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Hello everyone. Welcome to the 5e Minutes Podcast. I am pretty sure that every single of you listening to this episode has already faced it or work it or saw a zombie project. And what is a zombie project? It's a project that for any reason did not meet any criteria to continue existing, but it is still around. That project is late, is not delivering any benefit. The business justification for the project does not exist anymore, but the project is still there, dragging resources, dragging energy from all company or corporate sides and nobody can get rid of it. And I want to share with you, based on my experience, three factors that I believe make them exist and three actions that you should act, think and execute to get truly rid of these zombie projects. So the first part, why do they exist? The first reason is sunk cost. And what do I mean by that? It's many times you decide not to kill or terminate a project because you already spent a lot of energy on it. So you spend time or maybe you spend money or you spend anything that you say, You know, I already spent six months on this project, and then you spend one year and then you said, Oh, I already spent one year, and then you spend two years. Remember previous energy that you spend in a project? And when I say energy, it can be money, It can be teams should not affect your future decisions. And there is a quote that I love from L.A. Goldratt, the author of The Goal, and I said this many times The first thing you need to do when you are inside a hole, it is stop digging, stop.
Just stop digging. And many times you are afraid because you always think on what the energy and the amount of energy you spend on that project. The second reason is the concept of pet projects. Pet, really, like a small kitten or like a dog. It's a pet project. Someone wants to do that just because it's nice. It's nice to tell people that you are doing that, or maybe an executive supports it and it doesn't make any sense, but it's still there around, you know, just, you know, getting asking for attention but not delivering anything in terms of the benefit you are doing. And it's a pet for some specific sponsor or some specific executives. The third is fear. Fear of being perceived incompetent, fear of being punished, fear that you will lose your job. And what happens? You just don't tell the truth. You just don't tell what is happening in reality because you are fear. So you try to move under the carpet, all the trash, you know, thinking that you are cleaning. And most of the time when people see it's already too late and this fear, because you don't feel safe to say what you truly think, then how do we work to get really rid and sort out these problems? First, use pragmatic, simple and direct criteria. It means it's a criteria. If the project stop meeting that criteria, the project should not exist anymore. Full stop period. And that's it. It doesn't matter who is behind that project.
If you do not deliver, if you do not meet that threshold, you are out. Your project does not exist. It's not personal preference, nothing. It's just a clear, tangible mathematical criteria of benefit. If that project, if it's still delivered that benefit, okay, it will exist. But if it does not make any sense, you should just terminate it. Second, it's use of external support. Many times when you are inside the problem, it's very hard for you to sort it out. So you need to use external support. You need to hire a consulting. And please, I'm not advertising what I do, but you need there are many companies to do that, an external that will go and help you to clear the path because sometimes combined with the decision of terminate things, it terminate. It's something that nobody wants to do. Of course, everybody loves success. We were set up and we were raised to be successful. We were not raised to fail. So when you need really to show and demonstrate a failure, sometimes it's better to do this with an outside company that provides this support and this guidance on making this decision. It's very common. For example, when. Please do this corporate arrangements and this that they use this big consulting firms to do that. And one of the key things is not just the competence, but also this external perception that makes the life of those who are involved a less traumatic because of the relationships that were built over time. So use external support if you really cannot, I would say, identify or cannot really terminate the zombie projects.
And last but not least, provide psychological safety, give space for people to voice their concerns that people will not be punished. Because if people are afraid, what happens is that people will let the zombie continue around because it's not in their own benefit to make this happen. So you need to provide the psychological safety because if you don't do that, what will happen? People will not tell you the bad things. People will only tell you what you want to hear. And this is why many times people talk about the story of the king has no clothes. And why this? Because the king had a witch told the king. Or if you drink this potion, you become invisible. And then he took it. He removed all his clothes and use a horse and walk in the village. And he was thinking that nobody was seeing him. Everybody was seeing him naked. But nobody said, Why? Because he does not want to hear and no psychological safety. And this happens many times when the executive is like a king with no clothes because everybody is afraid, because there is no psychological safety. And I said this in many episodes. If you could manage this psychological safety, use external support, for example, when people are impacted and use pragmatic, systematic criteria, there is a good chance that you will get rid of all these zombie projects that are just draining resources of your organization with absolutely no way to deliver the value you want. Think always about that. I wish you a great week and see you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
