Failure to Launch: The Aftermath

You had an idea. It was a really good idea. It was an idea that you belabored over, considered, coordinated, pitched, and preserved. It was a team project, an all hands on deck effort with a quick, close, rapidly approaching deadline.

And then it was gone. Your budget got cut, or your leadership changed, or circumstances completely outside your (and your company’s) control caused your really good idea to become a really bad idea. You know, like a global pandemic that puts everything into perspective and also puts the kibosh on basically everything that you had planned to do. Whatever the cause, the game plan is a no-go, so what do you do now?

Stage 1: Wait What?

I can’t pretend that my first reaction to this happening to my project was anything other than whiplash. I was confused, surprised, and left with a sense of…what now?

When I really thought about it, I found that I felt a sense of loss for my idea. Building something is hard, and when it doesn’t get you the results you’ve hoped for (or any results at all), you’re likely to feel frustrated or even plain sad. Especially in a strategic role, but in almost any role, you spend a lot of time (literal hours) with your idea. You create it. You nurture it. You find ways around obstacles, you position and reposition, and eventually find the components (and the people) that can bring that idea into reality. All that work takes up a lot of your day, which is a lot of your life, and can be intrinsically linked with how valuable you feel.

We talk a lot about resilience at Upside, and this is exactly the circumstance that I think resilience becomes the most important skill. It’s somehow easier to accept when something fails than it is to accept the unknown. What if that thing hadn’t happened? What if we were able to keep moving in the direction we’d planned? Unfortunately, we won’t know. Even if we keep all these ideas in the hopper for a later date, we won’t know what would have happened if we’d been able to follow Plan A.

So what do you do? Accept it, and tell everyone that needs to know. Communication here is incredibly important. When you decide to abandon a project that involved a lot of teams, you need to make sure that you tell everyone why you’ve come to this decision. As my colleague Maggie says, “Clear is kind.” It is much kinder and will help you more in the long run to be transparent with all the parties involved as to A) THAT you are stopping and B) WHY you are stopping. Embrace questions, and be prepared with answers. Be thoughtful, and generous with your time as you work people through this transition. It took time to build; it will take time to unwind.

Once you’ve told all the parties the news, take a minute to pour one out for good ‘ol Plan A. Acknowledge all the work that went into it, all the time that you spent building it, and all the people that contributed to that work. You are not alone in this feeling, in this moment, in this frustration. Make sure that the people who helped you get so far into this project are seen and appreciated.

But don’t wallow there. Don’t sink. Give yourself the moment, and then start looking forward.

Stage 2: Where do I put my eyes?

You were laser-focused on this project, but it’s unlikely that it was the only component of your job. Once you take a step back from this area of focus, there is likely another place that you could shift your effort.

Don’t do this process in a silo — talk to your boss and ask questions. Look at your high-level goals, find what has changed (or hasn’t), and see where your project got stuck. Make sure you understand exactly why this project didn’t proceed so that you can make sure to invest in the right next area. Even if the issue was only a matter of bad timing, that’s still important to understand.

Also, talk to your colleagues and see what other projects are happening within your team. Is there a project that you could help support? Is there a person with a project waiting in the wings that you could take on? As long as these support the overall goals that you’re working towards, and your boss is aligned, this could be a great way to hit the ground running on what’s next.

While it may be tempting to hold onto your old goals, make sure that you are truly assessing your next project in light of the new information. It likely means you have to really leave your project behind. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use pieces of what you built in a new way.

Stage 3: Mining for Gold

Plan A isn’t going to work, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t value in what was built for it. Once you’ve started looking forward, and coming to terms with the reality of the situation, there’s likely a lot that you can repurpose for the future. These things may not all be tangible, but there are blocks that you built that you can put towards a new house. Think of it as recycling. It was a plastic bottle, and now it’s part of a comforter (somehow!).

Relationships

Most projects require engagement in some capacity across teams like marketing, engineering, legal, etc. You likely worked with people that you didn’t know before, learned how they like to be communicated with, learned what resonates with them. That is all valuable information that will help you be more efficient when you move on to the next adventure.

Did you call in favors? Be grateful that you had favors to call in! It may take some time to store them up for the next need, but unless you communicated the end of the plan poorly, you’ll find that they’ll bounce back sooner than you think.

Partnerships

There also may have been external parties that you engaged through this project. Did a new partner answer your call? This first initiative with them may not have gotten across the finish line, but that doesn’t mean that you didn’t have a big win in engaging with them at all.

Plus, if you were listening well, you learned something about what those partners are focused on and what they care about. That knowledge can help you craft the next initiative in a way that will get those same partners excited about the next event.

Collateral

For my campaign, we (read: our awesome designer) created beautiful pieces that have never been seen. They don’t evaporate into thin air! We can certainly figure out a way to use them for the next project and save ourselves a step. Words will likely change, but those designs will apply at some point. Don’t lose them.

You may also find that you uncovered new language for the pieces that you created. If you liked your phrasing, tweak it and find a new space for it to live. Or go a level deeper and uncover why you thought that would be more effective, and try to recreate the answer to your why with the next piece that you write.

Research

This is likely the easiest thing to find and repurpose as a little knowledge can go a long way. New information can be built into blogs, posted across display ads, and even sent internally or externally to help your cause. Whatever you learned can and should be shared, and can undoubtedly be used in a new way.

There are a lot of ways to rethink your strategy and reuse your work. Not everything will be applicable, but I’d wager that there’s a lot more in there than you think.

Stage 4: Onwards.

Thank your team. Thank everyone who worked on this project. Thank yourself for the hard work that you put in. Take what you can from your project and then let it go. Make the next thing twice as awesome.

Have you found yourself in a similar position? How did you regroup after your Plan A fell through?