This is from one of my favorite fiction books, The Magician.

An apprentice had come to pass several tests, except one where he kept giving wrong answers..

"What is your allotted place?"

"My place is here."

"What is your allotted place?"

"Where I am needed."

And so it went, until upon reflection..

I am the architect of my own imprisonment.

"What is your alloted place?"

"This is no longer my place."

These people driving by, their faces were so sad. It wasn't just the first one, but the next one and then another one... It was like they were dead.

They're commuting to work, they're not supposed to be wearing a grin

Paraphrased from "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

When an environment of creativity and enthusiasm is curtailed, rarely are projects successful. Instead they just get done, to the lowest level that is required to check it off. Of course you can then set this level as the measure of success.

To me projects need life, a human aspect to it. Something beyond check boxes and figures. The feeling you get when you see something and feel like somebody put a lot of care and effort into it at the least, and lives changed on the other end of the scale.

For me success defined by the latter. I can't work on projects when the human aspect is taken out as I don't believe they will be successful. I've seen it happen before. The bureaucratic project just gets by, the one with a team that cares from the top down and focusing on human and community values continues to be successful above and beyond their project deliverables.