Hey Reader,

Have you ever seen something unfolding before your eyes and you knew exactly what was going to happen? Or you were almost 99% sure?

Usually, that result would be a total failure, while the rest of the people around you would be convinced that it will be a success.

This seems like a realistic scenario when you have some kind of secret information unknown to anyone else.

But it would make no sense if everyone possessed the same information.

I'm talking about a multitude of situations at work where I've been and seen a project going downhill.

I mean, the project was still somewhat afloat, but all the signs of an upcoming failure were there.

However, it felt like I'm the only one who sees it. You know, like a crazy person on the street screaming about the end of the world.

Except... that everyone has seen it happen already in all of the previous projects...

I always found it odd, and a little bit insane.

People do the same thing every time and expect a different result - the traditional definition of insanity.

“Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results”.

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Like I remember I was hired to help set up a new Scrum team. It was a brand new team with people who have never worked together (or even knew each other existed before being put together on a team), who have never built similar products, and who were completely new to Scrum.

High-level executives, experienced managers, and people who had set up new teams before, all of them told me that "this product had to be released in two months".

I remember looking at the people who told me that, looking them right in the eyes, and saying "You know this is not going to happen, don't you?"

And it's like they knew, somewhere deep inside, but they also didn't know, because they answered "it has to".

What do you do in a situation like that?

Well, you have two options: either you leave these people alone with their impossible demands, or you take on a challenge knowing that you will fail.

I decided to go for the second option.

Now, there are a few things to know about 'taking on a challenge you know will fail".

Whether you believe it's going to fail or not, it doesn't mean that you should sabotage it to prove your point.

You take it on with a genuine intention to make it work... but you don't kill yourself over it (figuratively speaking, of course).

And there is one other very-very-very important point here: if you see the likelihood of failure, you need to communicate and over-communicate it.

So in this situation, I have found myself in, I have used every opportunity to share that the expectations set on this team were unrealistic and that we will need much more time just to get the team running smoothly.

The message took many attempts to finally sink in. But I'm happy it did before the initial deadline.

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I think that often our job is to help people realize what the reality is so that they can pivot what they are doing and focus on preparing for the inevitable instead of wasting their energy on things that won't work.

It's kind of like corporate therapy.

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It's weird how the reality of things somehow takes much longer to get to us if we don't want to believe it, right?

In the corporate world, we are often presented with unrealistic "realities" and asked to do unrealistic things.

We can always say "no", the way I did. Well, technically we can.

Some of the potential negative consequences are easy to imagine, like losing a bonus or even losing a job. Which makes it harder to say "no".

But if you've watched my previous video on essentialism, you will know that saying "no" and saying "yes" come hand-in-hand.

So you said "no" to losing your bonus or losing your job. But you said "yes" to doing something useless.

It seems fine, right? The negative consequences of doing something useless (or insane, as we've defined earlier) seem to be worse.

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Well, I would argue with this.

Remember just above I said, "You take it on with a genuine intention to make it work... but you don't kill yourself over it".

Because we are sucked into the unrealistic "reality" we forget the.. well, the actual reality.

If you said "yes" to doing something useless, never forget that it IS indeed useless so that you don't go a step too far.

Like, a completely crazy metaphor that came to my mind while I was writing this is...

You know people ask "if they told you to jump out of a window, would you?" when you are a bit too dedicated to something or someone.

That's kind of the same.

Be dedicated to making it work, but also don't forget that you can't fly.

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When I started writing this email, I didn't know where it will end up, but I believe it has a few good insights you can take with you back to your work.

Of course, this topic didn't just come out of nowhere :)

Last Thursday I posted a new video called "5 project management solutions that NEVER work". If you haven't watched it yet - go check it out here.

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And how do YOU deal with unrealistic expectations and demands coming from your management?

Share with me in the comments to the video or in the blog.

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