I’ve been thinking recently about something that doesn’t get talked about much.
Stopping.
We celebrate starting things. New campaigns. New projects. New systems. New suppliers. New ideas. But stopping feels uncomfortable. Sometimes it even feels like admitting defeat. And I think that’s where we get ourselves into trouble.
I’ve seen this play out in all sorts of places: data projects that quietly stop delivering value, campaigns that keep going because they’ve “always worked”, reports that nobody reads, processes everyone complains about but nobody changes.
Not because anyone made a bad decision. Usually the opposite. Someone made a good decision based on the information they had at the time. But time moved on and nobody gave themselves permission to ask: If we were making this decision today, would we still choose this?
Stopping feels hard because it’s often framed as abandoning something before it’s run its course or reached a natural conclusion. Humans like things to feel complete. Finished. And maybe even successful.
There’s a theory called Completion Bias – the idea that unfinished things create discomfort and pull at us in ways we don’t always recognise. Pair that with the emotions tied up in Sunk Cost – time invested, effort spent, decisions already made – and it becomes much easier to understand why stopping can feel so difficult.
But maybe the answer is to reframe what stopping means. Instead of:
∞ We’re giving up.
∞ We’ve wasted money.
∞ We’ve failed.
Try:
∞ This is no longer the right decision for us.
∞ Things have changed.
∞ There may be another option that aligns better with our current objectives.
Looking back with more information should give us perspective, not permission to judge.
The fact we would make a different decision today doesn’t mean the original decision was wrong. It means things changed. Good decisions can have expiry dates too. And recognising that isn’t failure – it’s progress.
If your team is wrestling with projects, processes or systems that no longer feel quite right, I’ve got some space over the coming months to help work through what’s still serving you and what might need rethinking.
And if you know a team carrying a process, project or report because “that’s how it’s always been done”, I’d really appreciate an introduction.
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