How to Manage the Pain of the End: Understanding Project Closure

In this week's episode, Ricardo talks about something nobody talks too much about. The pain of the end.

When the project releases its main products or services, it is pure joy. However, there is a less joyful moment happening at the same time: the feelings surrounding the end of the work, the loss and fears about the future.

Listen to the podcast to know how communications and a human approach can reduce the trauma of demobilization and disassembly.

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Episode transcript

The transcript is generated automatically by Podscribe, Sonix, Otter and other electronic transcription services.

Ricardo (0s):
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the 5 Minutes Podcast. Today I like to talk about something that most of the people do not like talking about or do not care too much about talking about is the end and how to manage The pain of the end. So why it's so complex when a project comes to a Closure that you do a proper Closure. And for me, what is very important for us to understand is that human behavior behind the beginning and the end of a project. So when you were starting a project, you were starting building, creating something is extremely exciting.

Ricardo (46s):
Each playful. It's a happy moment, right? So imagine you are in your family, decide to build a new house. It's nice, right? It's a very nice, it's cool. It's a happy moment. But when it comes to the end, it's very painful on everything because the End means loss. The end means feelings, fears, Pain. I like to do an analogy that is just for the tactical reasons that you see when a baby is born, a baby is born. Okay. And it's just happiness. It's just a joy.

Ricardo (1m 27s):
It just excitements for the parents, for the family, for the love it. Once it's not so common and we do not handle very well when we lose someone we love, right? When someone passes away, it's not the same feeling. It's not common to see people very happy and excited when something like that happens because it's a human behavior because we do not handle the loss. So for example, let's suppose you are listening to me and you are a project manager or a scrum master or whoever working in a large project. Okay. For example, you are doing a digital transformation just to not to take a construction example. And you were working for the past too years, two and a half years, three years, like crazy on that in the team, trying to digitize everything, trying to organize everything, revisit the business model.

Ricardo (2m 20s):
And suddenly they're a big product is coming to an end because it's done. What has the feeling? It's the feeling, okay? What do you do after that? What will be my job will do I go back to the same desk? I was working two and a half years ago. That probably your desks is not there anymore. And it's life is just a way it is. For example, if you are constructing a very large dam or a very large airport or a very large infrastructure, and you mobilize 10,000, 15,000 people around that, you build a city. And certainly people to bark in people made friends, people work together.

Ricardo (3m 3s):
And this is the pain of the loss is very high. And this is why it's not uncommon. When people start delaying things to not finish the project that we call this syndrome of 9.9%. But it's very common because these feelings are very strong. So you want to make it survive. One day I said one thing, that was a very, I wouldn't say polemic, but for me, I try not to say something from my heart. For example, when you see that your company is not viable anymore, many people, they tried the hard way. They try to do whatever they can to make it grow and make it.

Ricardo (3m 44s):
It cannot die. It cannot die mindfully. And at the end, what do you do? You just shred and a lot of money to create a lot of pain for the same Def because of the business is not viable anymore. It doesn't matter. You are selling something that the population does not want to buy any more. This is just a simple example. Okay? So what I said, its when you fail or even when you failed, when things go wrong and we need to close a business to close it in a mindful way and how do you do that? First? You need to understand how the mobilization we work. So you don't say, Oh, people now, bye bye to everybody.

Ricardo (4m 25s):
No, you need to prepare a true position so people can benefit and prepare themselves for the future. Second, you need to communicate. You need to communicate to the Society. You need to communicate to the authorities or whatever. Saying, look, we are the commission that plant, we are the commission that work we are doing on that. Citi. We are finishing that massive project that brought a lot of revenue and a lot of prosperity to that neighborhood because now the project is done. So you need to communicate. Cause if you don't communicate, you built and Powerwall up resistance on the top of resistance.

Ricardo (5m 7s):
And third, you need to understand that even when you leave the product, the project we'll be there. So there are actions on warranty support. For example, at suppose you build a massive team to do a digital transformation. At the end, you need to have people that will sustain that environment Because problems we were arise. If you have a power plant, you need to have equipment on the warranty. You need to have maintenance. So I'm talking to me, it's operation, but you need to understand that this should be transitioned in an orderly way or otherwise people will not even know, Okay. Where did we buy this from?

Ricardo (5m 47s):
So you can not even try to use a warranty. And I saw this, Okay? I saw this in so many public projects. We see that we see that, that there is no tracking of happened during the construction. So when people start running, people don't even know where these come from, where this equipment or when or why we did. This is why we build these walls. Where is the, I wouldn't say the foundation, a distractor. So we need to be very mindful on that. And I want to finish this podcast by telling you that this can work the same way for you, for example. So let's suppose you want to leave your job. Let's suppose you want to finish your work on that project.

Ricardo (6m 31s):
You need to have a strategy to do that. It's not just saying, Oh, I'm angry today. Bye bye. Because there was a lot of things that can be destroyed in destroy. Things is far easier than Butte things. So next week I will use these analogy and I will talk about what is your exit strategy? How do you implement an exit strategy? That is a professional. That is a competent, that is damaged freedom that you don't live. Just throwing everything away that you are mindful of with the community we're working with. You were mindful with the people you are working with.

Ricardo (7m 11s):
And this is something very special for me because there were a few people think about that. So I want you to think this week on that in the next week, let's talk more about your exit strategy.

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