Success Ambiguity
The initiative can't succeed because success was never defined. And it can't fail, because failure requires a standard that doesn't exist.
A true fortress has resources, location, and worthy people. Valluvar’s fortress has three requirements: assets, position, and capability. Without any one, it’s not a fortress. Your change initiative has been ‘in progress’ since 2023. Progress reports say ‘on track.’ On track to where? Nobody defined what success looks like. Not in measurable terms. Not in terms that would allow someone to say, conclusively, ‘We did it. It’s done.’ The initiative can’t succeed because success was never defined. And it can’t fail, because failure requires a standard that doesn’t exist.
Meta’s ‘Year of Efficiency’ in 2023 cut 21,000 jobs. I read the internal memos. In 2021, Facebook had rebranded to Meta and committed $36 billion to the metaverse. Reality Labs lost $13.7 billion that year alone. By 2023, Zuckerberg announced that the era of ‘Move Fast’ was over. The era of ‘Move Efficiently’ had begun. The overcorrection was total: from hiring 27,000 people in 2020-2021 to eliminating 21,000 in 2022-2023. Overcorrection is the organizational pendulum swinging not to center, but to the opposite extreme, with human careers as the weight.
Motion without a defined destination is wandering. In navigation, a compass bearing tells you which direction you’re facing. But without coordinates, without a destination, a bearing is meaningless. You can walk due north forever. Without knowing where ‘north enough’ is, you’ll never arrive. Organizational change without defined success criteria is compass-bearing movement: directionally correct, definitionally aimless. The team is moving. The dashboards show motion. The reports show trajectory. But nobody can answer the only question that matters: ‘Are we there yet?’ Because ‘there’ was never plotted on the map.
Define success for one active initiative in one sentence. Not a vision. Not an aspiration. A measurable end state. If you can’t write that sentence, the initiative can’t end. And an initiative that can’t end is consuming resources forever.
That permanent ‘almost’ has a name. Success Ambiguity. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Untie The Knot
Uproot
Success was never defined because definition felt constraining. The initiative needed ‘flexibility.’ But flexibility without a target is aimlessness. The initiative couldn’t end because ending requires a standard, and no standard existed.
Navigate
Every initiative has a single-sentence success definition: a measurable end state that, when achieved, means the initiative is complete.
Tool
DMG / Success Criteria: the protocol that requires every initiative to define its completion state before it begins. When success is defined, initiatives can end.
Implement
Define success for one active initiative in one sentence. Not a vision. A measurable end state. If you can’t write that sentence, the initiative can’t end.
Emerge
When success is defined, initiatives complete instead of lingering, resources are freed for new work, and the organisation stops accumulating permanent ‘in progress’ programs.