, even as it stayed true to its original vision. The moon landing was preceded by the Mercury and Gemini programs, as well as the earlier Apollo missions, that pushed NASA’s capability forward one step at a time. There’s no shortcut to building capacity if you want to do great things, and the best way to build capacity is to have short feedback loops that facilitate learning and experimentation.

Second, inspirational outcomes don’t always require monumental projects.

Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, is one of the most beloved public buildings in the United States. For the city of Chicago, it serves as a landmark, tourist attraction, and cultural anchor, much like the role the Sagrada Família plays in the city of Barcelona.

First constructed in less than three months in the spring of 1914, Wrigley Field has undergone a series of expansions and reconfigurations over time. It was nearly doubled in size in 1923. The left field bleachers were moved back in 1925 to reduce the number of home runs. An upper deck was added in 1928. The outfield walls were covered in ivy in 1937. Lights were added to the field in 1988. The bleachers were rebuilt in 2005. And the recent “1060 project” updated many more aspects of the stadium.

Stewart Hicks’ video on Wrigley gives a sense of the evolution of the facility and how it has deeply integrated with the surrounding neighborhood over time, but also, how and why the incremental evolution of the park created a community anchor.

Wrigley didn’t start with a monumental design, but you could say that, over time, the ballpark learned how to be better and better. The end result couldn’t have been designed up front because the incremental evolution itself is an inherent part of the inspirational outcome. There’s something magical, almost spiritual, in continuity; in projects and places that retain a meaningful connection to their past, even as they change and grow. In a sense, Wrigley Field represents an Incremental Cathedral.

So, we should boldly undertake “moonshots” when we believe the effort is valuable for its own sake, and avoid them when we want to achieve utilitarian, operational outcomes. But we should also keep in mind that an incremental / operational approach isn’t a limit to our ambition. In fact, it’s the foundation underneath most of our achievements.

1. Don’t take that as an exaggeration. Many other Catholic Churches have operated for hundreds of years, and some much longer than that (St. Peter’s will soon turn 400, Notre Dame is approaching 1,000), so it’s not unreasonable to expect the Sagrada Familia to be maintained indefinitely, for as long as the city of Barcelona itself endures.

2. Consider how the project was famously described by John F. Kennedy:

But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.