Beware the Squandered Squeeze

by Eddie Pipkin

We were watching one of the Tour de France stages this week and as often happens, a small group of riders had established a “breakaway.”  That’s when a few brave souls accelerate ahead of the main group and try to get far enough ahead to win the day’s race.  Sometimes, this technique works.  Often, it does not, as the much larger, main group (known as the peloton) can work together to go faster if they get organized and choose to do so.  Breaking away is a bold strategy that, done right, can mean a lesser known rider ends up on the winners’ podium.  On this day, however, the breakaway riders got caught by the main pack.  The fearless foursome who had gone for it had peddled their hearts out, but at a certain point it became clear their efforts weren’t going to pay off, so they gave up, slowed down, and let the pack reabsorb them, thus saving their energy for another day.  As the commentator wittily observed, it was one of those times, “The juice wasn’t worth the squeeze.”  Don’t you think we could all use a better sense of that calculation of effort versus reward?  Sometimes, we don’t know when to quit.

It’s good to go for it, whether we are undertaking a risky change or giving the go-ahead to a bold initiative.  The only way forward to bigger and better things is to put ourselves and our organization out there on the leading edge.  I write about this approach to life and leadership all the time.  Nothing risked means nothing gained.  The hardest thing of all to measure is missed opportunities.

But the unspoken corollary to risk taking is that if we take those risks, we will inevitably fall short from time to time.  If we are bold in our endeavors, we will occasionally fail.  Sometimes the crack-up is spectacular; sometimes an idea or initiative just peters out with a whimper.  It is the unpredictable nature of an unraveling plan that makes it hard to figure out when to pull the plug.

One of the important things to note in this example is the importance of having a clear metric for estimating if your potential result is worth the expended effort.  In the case of bike riders trying to win a race, once it seems likely their effort is doomed to failure, there is no benefit to be gained from a continued depletion of resources.  They won’t be getting any bonus points for having given it a try.  They won’t gain any tangential benefits or moral victories.  So, the best course is to get out as soon as the inevitable becomes clear and wait to fight another day.

In ministry work – as in so many arenas in daily life – making that calculation is even more complex than timing a bike race; knowing when to cut your losses and when to double down can be complicated and confusing.  Local churches are famously inept at making such assessments with any kind of precision, because we are so often so squishy on defining useful metrics.  Also, having come up short on bringing an idea to fruition, we are heavily invested in tweaking the narrative in ways that celebrate idealized intangible benefits.  (The classic aphorism, “If one person was helped, it was worth it” is regularly employed.)

Having a clear set of metrics to define success before we start the process can make the difference in knowing when we should bail out (or stay in).  In the case of Tour de France riders, the obvious measure of success is winning the stage.  If you no longer have a reasonable shot at winning the stage, you pull the plug.  How do they know when that moment comes?  They have lots of experience, lots of data gleaned from the experiences of others, and they have robust teams of coaches to guide them.

Local churches can set clear metrics for success, and they can leverage the experience of leaders in their communities who have been through similar situations.  They can also harvest data based on research from the experiences of other local churches.  It is highly unlikely that any plan you decide to undertake is a fresh and wholly original approach to a ministry challenge.  There are so many churches out there, it is almost certain that somebody, somewhere (hopefully someone with a relatable context to your specific situation) has previously tried the thing you are thinking of doing.  Know as much as you can know going in.  Know the danger signs to look for if the plan is going to falter and be resolute in what will be the red flag warnings that you should abandon ship.  That resolve matters, because you and I know how susceptible we are to keep an idea moving ahead even as the evidence of its demise starts rolling in.  We will do everything we can to keep it on life support.

So much damage is done by persisting in efforts that should be abandoned.  This is one of the reasons that organizations are so averse to risk.  They have been burned too many times by plans too many plans gone awry.  If we were more prepared to get out of a bad situation – if we treated failure to launch as a normal part of creative risk-taking – we would have a higher tolerance for taking chances.

Everything is an experiment.  Sometimes experiments work; sometimes they don’t.  Even when they don’t, they can teach valuable lessons, and those lessons can strengthen and inspire the next iteration of thoughtful experiments.  While it’s not true that every effort is “worth it” because we learned a valuable lesson or two, it is true that every effort, no matter how disappointing the final result, results in a valuable lesson or two.  That’s a subtle difference.  We shouldn’t make the same mistake twice, but we should stop and reflect on the wisdom gained from even disastorous attempts.

Leaders should be willing to stick their necks out.  They should also be willing to retract them if there have been miscalculations.  That’s not a failure of leadership; that’s wise, sensible leadership.

Make that squeeze count!  Maximum effort = maximum juice.

How do you and your team do when it comes to calculating risk versus reward?  Are you good at setting realistic metrics for measuring success?  Do you respond with efficiency when those metrics aren’t being met (or make adjustments quickly to better meet them)?  Have you built a culture in which risk taking is encouraged and part of the process of that risk taking is knowing when to cut your losses?

Share your stories – risks that proved worth the effort and risks that turned out to be a little too risky – in the comments section.