Visionary of Grandiose Plans
Five years ahead, one inch above the ground
The Visionary doesn't ship because shipping is small. They strategize. They architect. They produce slide decks that describe a future where AI has solved the hard parts and someone — not them, obviously — has implemented the result. The model makes this worse because it can generate plausible-looking architecture diagrams for anything, including things that don't work.
Symptom
Roadmaps that begin five years out. Prototypes 'omitted to preserve strategic altitude.' Slide decks with ten levels of abstraction and zero lines of code. When asked for a demo, the Visionary produces a diagram. When asked for the diagram, they produce a vision.
Why It Matters
The Visionary's plans aren't wrong — they're unfalsifiable. You can't test a five-year roadmap. You can't run a strategy. The AI makes this pattern worse because it generates fluent, confident-sounding architecture for anything, including approaches that have never worked and never will.
What the Chapter Gives You
How to spot the gap between slide-deck altitude and implementation depth, why 'AI will solve that part' is always the hardest part, and the counter-moves that force the Visionary to build something real.
Want the full chapter? Grab the free cheat sheet, read an excerpt, or get the book.
Recognize this one in your codebase?
Free cheat sheet, excerpts, and interactive diagnostics.