How To Get out of Thankless Work
When you're stuck in a no or low impact project, it's important to own the narrative and find a way to get onto higher impact work
(“It’s Windy Here Mum!”, Teddy the Corgi, Pacific Ocean)
Once, I got pulled into a thankless, mentally draining project that required long hours. The project did not have a measurable impact on metrics and KPIs. I was not rewarded for the additional effort during the performance review reason. How do you avoid wasting precious time and energy on such projects?
First, you have to recognize you are in a low (or negative) ROI project. Some people spend months or even years investing in a project, only to realize too late that it is not going anywhere or the type of work they’re doing is not valued. You may be in a low ROI project if you sense the following:
When someone asks “What impact does this project have?” or “Why are you working on this project?”, you struggle to come up with a clear, concise answer.
You are spending more than half your time handling interpersonal conflicts that don’t seem to go away
The project has missed milestones two or three times in a row
When you complain to others about how difficult the project is, you get responses like “I would not want to be in your shoes” or looks of pity
It is difficult to get leadership attention when you need it. They are not super involved and it takes a long time to receive guidance or support.
These signals are not always obvious and can be easily hand-waved away as “a part of the process”. However, if the project is not turning out the type of impact valued in your organization, then it’s time to assess the current situation, create future-looking scenarios, and understand the end game.
Here are important aspects to reflect on:
What is not going well? Is it a team issue? Is it hidden or implicit biases you weren’t anticipating? Is it a lack of a certain resource? Did the team overpromise?
What will the project achieve in the next 6 weeks, 3 months, or 6 months? What will you specifically accomplish? What impact will it have? Is that a good use of the resources on the project?
What are some potential options for change from here? Consider:
Can you ask for more or different resources? Would making the team and goals smaller actually help?
Can the project be re-scoped or de-scoped to minimize issues? Can the project be paused entirely?
Do you have an opportunity to switch to a different project? Is there someone else who would volunteer to take it on?
Once you take stock of the current situation and future options, it’s time to decide where to go next. Here are a few common scenarios:
Scenario 1: The project just needs a tune-up
Through your reflection, you may have found some new paths forward that are promising. Perhaps the project needs to be re-scoped down to just the truly impactful work. Perhaps changing the makeup of the team or the resources available can make a significant positive impact on the progress. If this is the case, you can use the “situation-complication-resolution” to make a case for change. Here’s an example:
“Hello [manager], my team and I have been working on [project X] for [four months]. Unfortunately, we’ve not made as much progress as we’d like towards [goalsX]. With reflection, here are two changes we’d like to make to accelerate the pace of the project:
We are bottlenecked on not having [this resource] because [xyz] tasks depend on this skill set. We could trade [x resource] for [this resource].
We could re-scope the project. We can realize 80% of the impact with [xyz]. We propose to break up this project into two phases so that in the first phase we focus just on [xyz], and then reassess closer to phase II how/when we should invest further.
With these updates, we believe we can increase team morale, accelerate the pace of the work, and deliver impact by [Q3].”
Scenario 2: The project is a dead-end but you can’t get out
In certain situations, you may realize that it’s a lost cause. Perhaps there are just too many ingrained conflicts within the team or with partner teams. Perhaps the work is not likely to realize the impact you once hypothesized. Perhaps you’ve hit an unforeseen roadblock that would take too must investment to overcome. However, you have limited ability to get out of the project early.
In these cases, it’s still worth a try to see if you can move to a different project (or at minimum invest in lining up another better project afterward). Perhaps you could truly look into the possibility that the project is de-prioritized (most people don’t think this is an option when it is). Perhaps the resources are better utilized or needed somewhere else. You won’t know until you ask. No one, including your manager and leadership, wants to waste time and resources on a dead-end project. Here is where everyone’s incentives are aligned. It is in everyone’s best interest to either minimize resources wasted or maximize impact.
For your remaining time on the project, it’s worthwhile to focus on three tasks:
Refining your narrative about the project: what can the company learn from this failure to avoid it in the future? how can you frame the narrative such that it is not a personal failure? What nuggets of positive impact can be hard (e.g. strengthening certain relationships)?
Minimizing waste of resources: be upfront if you might not need as many resources as you thought you needed. Give your teammates and others a chance to have a higher impact. Help them, and they will remember and thank you later.
Line up your next project: With one dead-end project, it’s important not to make it a trend. Start having conversations and building relationships to figure out what your next move might be. Spend time networking around your company. Strive for something with higher certainty that it’ll have a good outcome. Don’t wait for it to come to you (the good opportunities are snapped up quickly!)
All in all, if the project isn’t going to have a high impact, don’t focus on trying to achieve incremental impact. It won’t change the overall result. If you were aiming for a 20% increase, whether the result is 3% or 8% isn’t going to matter much. Instead, if you can’t convince your leadership to let go of sunk cost, start investing in setting you and your team up for success in the next round.
Scenario 3: The project is a dead-end and you have a choice
Believe it or not, this is the most difficult scenario for many clients. They are ambitious, high-performing individuals, who pride themselves on being able to solve any problem and conquer any situation. They have other teams clamoring for them to join their projects. They have sponsors and mentors who could open doors for them. But they don’t want to give up on their project. They feel indebted to the team. They feel like if they walk away now then they’ve failed. They think there’s still that 1% chance it’ll be a winner.
Let’s be clear, every challenging project requires investment and persistence to succeed. I am not saying you should call it quits at the first signs of difficulty. However, knowing when to pull the plug and walk away from a project gracefully is a learned skill. It’s important not to let pride, sunk cost, or concern regarding relationships get in the way.
Your reputation as a leader will only be augmented if you learn to wind down a low-impact project successfully. One of the best ways is to frame it in terms of benefiting the company. It may sound something like this:
“Dear manager, we have been working on project X for the last 3 months. However, due to xyz, this project is not likely to have the impact we had originally hoped. We have a few options ahead of us:
Keep going, but acknowledge that we will end up short of the goal
Make some small changes like xyz, which will incrementally improve our impact to x
Pause this project and re-assess where resources may be better utilized.
The team and I would like to propose option 3 as the go-forward plan. We have some initial thoughts on high-impact work we could be investing in we’d love to discuss.”
Communicate, communicate
When facing a failing or low-impact project, consistent and clear communication is critical. No one wants to waste resources on low (or negative impact) projects. It is even worse if the low impact comes as a surprise after a long time. If you want to be viewed as a leader on the team and at the company, then you need to own and lead in terms of the narrative and story.
If you have a channel you already use to keep people updated on projects, then consider increasing the frequency of communications. If you haven’t updated key stakeholders on your project, start a regular cadence immediately.
Schedule some 1-1 conversations with leaders and key partners to give them the details and your thinking about the project's potential. Have them help you brainstorm the next steps or fill gaps in your context that can inform your view of the situation.
When you are ready to make a call, spend the time to develop a communication plan, bring everyone up to speed (so no one is surprised by an email), and be clear about what will happen when.
Sometimes tune-ups turn into dead-ends. Sometimes dead-ends with no options become ones with options when you talk to the right people. Don’t hide a low (negative) impact project — own and get ahead of the narrative. You do not want a negative story written for you.