It pains me to see good companies making bad decisions, and yet it happens. All the time. In writing classes in college, my professor would say, “Kill your darlings.” This horrified me, but I paid attention and did what he said. And my writing was all the better for it. The thinking is simple enough: if you love an idea too much, you’re blind to its faults.

Perhaps you’re resistant to the idea that you should kill off your darling project. Ask yourself 4 questions (for starters) about it and see if you can justify keeping your ax clean.

1. Will this generate revenue? This seems almost too easy, but it’s the first question I ask. If there is even a pause while you drum up some way that it could maybe potentially, you might want to reconsider.
2. Is it a key part of our business or marketing strategy? I’m amazed how many times a company will do something that doesn’t relate at all to what they do. You know you’re guilty of it, too. If it’s not related to your business objectives or to marketing efforts directly related to your business objectives, back off. Or maybe you’re now trying to retrofit your project into a business imperative. This is equally dangerous. If the idea was formed before knowing what the desired outcome would be, it may not be the end of the road for your idea. But it is a pretty good indicator that it might not be the best way to get where you need to go. Make your strategy fit your desired outcome and not the other way around. Thinking backwards most often yields all the wrong results.
3. Is this solving a big problem for your company? Sometimes you need to do something not strictly on your business plan because something else is getting in your way, blocking your path to prosperity. If this is what you need to do to knock it down, you are probably justified. But that barrier had better be real.
4. Are there more important things that won’t get done if you do this? This question is my favorite. I could write about setting business and marketing priorities all day. Priorities are a killer. If you can’t set them and can’t stick to them or can’t even see what’s important, get someone who can. Seeing effective projects go undone because you are tending to a pet project instead is just plain bad management. If you know that you have a pet project, it’s time to start evaluating its worth before it’s too late.

Sometimes mapping things out on a whiteboard or a spreadsheet helps you to see what options you have and what you should be focusing on. Draw a line through the ones that haven’t passed the test and move on. More ideas will come. And better ones. Swing that ax.

Tags: bad ideas, leadership, marketing, maze, strategy | Category Management, Marketing