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Ricardo (4s): Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Five Minutes Podcast at this time of the year, the usually the first podcast of 2020. It's the time that you are reviewing your projects for the upcoming year, you are closing the Project from the previous year. And this made me remember a book that I read, I would say maybe seven or eight years ago called Kill that company by Lisa Bodell. And this book is all about simplifying things and how it's hard to transform So what we discussed and we can see in that book is that why it's so hard to simplify things?
Ricardo (45s): Why it's so hard to decide about killing a project. please. I don't want you to feel that the word Kill has just a negative connotation, but I'm talking Kill means the killing involves something. That is a tough decision at a tough challenge to Handel because the Kill is always associated with something that is not positive. That is traumatic and negative. And this of course it's the environment because no one's started a Project thinking that at some point they will have to cancel it or kill the Project. So let's talk about that. And I decided to record this podcast and the Podcast of the next week, just to talk about this.
Ricardo (1m 27s): So this week I will discuss a little bit more about why it's so hard to kill a Project, why so hard. Why many times we are in the middle of a project. And say why have we started Why did we start? Because it's so traumatic the process. And then next week, I want to discuss how to Kill. So I will share with you a little bit of my own experience since if you have to take or something like a bold decision, how do you do that? So going back on why it's so hard to kill a project so I can tell you four clear reasons for that.
Ricardo (2m 7s): And you will be a little bit surprised because many times we talk about, Oh, we are talking about money. We are talking about technology. No, most of the time it becomes so hard to kill a project because of our individual preferences, all the reasoning, motivation, and feelings around killing a project. The first one is ego. Ego is a really, really a dramatic thing because people start when the Project start, you get so engaged. So in love. So passionate about that, that your Eagle makes you blind to.
Ricardo (2m 49s): See that the benefit does not exist or will never exist. So your ego is one of the biggest challenges for you to decide on killing example, your own project. So this ego, it's something that makes a very big contribution for people just to sit on their current status. And these drive me to the second point and keep inertia. And what am I inertia? I nurture. If you go to the first time Newton's law, you will see that I nurture. It means if you have a body that is moving, it tends to continue moving. If the body is not moving, it will not start moving by itself.
Ricardo (3m 34s): So this is a basic, our initial. So what happens that you are doing a project. You start getting used to that you started passionately about that. So what happened? You don't want to stop the Project because it stops. The Project is good. You mean against traditional inertia because it's a soup, a change, the environment, and people don't like change very much. The third one is about sunk cost. I spoke with it many times in many podcasts about Suncoast. What is a sunk cost? The sunk cost is the amount of money or a Fort of energy you already spent. So what happens is this amount of money should never be part of the decision to continue to or not.
Ricardo (4m 20s): I love and I said many times there is a quote from Elliot Goldratt that he's one of my favorite coats. He said that the first thing you need to do when you are inside a home stops digging. What do I mean by that? It's somebody like, Oh, we already spell it. $1 million in this project so let's spend one more and then you say, no, God, now I spent 2 million. So let's spend two more. And in the end, you just create a bigger in a bigger problem. So one of the key things is that if you notice you're on the wrong way, please stop as fast as you can to avoid the perception of the sun costs in the fourth one.
Ricardo (5m 5s): That is for me, one of the clearest ones and one of the most challenging is to solve is the fear why we are so afraid of killing a project because people fear the failure killing is always connected to something that you didn't want because of course, if you knew up front that the Project was a bad decision, then I need to ask you, why did you do that? Right? It doesn't make any sense. So far, fear of losing the job fear of having, I would say that stigma of all that group, that group, they were the ones that sail.
Ricardo (5m 46s): So you will see that next week. I will talk a lot about culture because one of the best ways to create an environment where you can Kill projects that are not reasonable is to create a cultural way environment and psychological safety for people to work. So far because you feel the failure. Look, we are not good at dealing with failure, none of us. So remember that motor that a lot of people say about sports that all the most important things in an Olympic game, his to compete, it's not to win a, we all know that this is not true. This is not true.
Ricardo (6m 26s): We raised it to when we would not raise it to compete. So when do we compete and loos, we don't feel happy. You know you don't feel happy. Oh God, I was trying to be the champion of this volleyball tournament. And then I lost, but very happy. It's not common. Nobody is engaged with a project. There is a failure once to be part of it. And this is why most of the time, people try to drag that for whatever until he or she finds a new job and move on. So when the project collapses, nobody is there to witness the failure.
Ricardo (7m 6s): So these are the basic four challenges that make killing a project, such hard work. Next week. I want to talk to you about how do you handle this? How do you work and create an environment where killing bad ideas or killing complexity, it's taken in a serious and at the same time, positive way. And this is good. What will discuss in the second part of this podcast called Kill that Project? So I hope you enjoy the podcast and see you next week with another Five Minutes Podcast, take care.
