This kind of sentiment always shows up after the fact but the hard part is actually knowing it ahead of time.
Emphasis on knowing. I’m sure some people thought it was a bad idea ahead of time. But there are always people who think any new idea or big change is a bad idea.
The reality is that anything significant has to be tried out, for real, to find out. That’s the premise behind proven useful decision frameworks like agile or MVP. And as the GP says: good management shows up when they read the attempt clearly and resist the sunk cost fallacy.
Bad management sounds like “let’s never change anything” or “we’ve already come this far, we need to finish it no matter what.”
And to a large enterprise, tens of millions of dollars is not an existential amount of money to lose on trying something significant. Big sports teams lose that much on bad player moves all the time. “We can’t ever waste money on trying new things” is a great way to sink deeper and deeper into whatever rut you happen to be in at the time.
Literally your primary job as an executive. Strategic knowledge and wisdom
If wasting tens of million on a bullshit initiative isn't an example of bad management then literally nothing is.
The only place these types of terrible managers can exist are too big to fail companies like LinkedIn and the Government where theres zero repercussions for poor management decisions because money keeps pouring it.
In smaller leaner companies where money is actually important executives actually have to be good at their jobs.
> "We can’t ever waste money on trying new things"
There's a difference between a good strategic decision and starting a "facebook for pets".
Some ideas are terrible at the outset.
And executives whole reason for existence is to make this determination.
Blueshift was an objectively terrible decision and whoever made that decision is objectively bad at their jobs.
Emphasis on knowing. I’m sure some people thought it was a bad idea ahead of time. But there are always people who think any new idea or big change is a bad idea.
The reality is that anything significant has to be tried out, for real, to find out. That’s the premise behind proven useful decision frameworks like agile or MVP. And as the GP says: good management shows up when they read the attempt clearly and resist the sunk cost fallacy.
Bad management sounds like “let’s never change anything” or “we’ve already come this far, we need to finish it no matter what.”
And to a large enterprise, tens of millions of dollars is not an existential amount of money to lose on trying something significant. Big sports teams lose that much on bad player moves all the time. “We can’t ever waste money on trying new things” is a great way to sink deeper and deeper into whatever rut you happen to be in at the time.