Recoverable or Trash Fire: When It’s Time to Let an Initiative Fail
Choosing to no longer invest in a project or program because it will not achieve desired outcomes is a valid strategy, and frankly, is underutilized within organizations. The challenge is using criteria and feeling comfortable with moving on.
You may have heard of terms like "trash fire" or "dumpster fire" to describe a situation, project, or program. Essentially, that conveys that it's worse than being just trash because it's also on fire.
It also is a great meme or custom emoji in Slack.
There are many reasons why an initiative ends up this way, but at the point when some stakeholders feel that level of heat, it's possible that the desired outcomes are no longer achievable.
The trick is knowing when to step back and what questions to ask to determine whether continued investment is worthwhile.
Are the desired outcomes still achievable given resource constraints (i.e. time, budget, people, etc)?
What is the opportunity cost of continuing to invest versus moving those resources to other initiatives?
Does the initiative's risk outweigh its rewards and potential upside?
Are there changes within the organization or overall market that invalidate assumptions or misalign goals?
What lessons can be learned from how the initiative has progressed thus far?
Even when an initiative is accretive in value, allocating resources to it can be suboptimal relative to the organization at large.
Don't hesitate to let the fire burn itself out and use your resources to prevent the fire from spreading to adjacent initiatives.
TLDR: It may seem counterintuitive to let a project or program "fail", but sometimes this is in the best interest of your resources and organization.
