The art of stopping.

Why in these tricky times choosing to stop things, not being forced to, might be a good idea.

Over Easter I watched my children become daredevils on the slopes. I will never be able to ski because of a catastrophic car crash and so I fly down the mountain vicariously through them. It is interesting to observe how learning to stop is one of the essential parts of becoming good.

In business too, there have been a few high profile stops in the last couple of weeks. Virgin ceased investing in its space programme - Orbit, Amazon closed its UK book depository and Twitter stopped giving out blue ticks.

Of course, there are many ways of stopping. You can stop operating in a market. You could stop the process of taking a company public. Maybe even just give your employees a break and stop sending emails after midnight. I am going to focus on the power of stopping products or services.

There are a tonne of reasons to think about why you should stop something - it could be to save investment,  to change direction, or just to help the team focus more effectively. In my experience it is hard to do. There is always a compelling reason, or  - more likely - an excuse, to keep going. However, it is a good skill to build.

Perhaps the most dramatic way of stopping is for a  company to  pull the plug on their main product lines to save themselves. Kodak was well known for producing photographic film and cameras. However, with the advent of digital cameras and smartphones, the demand for traditional cameras and film started to decline and Kodak had to file for bankruptcy in 2012. In response to this shift in consumer behavior, Kodak decided to stop producing film cameras completely  and shift their focus to digital cameras and printing solutions. This allowed the company to stay relevant in the market and maintain its position as a leader in the photography industry. 

The Kodak story has particular relevance now, too.  There is currently much commentary in the technology sector on how much  Google will stop investing in its old search software in favour of more generative AI investment that can take on chatgpt and other new applications. How much of a  Kodak will Google be?

A slightly less radical way of stopping is to look at individual projects, not your whole business. I once worked with a company that had a ‘Kill List’ which was reviewed every quarter. Although the name was somewhat over the top, it actually made the process of ending projects less of a drama. In the annual planning cycle, executives would put forward a minimum of one project they were going to ‘kill’ off. Evidence of the death of their chosen project formed part of the executives’ bonus and appraisal assessment. This approach definitely improved focus and made the team look at all of their workload in a careful way.

At lastminute.com we were not very good at stopping stuff, we liked starting things too much. Perhaps we should have taken a leaf out of  Supercell’s book. The games company is famous for a culture that encourages experimentation and risk-taking. Nothing so innovative there you are probably thinking. However, when a test or project is completed, regardless of whether it was successful or not, the team celebrates the end of the project with a "Shutdown Party". This party is a way for the team to acknowledge the hard work that went into the project and to celebrate the lessons learned from it. Apparently they can get quite rowdy with multiple bottles of champagne consumed and all night celebrations. 

Surprisingly, Ford, several decades before Supercell, deployed a similar tactic when it decided to stop producing its famous Mustang car. This decision was somewhat strange, as the Mustang had been hugely popular since it was first introduced in 1964. To mark the end of the Mustang's production, Ford decided to hold a special event at its headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan. The event was called the "Funeral for a Legend", and who are featured a procession of Mustangs driving slowly through the streets, led by a hearse.

The event took a humorous turn when a group of Mustang enthusiasts showed up with their own cars and decided to stage a mock funeral of their own. They had a fake coffin with a Mustang emblem on it, and they even had a fake priest to perform the service. Chaos set in as the official procession drove by, because the Mustang enthusiasts started chanting, "Save the Mustang! Save the Mustang!" 

The official Ford representatives were not amused and the subsequent furore was one of the reasons Ford reversed their decision and the car remains a bestseller today. The lesson I take from this is to be extremely careful of your customers' emotional attachment to a product, especially one that you might be planning a big party for.

In this challenging economic climate and with energy costs continuing to hurt, deciding to pull the plug on an area of your business might not feel like a choice to many. But as I learned from my mini snow maniacs, flying to a stylish halt, even when it's the last thing you want to do, might be the best decision.