Leadership List Monopolisers

All right, let's get into today's topic around the zombie projects. Now you might be going, what the hell is in there enough of this stuff going on TV, but that is not what today is about. Today is not about the movie farcical kind of zombies. But what I've seen a lot in workplaces that's kind of destroying leadership mojo and stressing people the hell out is this notion of kind of coined the term a while back in its stuck sense. This idea of Think about your list, have a look at it. Just go through what you've got sitting there. You'll have some items that have been parked there a while. Things like maybe a system migration, or you're looking at possibly changing the way in which you do performance reviews, or you're talking about maybe one day spinning up an innovation pipeline if you're in the corporate world. And now these might all be good ideas, but the reality is it's been sat in your list for a while, right? hasn't made meaningful progress. Maybe you've had a couple meetings with your team about it, but it hasn't actually translated. Now the term zombie project that I've spun up has really come from this idea of they are these things that have been socialized, have built some level of commitment in your mind, but have not actually turned into a thing. Now you might go, well, that's okay. Look, I'll get to it when I get to it. Not quite. There is a... Decent amount of experience I have in this and some pretty good Backing on this from people I've worked with who can really see the effect of this There is a reason I use the zombie term is there is a real effect to it. It does create a semi Terroristic effect on your list a little bit of horror can be derived from this and that Think about that project, right? Let's hone in on and I'll use the example today around. Let's say you're gonna set up a software migration, you've got a really good solution kind of in your mind of what it might do. You've talked to your team about it, they're aware. But every time it comes up, it starts to aggravate people a little bit or they kind of roll their eyes. And then you start to feel a little bit stressed, right? You look at your list and you go, that projects been there so long. I haven't made any meaningful progress on it starting to stress me the hell out a little bit. Every time I look at it, I feel a bit guilty. I'm a bit afraid of it now. And I kind of wanted to disappear. Now there's some symptoms of this, right? So I've named a few there, but the first one really is it never really progresses. So if you think about that project or item on your to-do list, I want you to really have one in mind, but the first symptom is that it never really progresses. It's been there. It may be moved. You've done a little bit of scoping. You'll sometimes fire up a Google tab and start having a bit of a search and go, Oh yeah, that could work one day. Click ran out of time. Got to go. The second is it doesn't really need to be done. immediately because the argument would be well yes there probably is some value in doing it no one's questioning the potential value but you can do anything really well you can't do everything well all the time and leaders need to be really discerning and very quick to decide that they're not going to commit to certain practices or certain projects and this might be one of those where you go oh actually if i didn't do it it's probably not the end of the world Uh, it isn't focused on an outcome is the third one. And I sometimes see that. Yes, it's nice. And maybe it could realize some benefits, but there isn't really a strategic driver or real change program linked to it. You know, the software could be a nice thing to do. It would help make life feel a little bit easier or has some great features, but there's no real business need at this stage. What we have is working fine. It's not, it's not needed. And the team knows it's a zombie projects kind of the fourth one. They look at it and they go, Oh God, if they bring that up again, I'm not really, I'm probably going to hurl or I'm going to ask to be removed from this project. So what I then suggest from there is you really need to start looking at how you get rid of this. Um, this is not going to be a nice feeling. I will preface it by saying that, but part of the whole strategy around us having these conversations and these topics in the team Buffalo podcasts is really around giving you. clear, actionable insights. And so I've helped you already in the first five minutes, have a look at well, what's, what is the zombie project thing? And do I have anything on my to-do list that might be it? And then the second is how do I get rid of it? So first is how do you identify it? I've given you some steps there, some things that kind of are aspects of that, but you, if you're not clear, you might ask your team, you go, hey, you know, what's something you've heard about for a while here, but you haven't really seen make any progress. Or Hey, what's something in your mind that we've said we are going to do as a business or as an organization or as a leader and you haven't heard back from me on that, listen to them, hear what they have to say. They might go, actually there's nothing on the list. Then you need to look at your own to-do list and go, Oh, actually I've got a few, I need to get rid of it. Now you might not kill this project. I think that's a critical piece of takeaway that it really needs to be cemented is that you don't always get rid of the thing. It's just, it can't keep wandering the halls haunting you. And that that's the zombie aspect of it. It's, it's looking for something to feed on you either give it the energy or you kill it. And so when you're looking at that project, do you have to first, like I said, ask yourself, is there any real outcome this will achieve? I might like the idea. Like a client I worked with a while back said, you know, we really need to rebrand. And I said, why? And I, I'm just tired of our colors. Oh, okay. Well, That's fine, but what's the reason for like, what's the real business need? What's the driver? What have you