The idea that a project you work on might be harmful or ineffective is often hard to consider, take seriously, and act on (and then share publicly!). This is a skill I want to nurture and work on. I really appreciate this post and am curating it — I’d like to see more retrospectives, especially about projects that are being discontinued or changed significantly.
I also really appreciate some of the discussionin thecomments,[1] and I think the way the post was written encouraged this. Readers could disagree with the post/decision in part because the post provided relevant and specific information. It also shared an overview of the history of the project (milestones, etc.), and a description of how the team decided to stop this campaign.[2] And it was surprisingly vivid, perhaps because it is structured as a history of the decision and because it explicitly describes the experience of the decision-makers (worry, uncertainty, feeling “unnerved” at the prospect that the campaign might have been negative, etc.). E.g. in this section, I could picture the team beginning to worry and beginning a deeper investigation.
E.g. “While planning the strategy for the team in 2021 the new manager of the campaign, Weronika Żurek, stumbled upon more news about people in Poland switching to other fish species during Christmas, one of them being salmon. Carp is an omnivorous fish fed predominantly grain and soy, whereas salmon is a carnivorous fish, which in turn uses more animals in farming. The potential effect of that made us worried. We decided to reduce our actions around Christmas 2021 until we could investigate this further.”
The idea that a project you work on might be harmful or ineffective is often hard to consider, take seriously, and act on (and then share publicly!). This is a skill I want to nurture and work on. I really appreciate this post and am curating it — I’d like to see more retrospectives, especially about projects that are being discontinued or changed significantly.
I also really appreciate some of the discussion in the comments,[1] and I think the way the post was written encouraged this. Readers could disagree with the post/decision in part because the post provided relevant and specific information. It also shared an overview of the history of the project (milestones, etc.), and a description of how the team decided to stop this campaign.[2] And it was surprisingly vivid, perhaps because it is structured as a history of the decision and because it explicitly describes the experience of the decision-makers (worry, uncertainty, feeling “unnerved” at the prospect that the campaign might have been negative, etc.). E.g. in this section, I could picture the team beginning to worry and beginning a deeper investigation.
Related resources/posts/discussions:
Examples of someone admitting an error or changing a key conclusion
Staring into the abyss as a core life skill
What are examples of EA orgs pivoting after receiving funding?
Posts tagged with “Postmortems & retrospectives”
And also have uncertainties about the model that informed the decision.
E.g. “While planning the strategy for the team in 2021 the new manager of the campaign, Weronika Żurek, stumbled upon more news about people in Poland switching to other fish species during Christmas, one of them being salmon. Carp is an omnivorous fish fed predominantly grain and soy, whereas salmon is a carnivorous fish, which in turn uses more animals in farming. The potential effect of that made us worried. We decided to reduce our actions around Christmas 2021 until we could investigate this further.”