1. Declare victory
Regardless of whether something has been successful or not the quickest way to kill it is to publicly declare it a success: “The initiative has been completely successful. The team responsible is no longer needed. The values have been internalized.”
2. Suck the blood from it
This happens when people embrace and co-opt the words of a new initiative, but ignore the substance. It adopts the activity by name. But implementation is just a caricature. This sounds like a lot of Agile transformations I’ve seen. The added bonus is the initiative is forever discredited within the organization.
3. Death by a thousand tiny cuts
Kill the initiative by endless budget revisions, reporting burdens, multiple progress reviews, frequent changes to the features, or second-guessing those people doing the work. It’s entirely plausible to hide the intent to kill behind the claim it was getting lots of attention and being smothered with love.
4. Benign neglect
Starve the work of money, people, prominence or career. It becomes clear that this career path is a death march. With luck, it will die a natural death without anyone ever having to do something more explicit. Those who care give up and leave. Which is just terrific for those who killed it: no fingerprints!
5. We tried it but it didn’t work
Following an extended period of benign neglect and sucking the blood from the initiative, management declares one day: “It cost too much” or “It didn’t meet objectives” or “It was a bad strategic fit” or “Unfortunately it wasn’t right for us”.
[This has been taken from Why are there no successful innovation initiatives?]
