Why it doesn’t work (projects)

It would have taken countless failures for me to come up with this article which summarizes my experience with running projects and all the numerous obstacles I encountered, I hope they provide some wisdom to you even though?I wouldn’t be surprised if you ignore all of them, the old optimistic me would have too. Even before engaging into all these projects, I did spend a lot of time reading, studying and trying to figure out the best ways to ensure that my plans don’t fail but?ultimately I ignored those advices and went with my gut feelings, Few months and years later after numerous failures I have a better understanding of those lessons, even though I don’t think I could have done things differently. Though we read about all these things, it doesn’t give us the practical experience, which is what we actually need.

Those books told me don’t do this and that, despite understanding why, I didn’t understand the feeling and the reasons behind that but?by making those mistakes I got to have a deeper understanding and it led me to a better and wiser place.?It’s like your parents telling not to touch the fire or not to stay out late at night, it’s only when you face the consequences of those actions that you come to a better understanding of that advice but until then despite understanding why it shouldn’t be done you don’t have the practical experience of it. So in this article I don’t expect much of you in terms of realization right now, most of these things won’t be clear to you until you’ve experienced them yourself, but am sure if you keep this article close then in a near future, after you’ve made all the mistakes you need to make, you’ll have a better understanding of this write-up.

Make mistakes while you can

Like I said, even I wouldn’t have listened to my own advice so the greatest advice I can give to you is to?make your mistakes and to make them fast, one strategy I used which when I look back at it now was a great idea even though controversial at the time, was that I tried to do many things at once, being involved in countless projects and launching so many endeavors, at the time people thought I wasn’t very focused but my?greater goal was rather to make the most mistakes as fast as I could while I could still afford to make them. Try your best while you can, don’t aim for success,?aim to fail in the hardest way possible,?the thing is that we often wait when we don’t have the choice before engaging into projects which we can’t afford to fail, when your life depends on it, when you have responsibilities, when you are in need of money, thats when we go all out into unexplored paths and crash. While you still can afford to make mistakes, you should definitely, take on projects which don’t necessarily make sense, do things which seem impossible, explore new terrains, you could literally go out of your field to try something new just to see how you would fare there and the lessons you get from there will help you throughout your life, even if its just a lesson of resilience or taking a loss.

It is often said that “failure is the greatest teacher”, “we learn from our mistakes”, “success takes failures” and many other quotes, it would be a real stroke of luck for you to succeed at whatever you are doing on the first run no matter how well your planning could be so at the start you should really be aiming for as many failures as possible, that’s what builds experience and resilience. Nevertheless, we don’t like failing and our collective human experience is what pushes us forward so there are certain things we shouldn’t be failing at anymore,?using other people’s experiences helps us avoid those same pitfalls.

Every project has its own realities, its own factors which influence it and I can’t objectively speak for every project all at once but here are some things you should be on the lookout when running any project, these determine either the success or the failure of said project.

Resource greedy

At the start of your project you are going to evaluate a budget for that, this is probably going to be done off the top of your head taking into consideration some information you have at the time. The?best option would be to have a practical example of a similar project and make your budget similar to that one, but often times you aren’t going to have access to that information so you will have to make an arbitrary decision about the cost. This cost is going to change with time, especially when new information comes into light. I am here to caution you about resource greedy projects, when you roam through the town and you see uncompleted buildings which had gone already far enough, the reason isn’t that the owners didn’t evaluate the cost correctly, but along the way new information came to add to that bill and eventually the project became resource greedy and left the owner without money to pursue that, so you have to be well aware of this. No matter the project you are doing,?once you notice that it’s starting to take more and more resource without producing the results expected, then it might be time to reevaluate.?That’s why it’s always advised to run a simulation, a demo of that said project so that you get to figure out all the potential money pits that might come to drain your resources. A project shouldn’t be taking double the amount of money you projected for it, once you notice an upward trend in costs which doesn’t seem to go down, then your project is headed in the wrong direction.

Not enough knowledge

One thing you should absolutely avoid is entering into an endeavor without sufficient information, that is so critical to everything working. The more information you have about what you want to do the better and this can take months, if not years, when you aren’t aware of all the factors which influence your problems, all the obstacles you are going to meet or even all the things you will need to do?then every turn is just another wall waiting for you. Learning on the job is something terrible to do in this case because you have already engaged your resources, the time you spend learning the more your resources get drained without mentioning your time as well so before you engage in any project whether it’s starting a company, building a house or even opening a restaurant,?you want to have as much information as possible about running such a project and how everything works. Not only do you run the risk of being exploited by people who know more than you but your knowledge gaps are going to always set you back multiple steps, so take however long you need to learn and master the field you are getting into which is the mistake so many people make because they are eager to start living out their dream. Even something as simple as a restaurant might require you to study on it for a long period of time before engaging your resources.

