When is it time to kill a project?
And how can we know?
The other day I was talking to a colleague about when and how to make this call. It’s hard to know whether a project just needs more time to take root, or if it’s well and properly doomed.
Probably we’ve all experienced the relief of letting go of a project whose time had passed, or whose impracticality had become clear. But probably all of us have suffered through projects that either (a) weren’t killed in time, or (b) were nipped in the bud before they had any chance to prove out.
Patience, patience
Arguing on behalf of patience, my buddy gave the example of The West Wing on television, which drew mediocre ratings for NBC until word-of-mouth — and a wagonload of Emmys — boosted its audience. He contrasted this with the many, many shows that are killed after half a dozen episodes because they don’t catch fire with viewers immediately. (A favorite example of mine is Wonderfalls, which was wonderfully written, but too quirky for its own good.)
Certainly some shows should be allowed to die early, but what if it’s simply impatience on the part of t.v. executives that’s preventing the emergence of more West Wing-type hits?
Enthralled by sunk costs
On the other end of the spectrum, there are those awful projects that become self-sustaining in the worst way. We justify our past decisions, whether they deserve it or not. We throw good money after bad. We use all sorts of tortured logic — or just raw hope — to explain away failures and posit successful outcomes.
The best example I can think of comes from baseball, the land of guaranteed contracts, where it seems to be a rite of passage for every manager and general manager to be forced to play an overpriced, under-producing player because the owner can’t stand the idea “that we’d be paying him all that money to sit on the bench.”
But as any economist can tell you, sunk costs are sunk. They’re not coming back. Team X may not like paying Mr. Formerly Fearsome Slugger millions per year to stink it up at the plate, but . . . them’s the breaks. If there’s a better player available on the roster, he should play while Mr. F.F.S. sits.
Easier said than done?
If our emotions never got tangled up in our logic, maybe life — and business — would be easy. But back in the real world, our feelings invariably have some pull in our decisions, and it can be hard to cut the cord on our cherished projects.
So, how do you get over that hurdle?
How do you know when it’s time to kill a project?
And how do you go about it?
~
(Image via TreeHugger, with apologies to National Lampoon’s classic January 1973 cover. Do I need to tell you that National Lampoon isn’t suitable for work? It’s not suitable for work.)
Category: Management15 Comments so far
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Tim,
I don’t have a good answer to your question but have a related issue — how to convince your boss to kill a project when he’s seeing some vision that has no basis in reality (or other people’s visions). I’d have happily killed some tech projects I’ve worked on, but was overruled.
Stopped that problem by not working there anymore ;-)
Brenda
Brenda — Sometimes the “nuclear option” of quitting is all you can do!
But in general, I think selling the killoff is like selling anything else: you have to portray the value of it **from the perspective of the person to whom you’re selling the idea**.
If it’s the boss’s pet project you’re talking about — or something that seems exciting to him/her — it’s a much tougher job. But often the basic appeals work best: killing it will save money, killing it will save time, killing it will improve morale, keeping it going costs too much for too little return, etc.
Sometimes it’s a long haul.
Wonderfalls was almost too good for television. So was Firefly. One succeeded in the DVD aftermarket, one didn’t.
Maybe the issue isn’t always killing projects that aren’t working, but figuring out if they’re in the wrong place?
VERY good point, Ike.
Since you mentioned Firefly, let me riff on Joss Whedon for a sec. The guy is obviously a storytelling machine, but he’s extended his effectiveness by not insisting that it all be in one venue, e.g. feature films or major network television. He’s writing comics, doing online stuff (Dr. Horrible blog musical), involved with films, etc.
It’s gonna take a while before this model takes over, though.
“It’s a trap!” - Admiral Ackbar, Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi
I’m going to spoil everyone’s party and just say that, too often, *there is no way to know* when a project should be killed. Indeed, the world’s great achievements have been built, in a sense, by a stubborn, “stupid” minority keeping alive projects the majority wanted to kill.
Examples of TV shows like The West Wing or, one of *my* favorites that instead met the Wonderfalls fate, Dead Like Me, are nothing compared to the business, scientific, and massive historical examples of “throwing good money after ‘bad’”.
