Just Brilliant: Pay Kill Fees for Bad Projects
Posted on Tuesday, October 9, 2007 by Frank RocheBob Sutton is always interesting, but today he’s plain brilliant. Prof. Sutton writes about how high performing and creative people “fail quickly” and proposes a way for companies to have more success: Pay kill fees for bad projects. Brilliant.
Rather than having people get invested in failure on a project that they know won’t work, just pay to kill it. This is about rewarding success instead of rewarding project management. Wow.
Charlie
Oct 10th, 2007
I totally agree that many projects are doomed and are an inefficient use of investment.
As a resident devil’s advocate, it is my duty to think of the lucky employee (or subsidized farmer) who gets paid not to work. They just need to throw their hands in the air at a suitable point to claim their rewards.
Finding a sweet spot (and making sure your employees see it as one) that balances a strong desire to make projects succeed with the courage to let failing ones go might be too tough a challenge for a policy. This sort of thing just requires great management.