As a business owner, it’s natural to want to salvage a project – even when it’s going downhill quickly.
After all, you put so much time, energy, and effort into every project you begin, and leaving one for dead is a sad prospect. If you do that, it’s easy to let yourself believe that you’ve “failed” or that the whole idea was stupid, to begin with. Unfortunately, that kind of thought process doesn’t do anything good for your company, or for you as an individual.
In the world of business, sometimes projects just have to die, and knowing when to walk away is a critical part of keeping your company healthy, and keeping your mental wellbeing intact.
If you’re struggling with figure out what to do to save a failing project, and deciding when you need to just throw your hands up and walk away, this piece is for you.
Read on.
First Things First – Knowing When to Salvage a Project
We’ve all been there: that critical moment when a project is listing dangerously toward failure, and you need to make a split-second decision about whether to salvage it or let it go. While these moments are stressful and can be overwhelming, they’re critical for your company, and making good choices within them will go a long way toward ensuring you stay afloat for years to come.
The terrible thing is, however, that it’s not always easy to know when you actually should try to save a failing project. So often, professionals make these decisions from an emotional standpoint. When you’re emotionally invested in something because you’ve spent thousands of hours working on it, it’s nearly impossible to walk away. On the other hand, however, making business decisions from an emotional standpoint is seldom a good idea, and it almost always ends in disaster.
With that in mind, here are some logical questions to ask yourself when making the decision:
“Do I have the skills or expertise to finish this?”
The first question you should ask yourself is whether the project is truly realistic for you, given your unique set of skills and expertise. In many cases, projects fail because they were overly ambitious right out of the gate, and there’s nobody in the company that truly has the skills, expertise, and experience to bring a project to completion.
That said, the first thing you need to do is ask yourself whether the project is within your scope or not. Try to avoid the temptation to puff yourself up and assert that you do have the skills, even if you don’t. This won’t serve anyone in the long run, and it will only draw out the fate of your struggling project further.
“If I don’t have the skills and expertise, can I find someone who does?”
So you started a software company on the side. The only thing is, you’re not a software engineer, and your project is tanking. You’ve hit a series of brick walls you don’t know how to scale. In this case, all hope might not be lost. Even if you don’t have the skills to bring your project back into the black once more, can you find someone who does?
Today, we live in an economic environment where thousands of people are leaning toward working on a gig-to-gig basis. This means there are a plethora of talented, intelligent, creative people out there who aren’t tied down to any one company and are more than happy to work with various projects all at once.
With this in mind, consider finding someone who has the skills and expertise needed to help you make your project successful. Depending on what your needs may be, you can find talent on industry-specific job boards, or a freelancing platform like Upwork.
In addition to helping fix your project, finding someone with an in-depth skillset may also provide the insight and fresh viewpoints you need to take the next step forward.
“Is it Too Late?”
Sometimes, it’s just too late to salvage the project. If you’ve spent more money than you have, made fatal mistakes, or waded into territory where nobody else is willing or able to help rectify things, it might be time to kiss things goodbye. Knowing when you’ve gone too far is a critical skill. When properly developed, this skill will save you from financial and personal disaster down the road.
The Art of Walking Away: Tricks to Do it Gracefully
If you’ve asked yourself the above questions and the answers aren’t looking good, it’s time to walk away from the project. This is a complicated and emotional process. Therefore, know that it’s noral to feel some sadness or shame surrounding it. Here are a few tips to make it easier:
- Try not to dwell. Dwelling on the downfall of one project only makes it harder to start the next one. Learn from the mistakes and move on.
- Kill the project quickly.Once you’ve decided to walk away, kill the old project quickly. If you drag it out, you’ll only be dumping more valuable resources into it lie time, energy, and funds that could be dedicated to something more promising. Instead, make a clean break and pivot your focus.
- Don’t rebound hastily.While beginning a new project is smart, starting one from a place of desperation and fear isn’t. This is a time when you will likely make bad decisions and start projects that are bound to fail again. Instead, take some time to recover and consider your next move. Once you’ve done that, make said move intentionally.
When a Project is Salvageable: 5 Steps to Make it Work
If you’ve asked yourself the above questions and decided that it is indeed possible to salvage a project, here are the five steps you’ll need to take to get it done:
- Accept responsibility and acknowledge the situation
It’s impossible to salvage a project if these two things don’t happen. Firstly. before anything can go forward, the people involved in the project’s downfall need to accept responsibility. Frequently, the negative direction the project took wasn’t the result of malice or bad intentions. In most cases, it’s a mixture of poor decisions and failed efforts. Everyone can work to make those things right, once more, by first taking responsibility for their roles.
Secondly, everyone involved in a project needs to acknowledge the state it’s in and commit to making it better. It won’t do any good to sugarcoat things. It is essential to start from where you actually are, rather than where you wish you were.
- Strip the project back to the foundation
When the project began, what were its primary objectives? Chances are, one of the reasons it got so close to failing is because it deviated from those. Sit down with the team involved with the project and do a step-by-step dissection of the project to determine where it went wrong and what you can do to get it back on track.
Remember to be flexible, here, as the first approach didn’t work. To make things go forward, you have to be willing to alter your strategy.
- Improve your communication
One thing that people commonly overlook in the project management setting is communication. It’s impossible for a diverse team to work together efficiently on a project unless they’re communicating well.
That said, take this opportunity to go back and re-evaluate your communication channels. Ensuring communication is flowing effortlessly and efficiently is a critical step in ensuring the success of the project – in everything from marketing to productivity to time management.
As you identify weak points in your communication, replace them with stronger links. For example, maybe you weren’t holding enough face-to-face reviews in the earlier phases of the project. In this case, you could benefit from using a collaborative dashboard like Basecamp. This will help you manage your communication and hold regular face-to-face check-ins to ensure that everything is staying on-track and fluid.
- Face team concerns head-on
Resentment is a guaranteed ingredient for failure in group projects, and being sure to address team concerns head-on is an excellent way to stop irritation before it has a chance to form. While the near failure of a project is traumatic for the project manager, it’s also traumatic for team members. It is critical to acknowledge this and address it accordingly.
When team members have a chance to voice their concerns and express their fears, they are more likely to invest renewed interest into the project and work as hard as they can toward its success.
- Don’t make the same mistakes again
We’ve all heard the saying “it’s not the mistakes you make, it’s what you learn from them.” There are countless examples of successful people throughout history who have failed miserably in many of their projects. With that in mind, don’t let the bumpy trajectory of this project get you down. Commit yourself to learning from your mistakes and moving forward, careful to no make the same ones again.
When you and your team both take careful lessons from the project in question, you can all become better, more efficient operators – both now and in the future.
Salvage a Project the Smart Way
In business as in life, there’s a time to hold on, and there’s a time to walk away. If you need to abandon a failing project, do it as gracefully as possible and use the experience to make better moves in the future. If it’s possible to save the project, however, things like auditing your communication channels, accepting responsibility, holding team meetings, and facing project concerns, head on will help you get back on track and enjoy a successful project once more.
To learn more about how to increase your productivity for business success, contact Thrive Internet Marketing. We’re a full-service digital marketing company offering quality management services for brands like yours!
Virginia Van Kampen