Quitting

Why is it so hard?

This post is a collaboration between Mike Fisher and Jon Williams, Fractional CTO and Technology Consultant. We did not distinguish between stories shared by each author so you can guess which came from each of us. 

Back in my younger days, I was working construction pouring concrete slabs for apartment buildings. My friends were all working for minimum wage as cooks or lifeguards but I was making better wages given the strenuous nature of the work. One day I saw a flier for a job at a new construction site, so I told my friends that night that I was going to quit my job. They all discouraged me, but I was adamant. Without having secured the next job, I quit. It turned out the new work was much more interesting and it paid better, a win-win. I often look back on this experience as a lesson on how sometimes quitting can be advantageous. Given that I believe one of my superpowers is long suffering, having this experience to remind me that sometimes it is the right decision to quit is extremely helpful. However, despite having lived this beneficial experience of quitting and many others since then, it is still very hard to do. 

The concept of quitting is often fraught with negative connotations, particularly in a culture that prizes determination and perseverance. Quitting is perceived almost as a taboo, a surrender, an admission of defeat. This stigma is deeply ingrained in our societal ethos, where stories of perseverance, like Thomas Edison's relentless pursuit of innovation, are glorified. The problem with this perception is that it overlooks the strategic value of quitting. When viewed through a practical lens, quitting can be a powerful tool for reallocation of resources, refocusing efforts, and avoiding the pitfalls of sunk cost fallacy.

In the realm of decision-making and project management, understanding when to quit is as crucial as knowing when to persist. This balance is not always easy to strike. Leaders often face the challenge of overcoming their own biases, the most prominent being loss aversion and escalation of commitment. These biases can cloud judgment, leading to continued investment in losing propositions. However, by adopting a systematic approach to quitting, such as establishing clear quit criteria and regular check-ins, leaders can make more rational and effective decisions. 

If you find yourself struggling with quitting projects or initiatives in your company, you are not alone. Some of you probably remember Sony’s Betamax or Beta product which was a consumer cassette format for video cassette recorders. It was released in the US in November 1975 but quickly lost to VHS in the videotape format war. If you aren’t old enough to personally remember the Beta vs VHS days, you’ve probably read about it in a case study about open formats. What is most relevant about this to our story today is not how Beta, despite being of superior quality, lost to VHS, but rather how long Sony continued to manufacture Beta products. Despite the sharp decline in sales of Betamax recorders in the late 1980s, Sony didn’t halt production of new recorders until 2002 and didn’t stop making new cassettes until 2016. Almost 40 years after they had lost to VHS! Possibly the greatest case study of all time for a product line that they should have quit much, much sooner. 

In my own experience as a technology leader, I have faced numerous instances where the decision to quit a project proved to be more beneficial than persevering. The difficulty in these situations often lies not in the act of quitting itself, but in the process leading up to it. It requires a significant level of collaboration and consensus-building, ensuring that all stakeholders are on the same page. This collaborative approach is crucial because quitting a project is not just a logistical decision but also a deeply personal one for those involved. It's essential to recognize that while quitting can sometimes be perceived as a failure, it is, in many cases, a strategic move that can lead to better allocation of resources and ultimately, more significant success in other areas.

Interestingly, I have never regretted canceling, aka quitting, a project. But I have regretted not canceling a project, many times in fact. Earlier in my career, I often didn’t even think of quitting and only quit when it was forced upon me. In the middle of my career, I often came very close to canceling, but I was always able to come up with a reason not to quit a project. It’s much harder to come up with a convincing reason to quit.

I remember a huge project I was a part of building an inhouse 200,000 square foot fulfillment warehouse. This project was a huge distraction and disruption to our business. At a leadership offsite at the beginning of the project, the CEO of another division said to me, “You should outsource warehouse inventory management, it is not your core business.”  I remember thinking to myself, “How on earth am I going to tell my CEO we should cancel when they’ve asked me to come here and rescue the project?” We moved forward with the project, only to close the warehouse and outsource a few years later. Imagine what I could have done with all those wasted hours fixing technology at the warehouse.

An area that I think technologists often find it hard to quit is during an incident. Some teams are now trained to immediately rollback the last change when they notice an incident but many still try to diagnose the issue or perform some quick fix to restore service. Almost always the fastest way to service restoration is by rolling back the last change and starting working from a “last known good” point or configuration. In land navigation, when you are trying to traverse across ground with a map, compass, etc. one technique to find your way should you get disoriented is to return to your last known position. The Scotland Mountaineering site suggests, “You may be able to retrace your route back to your last known position so that you can start all over again. On your way back you may cross a feature that gives you a good clue as to your whereabouts.” This sounds exactly like something we should try to do when we’re lost in the woods or when our system is having an incident…try to get back to a last known position.

Another quit example is what a colleague once described to me as a Zombie Project. Basically, either leadership or the working team (or both) are no longer committed to the project but it continues anyway in a Zombie-like fashion. These projects never succeed, but no one has the strength to call them done! People would rather a project fail than quit. Why? Because if a project failed, then “it” failed. If a person quits a project, then “they” quit. Project quitting is personal, project failure is often not.

Annie Duke's book Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away provides a comprehensive framework for understanding when and how to make the decision to quit. Duke advises establishing clear quit criteria and benchmarks for rational decisions. Planning for the possibility of quitting (a stick-or-quit plan) and regular progress evaluations help maintain alignment with organizational goals. Duke argues that when quitting is a border-line decision, to quit is often the better option.

Duke also stresses the importance of listening to experienced voices from the past when making quit decisions. I recently wrote about the benefits of learning from other people’s failures as well as your own. Duke suggests that quit decisions are often more effectively made by individuals different from those who initiated the project. Not only should we learn from other people’s quit decisions but we should consider asking them to help us decide when to quit. This separation helps to eliminate personal biases and emotional attachments that might cloud judgment.

The act of quitting, when executed strategically and thoughtfully, can be a powerful tool in a leader's arsenal. By understanding the nuances of quitting and incorporating strategies from Annie Duke's book, leaders can make more informed, rational, and effective decisions. This approach not only benefits the leaders themselves but also their teams and organizations as a whole. The art of strategic quitting, therefore, is not about giving up; it's about making smart choices that lead to better outcomes.

As a leader, how are you going to approach quitting differently in your decision-making? Are you going to start re-evaluating your projects now and come up with your quit criteria? Don’t forget to ask someone you trust what they would do in your position.