Plausible deniability

I have not given this enough though until someone came to me and said, "hey dude, are you really gonna throw everything you have to this project? Aren't you supposed to just play safe?"

The point is, you have to be safe to be able to achieve what you plan for. On the other hand, if you spend too much time in looking for plausible deniability, guess what, you just create an atmosphere where everyone's main interest is not in getting things done, but in getting asses covered when shit hits fans. It is not easy, however, just to keep your head down, ignoring all politics around you and your project team, naively thinking it is a single-threaded project execution. Make no mistake, it never was, and will never be!

To have a project without pissing everyone off, yet still coming out with expected results, is more of an artistic execution than a by-the-book exercise. Obviously, a happy and motivated crowd will just ease off those expected and unexpected impedance, not mention initiatives. If your goal is really getting things done rather than being tragic hero, you should know that when you are gone, by whatever reasons, your project gone with you, be it a car crash, a mis-interpreted message, one wrong recruitment, one careless comment. I might have made it too dramatic than reality, it is likely that some of these problems will not be one if you weigh them at different levels.

It is imperative that a project leader shows his/her full commitment and always ready to go extra miles to make things happen. I have plenty of examples that crossing the line of being THERE or "let's try it next time" really lies in how much you want it, in another word, if you started to look for plausible deniability, using brake when you should be on full gas, you're pretty much out of luck.