Little Support

Every project requires support from other persons, even if you feel like its something you can do alone,?you still need electricity to light up your room as your reflect on your idea, you need water to flow so you stay hydrated, you still need your local store to sell the food you are going to eat.?Every project requires you to count on the support of others to make it work and?realizing where all the support you’ll need should come from is very important.?Something which often spells failure for most projects is that we don’t take the time to sit down and analyze all the support we’ll need for our project and whether we are going to receive it. Support can be in many forms, whether its the customers who are going to purchase your products, the service providers who are going to help you set everything in place or even the resources you need to put in place so that everything works smoothly.?Failing to acknowledge the support you need is going to lead your project to a dead end even before it begins,?so you can’t just go into a random neighborhood and expect your project to work without even evaluating if you are going to receive the adequate support from that place, whether you have the social skills to get all of that support and much more. When enough people are against your project or not interested in it at all then you might as well not do it because its not going anywhere, but when you have enough persons interested and willing to provide you with the support you need then you are on the right track, its important to mention here that I am not talking about financial support but rather about people wanting your project to succeed.

Wrong environment and time

Its important to take into considering the environment you are in and whether its the?appropriate time for that project,?sometimes its just not the right time, people aren’t ready for such an endeavor, the idea might be brilliant but people are going to reject it because its still way too novel for them. When you look at the pandemic of last few years and the time before that, having videoconference calls wasn’t a thing, nobody would have wanted that, we all liked being there in person for all of our meetings but when the pandemic struck and we had to socially distance ourselves those platforms skyrocketed because?the time had become right for that. Starting a videoconference company before that won’t have made much sense but it took a renewed meaning when the environment gave it to him,?so think intrinsically about your project, is it the right time and place for it??are people ready for that or is there a more appropriate moment. Your project might just fail because it wasn’t the right time for it, maybe it would have done better at the end of the year or at the beginning of the year, across this timeline you see different businesses taking shape or maybe it wasn’t just the right place for it and it would have done better in another area, town or even country. Don’t just look at everybody, place and time as being the same.

Way too ambitious

Sure we should aim high but that doesn’t imply being unrealistic too, ambition is great but you have to be realistic too. When another person makes an ambitious project, it sounds ambitious to you but it might be just realistic enough to him,?don’t go all out making the most insane plans hoping to push yourself beyond your limits while ignoring the basic laws of nature thinking that your optimism is what is going to save you at the end of the day. Ask yourself if you aren’t asking too much out of yourself, your environment or even nature. Right now there is a person who has plans of going to Mars, he already has rockets and the funding he needs so that plan seems realistic to him but to you, it might sound way too ambitious and you definitely can’t do the same because you don’t have all those resources. So while making your project and your plans they shouldn’t fail to factor in the resources you have at your disposal and how far they can take you.

Too demanding (persons,time,commitment)

Like resources when a project becomes too demanding in persons, time and commitment then there is an issue, these elements should be well thought out even before you start. The number of people you need, the time you are going to allocate to this and the commitment level required, thats why you should spend a lot of time studying all of this before engaging yourself and resources, if after you launch you realize that you need an additional unplanned group of 10 persons then thats going to have a catastrophic ripple effect across your project.?Knowing also the level of commitment from each person is detrimental, because this commitment will have to be motivated either financially or materially. For people to work long hours you’ll have to pay them more, the harder you want them to work you’ll have to give them bonuses etc Even if its just you, rewarding and motivating yourself is also very important and yet very much neglected,?can you sustain the high levels of commitment that the project is going to require??Sure its your project, your dream and desire but don’t get caught into the high of it working and neglect the realistic nature of the commitments required. You probably already spend 9 hours working at your day job and ontop of that you want to add another 6 hours of work on that project, realistically that means going to work at 7am and returning at 4pm then adding 6 hours to that means 10pm. Sure you can do it the first few days but is it realistically sustainable over the entire period of time of the project? Evaluate the level of commitment your project is going to require and judge whether its sustainable for you or not.

Wrong team

Having the wrong team is sure to spell failure for you, I can’t talk too much on this because its subjective to every project but for me I think there are just two factors which determine the competence of the team, either they share your vision or they are motivated by the money, then the rest is all about management.

Scalability

Scalability but also sustainability, some projects are designed to grow else they fail while others just need to be sustainable enough through the years and realizing which is which is vital. When starting off a project, its going to require a certain level of resources to launch before reaching a plateau of progress, at that level you will have to maintain it with a reduced amount of resources, for example a house takes tons of money to be built but then you just need little resources to maintain it, the question here is, where will those resources come from.?Thinking about where the resources to maintain your project come from is important because it gives you a renewed sense of responsibilities, if its a business then ideally they should come directly from it, you don’t want to start a business which won’t be able to sustain itself.

Strategy Flaws

Assuming all the other pitfalls are taken care of then it becomes a question of strategy you put in place to make things work, the best advice I received is?“dont’ try to reinvent the wheel”. Every business or project you see out there is successful because their strategy worked and so you need not try anything different but rather optimize what they did for it to work for you, no need taking useless risks exploring new grounds while the pathway has already been paved for you by others who laid the ground work. We are always trying to innovate, do things differently and make things better, you want your idea to be unique, fresh and attractive, thats all great but it doesn’t necessarily have to be so from the start,?your main concern should be for it to be operational then moving from there now you can explore your creativity in all regards.

This is definitely not an exhaustive list of things which might make your project to fail, there are many more gaps, many more uncontrollable factors so the more you know the better. You can start by working on avoiding these pitfalls and keep learning on the specifics of your project.

The more you know the better

Thanks for reading