Courage To Pause

It was the year 1999, and I was managing a project for a US hotel chain. The project was complex, and I had not handled such a type of project before. For gathering the business requirements from the client, I had to travel to the US and then came back to get the development work completed. The client and our US-based team were very demanding on quality and timeline. 

After the initial 3 months of a good start, we were to deliver every 2 weeks a new package. We started getting some initial quality issues. As we fixed, we got into delivery timelines and scope issues. As the project was structured to have deliveries every 2 weeks, we got into an endless loop. If I had the team focus on defect fixing, then we would not deliver the completed scope in the next delivery, and if I had the team focus on scope for the package, then we had quality issues. Our US-based manager and the client became very unhappy, the project turned red, and we were on the verge of losing the client.

Perplexed, I met my Business Unit Head for advice. In my discussion, he asked me, “Amit, so what best you can do?” and I said, “Stop the project for a few weeks and get the quality issues fixed.” That was a sudden realization. I decided that the only way to get back on track was to hold all deliveries for 6 weeks. I called the US-based manager and told him of my plan. He was not comfortable, but I leveraged my influence of Business Unit Head to convince him.

 Then I got the team together and told them that we have 6 weeks to get this thing fixed – else the client will be history. We worked day and night and cleared up all possible defects and quality issues. The pressure from the client was immense as they had no clue what we were doing for 6 weeks, with no updates being provided

After 6 weeks, nervously excited, we delivered and waited for the client’s feedback. It was brilliant – after testing the product for 3 days, the client was very happy and sent a congratulation message to my seniors and us. Suddenly, we had the red project becoming green, and we celebrated the success with the team.

We started running the project confidently for the next 1 month. Then, one day we were called into a room for a conference call with the US-based team. The team came quite relaxed and happy with the progress and expecting some good messages. The US-manager came and said that the project is being shelved. We were aghast that what had happened – everything was running fine till now.

We were seeing the impact of the dot-com bust of the Year 2000 – the bubble had busted !. The client had run out of money to invest in a new product launch and had put a stop to all the development projects. Within a week, the project was wrapped up, and the team disbanded. I was suddenly sitting idle with no project on hand.

I had seen Success-Failure-Success-Failure in quick succession. From this event, I picked one big learning - that sometimes to get on track, you have to gather the courage to stop the project.  I paused the project to fix the project quality issue so that project could progress. And the client paused the development projects to fix their financial issues so that the company could still progress. 

You Need Courage to Pause the Progress

About Amit Chawla

Amit Chawla is India’s #1 Business Clarity Coach, Amazon #1 Bestselling Author of "The Clarity First", who is on a mission to transform the lives of the Decision Makers. Accredited by the International Coaching Federation, he helps Business Owners and Decision Makers accelerate business growth by providing them the tools to have Absolute Clarity for their business goals. You can learn more about him on www.amitchawla.coach.