One of my business partners and I once worked on a management book that never got published. The agent liked it and the editor liked it but the marketing people thought its scope was too broad so the manuscript was taken into a back room and strangled.
[The project was a graduate course in dealing with book publishers. Forget the editors. Marketing is the only vote that counts.]
Anyway, one of the chapters dealt with business travel and consumed an inordinate amount of time. Later, after our wounds had healed, we began to use the expression, "the travel chapter," to refer to a project that is being over-refined and which should just be ended.
The best can indeed be the enemy of the good.
Have you ever found yourself in a project that seems never-ending and needs to be cut short?
2 comments:
Yes. And when I finally mustered up the courage to end it I felt the heat ("isn't there something we can salvage out of this?") and then the relief (there wasn't).
You can salvage the wisdom never to do it again.
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