Starting over, isn’t easy. No matter how long you put into the project, starting over is always met with an initial sigh. “Here we go again” “Back to square one” “I have to do it all over again.” Yes you do, but you are also there to do it all over again, you also get to start all over again, and you have the opportunity to begin again. Not everyone gets that, so revel in…
When things go wrong, there are three things you need to do. Reset – it is what it is, let it go. Regroup – get everyone back on the same page, forget what happened, get them focused on where they need to be. Relaunch – Push forward once again. Many teams get hung up on Reset, they can’t let it go, they refuse to let it go, and they never get the chance to regroup…
After you ship, after you deliver, after you have the moment of “I did it”, there is a time for taking a break and patting yourself on the back. You did it. You got here. You survived. But don’t rest too long, don’t rest on those laurels too long, otherwise you won’t get back to doing what needs to be done. Which is finding the next Ship.
Take as long as you need. But get there. If you’re not planning on getting there, abandon it. There are things that have a time crunch on them, figure out if it’s for you or not (perhaps it’s not). That’s okay. What isn’t okay is rushing to get things done and making a mess of it.
Old ideas don’t die. They get re-packaged, updated, built upon, and shipped in something different and better than before. They evolve. Just because you did something before and it didn’t work, doesn’t mean it won’t work this time with a few tweaks to it.