Why Is Killing a Project After Six Months a Leadership Failure?

Brian Chesky calls it a failure of leadership when a team spends six months on a project and he has to kill it. They should never have gone six months down a journey without him pulling the plug.

He wants to be at the beginning and the end of the process and to check in during the middle. Projects head the wrong way for one of two reasons: they start wrong and are not set up for success, or they sit off on an island without oversight. Setting a project up for success means a clear vision, the right people, one directly responsible individual, enough resources, total alignment, the right process, and a scope that is neither too big nor too small. After that he sets a rhythm. He can stay involved with a couple dozen projects, maybe 20, and not 20 a day. Two or three get a daily rhythm, others a week-by-week rhythm, and others a monthly rhythm. If he is not meeting a project monthly, he would call himself not involved.

When a project is set up for success and is not left without oversight, the problem of killing work he is unhappy with never comes up.