Episode transcript The transcript is generated automatically by Podscribe, Sonix, Otter and other electronic transcription services.
Ricardo (4s): Hello, everyone. Welcome to the five minute podcast. Today I'd like to continue discussing about the Podcast Kill that Project. If we go back to last week, I discussed a lot about why it's so hard to kill a product. And I sat that there is a lot of human beings Kavier and cognitive bias on it. Ego inertia, sunk cost, fear, fear of failure. Later this week, I want to talk to you about what can you do to kill a project? And I'm sharing with you something that it's my own experience. And I need to tell you one thing Kill that Project is not good.
Ricardo (47s): It's not something that people do with pleasure. You only kill a project because something went wrong on that project. Because if you know that the Project upfront, it's not a good project, you don't even start it. So it's like, please, I'm just using an analogy. It's like getting a divorce. Nobody gets married and, go to the church, for example, thinking about divorce, right? You mary thinking that you will live forever together, but something happened on the middle of the way and things change, right? And it's a very traumatic process. So I want just that you acknowledge that.
Ricardo (1m 28s): And I want to share with you five steps that I personally use when I'm facing these kind of situation. And I need to really kill a project. The first thing is something like a reality check. And I basically try to answer how life would be if the Project did not exist. So if we just stopped doing that, so what will happen? What will be the problem? I will lose clients. I will lose an opportunity to grow to a market. I will lose diversity, what will be the pain of not having that project let me tell you, if you dark struggling saying, Oh God, if this Project did not exist, everything, wil be the same.
Ricardo (2m 12s): Then I would tell you that you have a problem because really this is a project that it may be worth two Kill because some projects are so critical that you cannot even think about killing it, because you say, if I Kill that Project and killing the company, my company will be dead, maybe not tomorrow, but maybe in half a year. So it's something that is very important. The second point is that you should fail fast. The biggest problem, because people have fear ego, inertia, so people fail miserably slow. And then when you fail, you create such a drama and such a trauma and such a damage that it becomes.
Ricardo (2m 58s): just unconceivable. So the first thing I want you to understand is that if you have, to fail, fail fast, fail quick. As soon as you notice God, this will go nowhere. This is irrelevant. Or the market conditions changed it so dramatically that the best course of it, the action is just to stop the Project. But there is a point here most of the time, when you fail fast, you fail without being mindful with the people in the project, most of the time you say, Oh God, let's get rid off that project. And suddenly, means to get rid of the Project means get a read of the team, get rid of the infrastructure.
Ricardo (3m 38s): And what happened if you do this way, you just fulfill the fear. Remember last week, you just fulfill the fear. So people will say, oh, God, did you see what had happened on that fail project? That happened two months ago, I will not be there. I will not be there. So what I'll do, I will do whatever I can do to delay the failure, to delay the failure. And then what starts happening? You start hiding things, you start not sharing information. You start just drying to drag that situation, because you have fear and you have hopes that something magical will happen in the future.
Ricardo (4m 21s): So you need to fail mindfully and not blame people for the failure. The failure is a part of the game. Of course, it's just not the desirable part of the game, but it's a part of the game. So you need to fail mindfully. And please I am using this. And I'm starting to think a lot about that because I saw a Ted talk about failing mindfully, because there are people involved. For example, if you stop a project you're talking, maybe you will win back directly 10 people,a hundred people, a thousand people. And you need just to understand how you can create some sort of psychological safety. And this is the point of my next item.
Ricardo (5m 4s): Number four it's to create a psychological safety culture. So if you want to fail fast mindfully. You must create a supporting culture where people, do not have fear of failure. They know that failure is a part of the experiment is a part of the innovation. So you create that and we can learn a lot from this high tech companies and startups. Do you see? They're not afraid to fail every time I hear Google or Google shred, thousands of ideas, every ear. So this is part of their creative processes.
Ricardo (5m 45s): And this is what makes Google, Google so they create a culture that people are not afraid of experiment. So if they experiment and they see that it will go nowhere, they just fail fast mindfully and they just move on. They just move on. But if you have a fear, if people start to having fear, what about their jobs about their security? Then things change and my last topic. That is, I would say quite polemic but I like to use that is the concept of timebomb. What is a timebomb? Is when you create a date or a deadline, with some clear expectations.
Ricardo (6m 26s): So by that date, the project must be at this stage or the Project must deliver that outcome or do something feasible and tangible and valuable. And if the project does not deliver it's over, it's over. So you create a time bomb. But look, a time bomb only works with a supporting coach, because let me tell you, if you create a time bomb in an environment of fear, ego inertia,do you know what will happen? I know people will take their CVS from the drawer and it will spread it out. They will look for a new job like crazy and they want to, leave fast before the boomb explodes.
Ricardo (7m 13s): Look, it's a natural in look, it's not aricardo that created this rule. This, is a natural survival, this is modern nature created. So it is our instinct of self-preservation. So it will say, look, this bomb will explode. I know that I'm not able to deliver that. What I do. I just find something else. So this is Why Gallup. Last year put that 85% of employees are disengaged or actively disengaged. This is really scared in this is the concept of the time bomb.So if you check the project will not have an impact if you shut it down, or if you keep the fail fast and fail mindfully, if you create a supporting culture and implement these mechanism like this time, boomb, you can kill a project without creating a human damage.
Ricardo (8m 6s): So you create an habit of being quite strong with the Project, but quite soft with people. And then I want just to finish using the words of William Ury one of the experts in negotiations. He always say, be tough with the problem in be kind with people. So what I'm telling you here. It's if you want to kill a project, be tough with the Project, but be soft with the people. Most of the time, we are tough with the Project and tough with the people. And then we have all this undesired side effects of failure. Think about that and see you next week with another five minutes Podcast.
