Finding the Freedom Not to Fail

Even well-meaning workers doubt ambitious company plans will come to fruition. How to break self-defeating patterns that hinder employee execution

By Joseph Grenny

Would it bother you to find out that 80% of your staff is betting against your success?

I'm not suggesting they want you to fail. In fact, most probably wish things would work out. But in spite of their hopes, they're pretty certain your grand plans will circle the drain in a matter of months.

That's what we found in our survey of 1,000 employees. More than 8 out of 10 people said their company had some organization-wide initiative underway that they believed was likely to fail. You might call this armchair quarterbacking until you take into account that 78% also reported that they currently were working on a "doomed project."

Call me a cynic, but our track record for executing on corporate initiatives speaks for itself. Sustained research shows that across the U.S., estimated failure rates for corporate projects range from 66% to 91%. What's more, companies' collective inability to execute on major projects costs many billions of dollars a year. For example, it is estimated that of the $255 billion spent annually on IT projects in the U.S., more than a quarter is burned up in failures and cost overruns.

The problem isn't limited to IT. Look no further than the Freedom Tower in New York City and you'll see…nothing. The tower was generously given a decade for completion. Unfortunately, by the 2011 deadline, progress on the tower will barely be visible. Not to be outdone, NASA reports that two-thirds of its projects are routinely over-schedule and over-budget.

Poor execution is written in red ink

So whether you're building a warehouse, launching a new product, or adding vegetarian options to your cafeteria menu, it turns out that our collective ability to execute in most organizations stinks.

While leaders could scoff at flushing millions down the drain in times of plenty, circumstances have changed. The enormous cost of poorly executed projects can mean the difference between profit and loss.

If it's consistent, it's predictable.

Given how reliably organizations perform unreliably, my colleagues and I decided to study this predictable trend. We looked for patterns of behavior behind employees' dour expectations—events and issues they had observed—that told them things might be headed south. What we found startled us.

We discovered five early warning signs that are remarkably predictive of ultimate failure. In fact, you can forecast with up to 85% accuracy whether your efforts are doomed by observing how your people respond when any one of these five issues arises.

five triggers for company failure

Here's the most important thing to understand about our findings: The existence of these five problems is not the key issue. How your people react to these problems is what causes the mischief. Consequently, leaders who actively influence how people behave when these issues inevitably emerge vastly increase their chances of getting things done on time, on spec, and on budget—by 50% to 70%.

Allow me to present the five triggers of execution failure:

#1: Fact-Free Planning.
Doomed projects are born in the planning stages. People watch leaders set tight deadlines or allocate implausibly thin budgets with no consideration for reality. Eighty-five percent of leaders say this kind of fact-free planning happens regularly. Yet our study showed that the occurrence of fact-free planning does not doom a project. It's how people respond when leaders pressure them to make unrealistic commitments that makes or breaks results.

#2: AWOL Sponsors.
The second predictor of project demise occurs when senior leaders are absent without leave. Those who should provide guidance, accountability, and support fail to show up when needed. When this happens—which it does in 65% of projects—participants lose hope. And if the participants don't respond in the appropriate way, there's a 75% chance this project will fail.

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