Zombie Initiatives

Recently, a colleague shared with me a story about an initiative that continued well past its useful life.  Without getting into the details, the initiative, which had good intentions, resulted in formation of a committee to review requests to use an IT application in a specific use model..  The “good intent” was to ensure that, early in the life of this use model, there would be special oversight to ensure success.  That was the good intention.  After three years and several hundred applications, the committee was still meeting on a regular basis.  When asked under what conditions the committee would deem its work completed, no one knew the answer. In fact, no one recalled who chartered the committee or who was authorized to deem the work of the committee done. What was clear was that the committee charter did not include the conditions under which the committee work would be deemed complete – even if it was just the passage of time.

Committees that never finish their work and projects that never end are best described as Zombie initiatives because you cannot “kill them” even if you try. In LEAN terms, it seemed that the wastes of Over-Processing and/or Over-Production were present here.

Often, these Zombie initiatives become such a fabric of daily work that no one even questions, “why are we doing this.” Yet, by not questioning, “why are we doing this”, we are creating the wastes of over-processing and over-production over and over again.  Imagine the resources we could free up to work on customer-value-added or business-value-added activities if we could kill Zombie initiatives, whether the initiative was a project, a committee, or a regularly scheduled meeting.

Perhaps one technique to prevent future Zombie initiatives is a strong charter for the initiative that states the conditions that will terminate the initiative.  And one of the conditions should always be the lapse of time.  The sponsor can always renew the initiative if he or she desires. But, barring that explicit renewal, initiatives should terminate or sunset.