heard from customers? Well, no one's complained about everyone likes our brand. We've got a long history. We really perform well. Got good domain authority. No one's worried about our socials. What's the driver? It's go off. Just sometimes when I look at our logo, it annoys me a little bit. And then I asked them, I said, well, do you have to go through a full rebrand? You know, we get in your agency and you go through this whole workup and you do Not that I have anything against that process, but it is a long and arduous and painful process and they hadn't done it for a couple of years, but it had this issue on their list, which means something was driving that. And I said, is there another way you can do this? You know, do you maybe just need to either let it go or is there some other decision you can make? And they're like, well, I guess I could just get like that tweak done on the logo. It's really just this little piece off on the corner here. I said, well, do you need to change anything else? Well, no. I said, well, how about you just action that, get that off your list and be done with it. And they did on the other side, there's been other projects where like a change management program, that's this waste program that came out a long time ago. It was with a particularly large organization and they had this idea that they wanted to have a waste reduction program. So if you work in a small business and you're unfamiliar with this term, waste reduction programs are generally focused on how do we reduce inefficiencies in staff time and systems and processes and create better productivity outcomes. Fantastic. Like a great thing to do. without, you know, this isn't about firing people. This is about efficiency and systems and making sure that we're not wasting resources and frustrating our people. And my background initially was in Lean Six Sigma and continuous improvement, which looks at waste as a core driver of improvement. And I would argue that that's great. But the issue was that they didn't have any targeted issues. They didn't really know what they wanted to get out of. They had just been to conferences over a number of years and had heard around waste reduction and driving productivity. And I thought, hmm, like, is that really your priority right now? Like what show me your strategy. The strategy said innovation, which of course is always on their product growth, and market domination is like, Oh, gosh, that all probably needs a little bit of work. But the reality is that the waste reduction was not really a core strategic initiative for them. It was some idea that got born into the organization and had not left because no one had gotten rid of that zombie. So I said to them, look, there may be a place for this, but you've got some bigger priorities. How many people do you think it would take to staff this project? And I saw, you know, about 20, maybe 30 people to get the project off the ground. So to scope it up and do it. And like, no, that's just to get it like launched. And I said, okay, what about delivery? Oh, organization, our size, probably another 50 people. All right. So we're talking. 20 to 80 people potentially, depending on how you do this and how you go about it. Yep, all right, so that's, we're starting to look at getting close to a million or so dollars, if that's a year or two project in wages. What other projects do you have? Well, we've got a core systems migration that's happening. Okay, is there a business case for that? Yep, what's the business case? Oh, that should net us eight mil. Okay, what's that require about 20 people? All right, so now you can see, all right, before we even continue with that conversation. You can start to see we're looking at the brass tacks around it. What's the real financial driver around this? And whether you're a frontline leader or a senior executive, those examples still apply to you because the reality is you have to make decisions on scarce resources and zombie projects. Post critical threats to those. Those are things that will just chew away at the edges of your resourcing and make you feel tired and unaccomplished. So you can do like they did in the first one, which is a small scale project with the brand change, get it done, get it off your list, or look at it as a larger assessment and go, Hmm, this is probably a good initiative and I will park it for later when I have the resource thing or option three is this is actually not all that beneficial. I've looked at the business case. I've looked at what's required and I'm not going to do it. Not everything that can be done needs to be done. It's really hard for some leaders to accept this. And it's a critical lesson to learn. Even in my own business, over the years, I had to learn and had to remind myself constantly, it's like, hey, you do this stuff with other people, you gotta do it for yourself. And the idea here is that you can't do everything everywhere all the time. You have to make decisions on scarce resources. And the more focused you are, the better the outcomes will be in those focused areas. You don't need to be perfect at everything. It's okay to park some of those things. So I would say to you have a look at that list as your homework from today's episode, have a bit of a look, go right. What's been on here that's haunting me or what are the things that my team tell me are haunting us. And I need to make a decision in one of those three categories to go either do the small scale version and knock it out. Do the moderate, do the proper version and park it to later or kill it. Get it off the list and tell people it's dead. Tell them, hey, we've decided this is not a critical deliverable. This is not linked to our strategic priorities. We're going to get rid of this. If something changes down the track, we'll have a fresh conversation on it. But this is off the list. You'll be surprised at how well people respond to that. Great. So now, as always, I challenge you to take that away and to do something actionable with it. Thanks for tuning into today's episode, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.