Unfortunately, that also leads to a lot of bad ideas staying around longer than they should. It’s a messy world and there ain’t no gettin’ around it. We live in a world where mediocre ideas can flourish (I’ll refrain from citing my pet TV examples here) and great ones wither (e.g. the prophetically-named Dead Like Me).
The only real way to tell when it’s time to kill a project is to leave it to the last one left to turn out the lights. In other words, I think Brenda hit on it without exactly saying it: There’s no way to know when it’s time to kill a project, only when it’s time for you to leave one. And even that answer isn’t always as easy as we’d like it to be.
It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.
Let us consider who has to be involved in a new order of things typically. The team of skilled but disparate competents, the writer (designer), the director (team leader and head cheerleader), the producer (sr. exec) responsible for creating the ecology and the c-levels who gamble their lives, fortunate and sacred honor on this motley collection whose talent is unknown until they deliver.
Now consider Lord of the Rings and the special features on the DVD. The most superb example of an outstanding design carried out by a team of truly talented people in all functions coordinated and energized by a team leader of passion and genius. Backed by superb producers further backed by a c-level willing to let $300M disappear into a black hole for almost five years.
Then consider King Kong - mediocre story, drowned in special effects where track record was no substitute for having all the elements in place and working synergistically.
Then consider Firefly - outstanding stories, superb writing, good acting, amazing music, ham-handed execution and negative interference by the C-level who disrupted the evolutionary flow of the story.
How ’bout Studio 60 - started well, many elements, could have been great comedy-drama that was also the world’s best forum for honest debate on values and philosophies that dove into the black hole of creator’s self-indulgence, destroyed the audience and lost funding. Yet sadly recovered at last but too late (it’s now on HULY in total btw).
Nothing is so difficult…
Chris - I appreciate what you say here, but I think there’s a key difference between (a) knowing and (b) having a pretty good (i.e. actionable) guess. I agree that the first of these is elusive, if not actually fictional, but we must proceed as though the second is attainable.
dblwyo — I take your point. In particular, we can’t rely on a “genius” (Jackson, Sorkin) to deliver the goods in every case.
But what might be useful rules of thumb?
That I’d have to think about but the point I was reaching for was this is really hard work, it takes a skilled team no matter what genius is present and is fraught with many places where it can break.
That said it seems to me that the fundamental RofT is “good business judgment”.
That’s not meant to beg off but presented as the sine qua non of decision-making - to start, to run and to continue or kill.
Beyond that should it be thrown open for discussion ?
I’d start with good people, set up checkpoints that mimic the nature of the project, trust your people and give them adequate resources and rewards, penalize only bad behaviors not failures but be prepared to pull the plug when milestones are not being met.
This interview with Peter Cherin on Rose speaks to this entire discussion. The discussion of Titanic as a failed movie that turned out and the whole discussion about the creative product.
A conversation with Peter Chernin, President and Chief Operating Officer of News Corporation, and Chairman and CEO of the Fox Group.
http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/08/04/1/a-conversation-with-peter-chernin
dmlwyo — Very interesting, both for the discussion of Titanic and for Chernin’s views on social media and other online businesses. I also had no idea about his involvement in the fight against malaria. Good stuff.
I’m shocked no one has brought up the classic “Freaks & Geeks” which had the hammer fall too soon.
I once pitched a project to a cable network & they LOVED it. However, after the bloom wore off their VP confessed that they had another project in the same general “area” mine was in - the problem was that project had been in development for years and they had wasted thousands of dollars on it. They passed on my project even though “everyone liked it better” they wanted to stick with what they had. Three years later, I finally caught an episode - it’s had no publicity and they’re quietly burning off the episodes.
Hooray for Hollywood! Gah.
How can nobody mention “Happy Days” - the TV show that led to coining the phrase “jumping the shark”? Aaaay!
Slackmistress & Nedra — Good comments. To me, they represent the opposite sides of the “golden handcuffs” that too often bind us.
Happy Days made so very much money for so long that they kept it going long after the show had run out of ideas. And Slackmistress, the project competing with yours sang the siren song of sunk costs: “We’ve spent so much money on it at this point . . .”
[...] the same conversation that inspired the post about when it’s time to kill a project, my friend said something about how sometimes we make the right choice (or back the right project [...]