Deliberate Failure



Prioritization in hard times can be reframed as deliberate failure. Failure is inevitable when lacking resources. Failing deliberately lets you choose where in the system the failure happens - as opposed to the world choosing for you.

The Situation: Too much to do

When there is too much to do you might try working faster and harder. You might even try working smarter.

Some times that will be enough. Other times there's just not enough people. Those times something's got to give.

You may be tempted to move people around to "cover all areas". But if there aren't enough people, you will just end up spreading your personnel too thin.

The Prophecy: Inevitable Failure

Failure is inevitable when there's not enough personnel or energy in the team or organization.

Like with the law of conservation of energy, no new energy can be magically created. So, when you choose to succeed with something a failure is bound to occur elsewhere.

Example 1: Sales department over-promised with new features to a customer. Engineering accepted the impossible task to deliver all features and on time. Inevitable failure manifests as buggy release and stressed employees.

Example 2: Layoffs in tough financial times. All teams and project kept as is just with fewer people. Inevitable failure manifests as understaffed initiatives losing steam, a loss of company spirit, and increased employee turnover.

The Strategy: Deliberate Failure

Take control with deliberate failure. When you are destined to fail somehow you can at least choose how!

If desperately trying to succeed in everything just leads to the world choosing where the failure occurs for you... why not instead deliberately choose where failure is to happen proactively?

There lies beauty within this stoic acceptance. Because, some kinds of failure is arguably better than others.

Some even argue "deliberate failure" is just called "prioritization". One of the hardest things we have to do when choosing what to do - is choosing what not to do.

The Analogy: Shadows vs The Sun

A small poem for you:

Where the shadows lie tells you where the sun is.

The sun will blind you.
Its radiant light making you unaware of your surroundings.

The shadows are boring and bland.
You'll watch them with eye sight and situational awareness retained.

If you direct your attention to all the great things you want to succeed with (the sun), you can be blinded and lose your situational awareness. At face value of course we must "meet the deadline", "be legally compliant", "fix the glaring UI bug". Many #prio1 tasks feel like axioms in this sense - they simply MUST be addressed.

But when failure is inevitable better direct your attention to "the things we won't do", "the corners we will cut", "the deals we will not sign". These point out the direction with surprisingly clarity.

Or, think of it this way: What's even the actual difference between Swedish political parties? It's not always easy to tell as a voter. Politicians tend to often talk about all the good things they WANT to do. But, realistically, money is limited. So, personally I'm more curious what you DON'T want to do. Tell me about the areas you are most excited to do budget cuts in to FUND those other great ideas. They will tell me more about you actual priorities than anything else. "Where the shadows lie tells you where the sun is."

The Practice: So, what to fail with?

👏 Yes! Time to fail deliberately, but with what?

There are many options available, here are a few examples:

Skip the Project

The simplest and most obvious form is not doing a project at all.

This can free a lot of resources.

Do fewer projects as a whole but do them right.

It works best on projects not even started yet, otherwise risks damaging morale and communicating you don't trust them to finish it.

Re-Negotiate the Deadline

You could fail by creating proactive friction with the customer.

Better deliver late instead of low quality code "on time"?

There's an aspect of guarding your team here. Bite the bullet. Take the blame and friction. Don't let the pain trickle downwards in the organization tree.

InfoSec Tradeoffs

How about you run it in the cloud instead of on-prem?

No as good from an InfoSec perspective, but maybe the customer will sign anyways?

As a bonus someone else will do the infrastructural maintenance that backs that API endpoint in the cloud.

Technical Tradeoffs

Leverage technical tradeoffs to reach 80% of the goal at 10% of the cost.

The best technical tradeoffs keep things simple and introduce close to no future maintenance overhead.

The Question: About the action

What will you choose to deliberately fail with this year?