The Art of Killing Projects

How to find the right moment to stop initiatives that are not making an impact, and do so painlessly.

The most challenging aspect of my work in employer branding is not generating new ideas and trying new things, but rather finding the right moment to stop doing them. I’m sure you’re familiar with this — once an initiative moves from the “Idea” column to “In Progress” on a team’s agile board, it becomes the center of focus, demanding all of our time and attention, often overshadowing other tasks. Even if this idea is not (or has become) as successful in practice, it may try to keep its place at all costs, preventing other ideas from being heard.
As a manager, you need to regularly question all initiatives you are responsible for, even your favorites, pay attention to workflow, systematically review all ongoing projects (even routine tasks), track metrics, and be willing to re-evaluate, pause, stop, or even kill projects when necessary.

Hey, I’m Anton Anokhin, an employer branding manager with almost 12 years of experience. I’ve spent most of that time at Wrike, juggling various events, content, and community initiatives. Today, I’m here to discuss what we did, what worked well, and where we could have improved. I hope this helps you with your projects.

What does “regularly” mean? Are there any signals that a review is needed? In my team, we base the frequency of reviews on the cadence of the project. For content-related projects, we conduct reviews more frequently than for events. For example, if we are launching a specific type of content or for a specific channel, we can iterate and adjust our tactics on a monthly or quarterly basis. For larger events, such as conferences or trade shows, you can schedule a review during the annual planning session. But if you notice that something isn’t working, you don’t have to wait until the next big team meeting. Obvious indicators include low team motivation or the team getting bogged down by the number of ongoing projects or the number of new ideas itching to get started.

Let’s discuss the factors that can tell you when a project’s time is up. I’ll try to recall the real examples from my practice to illustrate them.

When it’s time to kill a project?

Metrics are falling and attempts to change the approach have led to nothing

First of all, it’s a good idea to collect metrics :) You can read more about the metrics we track in Wrike Employer Branding in this article. Decreased engagement is a clear example that something is going wrong, or that you’re putting too much effort into something without making a significant impact.

After we decided to launch an Instagram account for one of our local Wrike offices that featured employee stories, regular rubrics, and quality content, we had been spending a total of 6–8 hours per week on the project with a team of three people. While the content was well received by our employees and we gained about 100 subscribers in the first few weeks, we experienced very low subscriber growth and declining engagement over time.

While the initiative was successful in building connections with employees in the local office community, showcasing the company’s culture, it was not having a significant impact outside the office. Ultimately, we decided to discontinue the project because the effort did not justify the impact. Interestingly, no one in the company inquired about the fate of the account.

A project no longer meets the business needs

It happens. Sometimes it happens suddenly.

In this post, I detailed how we created and ran the very successful community event, DartUP, a conference about Dart and Flutter. However, we had to sunset it because Wrike was moving to a new technical stack and there was no reason to continue promoting the old one.

To reduce the consequences of these changes, try to get on the same page as your stakeholders and company leadership. Involve them in your activities, get their buy-in, or at least have regular meetings or other ways to present information about your initiatives. This can help you to be aware of course corrections, re-approach, and communicate changes smoothly.

External Conditions Have Changed

Sometimes external conditions change and make a project unfeasible. For example, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many events had to be moved to an online format. Companies had to get rid of their offline initiatives, and large conferences started creating or adopting online platforms to move forward. Wrike was also trying to find new formats for online.

Realizing that it did not make sense to simply take offline events and put them online, we experimented with the formats: We made it interactive with panel discussions, AMAs, case studies, and case roulettes, focused on the practical and short video content, and even created the worldwide Engineering TeamLead Community (for which we used the advantages of online a lot!).

Online, we were able to bring in great experts from Google, Atlassian, HubSpot, JetBrains, RedHat, Shopify and attract new audiences to these events. When Covid was over and we had to go offline, we couldn’t figure out how to transform this community without losing such quality experts and coverage, so we decided to end the project. By the way, I think the niche still exists.

An experiment failed

If an experimental project does not produce the expected results and you have an obvious explanation for why, it may be time to move on instead of trying again. Experimentation in employer branding can make a big difference, and you definitely need to allocate enough time to try something new (in our team we invest a decent 20–30% on new ideas). But it’s important to finish the failed experiment so you can spend that 20–30% on new projects that can take you many steps forward.

