Are you suffering from a surfeit of successful initiatives? Is your organisation sick and tired of delivering new ideas and solutions?

 

Don’t worry. Here are seven ways that you can ensure that your projects will struggle and fail, helping you to remove a lot of ‘to do’ work from your calendar.

 

And if you’re already doing these seven things, congratulations, you’re well on your way to killing all of your important initiatives.

 

1 Fail to set a clear business direction and purpose.

If you did this, your teams would know what you’re trying to achieve. In turn, this would stop the continuous discussions and arguments about where the business should be heading. A lack of clarity makes it hard to know what projects to develop, helping ensure that nothing really gets done.

 

2 Keep away from articulating your big, important goals.

If you’re unclear on your level of ambition, everything becomes equally important, and so your people can fight over which project is the best, rather than getting on with delivery.

 

3 Don’t prioritise your initiatives.

If you let any old idea turn into an initiative, you can be confident that the sheer number of projects will mean that everyone is competing for the same resources, treading on each other’s toes and basically achieving nothing.

 

4 Make sure you don’t properly resource your projects.

Allocating your people and your funds to specific projects will mean that they have a better chance of delivering. Instead, simply expect that your projects will be done by someone who already has a more than full agenda – probably at 10 pm on a Thursday evening – so that any progress is glacial.

 

5 Avoid clear responsibilities and accountabilities.

If nobody knows what they’re responsible or accountable for, they are far less likely to get things done. Instead, make sure the roles and responsibilities for your project teams are as fuzzy as the view through Mr Magoo’s spectacles.

 

6 Never follow-up on progress.

If you end up letting an initiative start, never go back to it. Over time, the project leader and team will understand that you’re not really interested and turn their attention to other pointless projects instead.

 

7 Don’t celebrate any successes.

After all, this would only encourage your project teams to try even harder to deliver more.

 

Of course, should you be interested in making sure that your projects actually deliver real benefits to your customers and your business, you might just want to do the opposite of what I suggest! Just saying….

 

© Stuart Cross 2019. All rights reserved.