A few years ago, one of my direct reports experimented with a new format called the Twitter conference. The idea was to translate classic talks into Twitter threads. Our topic of choice was cyberpsychology, specifically, the psychological aspects of IT. We invited 5 speakers who are prominent in both the IT and Twitter communities. Each speaker was given a one-hour slot to present their topics and engage with the audience: one tweet — one slide and one comment. Despite the novelty of the idea, the results fell short of our expectations. While the speakers enjoyed the new format, audience engagement was not as high as we had hoped. Although it was fun to experiment with and we did gain some new Twitter subscribers, the team ultimately decided not to continue.

Your team is out of resources

Sometimes, you may overestimate your abilities and take on more projects than you can handle. However, experience and project management skills can help solve this problem. A mature manager understands the team’s workload and can balance it accordingly.

However, everyone is susceptible to unexpected actions, incorrect estimations, or the eventual resignation of a team member. These are all reasons to review the team dashboard and think about pausing or even canceling some projects.

The team does not support the initiative

…and you cannot force people to do something they do not believe in.

As a leader, you may sometimes need to lead your team in tasks that they are not passionate about. While this may sometimes work in the short term, it is important to consider the long-term implications.

If your team is resistant to a project, it can be difficult to decide to end it. Start by listening to their concerns. Their insights may reveal deeper issues that can help you rethink or stop the project. If their concerns are too significant to overcome, it is important to weigh the costs of forcing the project on them. This can lead to poor quality work and low morale, which ultimately affects the success of the project. The success of a project depends not only on a good idea but also on the commitment of the team.

At Wrike, we had a successful project called Pyjama Talks. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we launched a series of video casts where we invited notable figures in the IT industry to raise brand awareness and attract speakers from big-name companies like Google, Hubspot, RedHat, Intercom, Citrix, Atlassian, and Microsoft.

Although we continued this initiative after the pandemic ended, interest began to wane significantly. Deciding not to continue was a big challenge because we had partnership agreements with a major publisher, several potential speakers in our backlog, and a highly motivated host who was the main driver of the project. However, when he left, I asked the team if they were willing to support the initiative. No one voted for it, and I accept that.

How to kill projects?

There are several strategies for gracefully and effectively terminating projects that are no longer viable:

Understand the project life cycle: Understand your project’s natural cycle. If it’s a recurring event, such as an annual initiative, it can be ended smoothly with careful planning. The key is to recognize and accept the need for closure from the beginning of the cycle. This self-acceptance is a critical first step to ending a project gracefully.

Termination After Completion: Another way to end a project is to let it reach its natural conclusion and then announce its closure. This strategy can allow for a smoother transition since the project’s completion provides a logical endpoint. It gives the team a sense of closure, having seen the work through to its conclusion.

Assess Stakeholders: Evaluate the broader community and stakeholders who may be affected by or have an interest in the project. You can get a comprehensive view of the potential impact of your decision by understanding who the project is important to.

Handover: If the project no longer aligns with your business goals but still has passionate community support, consider transitioning ownership of it.

Suspend: If you’re uncertain about the long-term necessity or viability of the project, it may be worth putting it on hold. This pause gives you the time and space to evaluate its relevance and decide whether it’s worth revisiting later.

It is important to remember that ending a project is not always a sign of failure, but can be an opportunity to focus on other more valuable or promising ways.

Conclusion

When it comes to branding, there are two key factors that can have a significant impact on the outcome of your efforts. The first of these is systematicity, which essentially means that you need to be consistent in your approach and be willing to track metrics to determine what is working and what isn’t. This requires a certain level of discipline and commitment, as you need to be able to stick to your plan even when the results aren’t immediately apparent.

The second factor is innovations, which refers to the importance of experimentation and being willing to try new things. This can be challenging, as it requires you to be comfortable with uncertainty and not beat yourself up when things don’t go as planned. However, it can also be incredibly rewarding, as it allows you to explore new avenues and potentially discover innovative approaches that can set you apart from your competition.

Of course, all of this work can be overwhelming, particularly if you are already dealing with a heavy workload (I bet you are!). That’s why it’s important to be able to terminate projects that aren’t bringing results, as this can free up space and resources for new ideas and initiatives. While it can be difficult to let go of something you’ve invested time energy, and passion in, it’s ultimately necessary in order to keep your brand fresh and relevant in a constantly evolving market.