When to “Give Up?” without being a “Failure”

All rights, this may look like counterproductive and ill chosen. Give me the benefit of the doubt and read till the end before judging.

In management and leadership we may often talk about the positive and encouraging side of not giving up which makes all of us feel good. But there is a flip side to it too. Though we do not talk about the negatives of "not giving up" often, we may have to use "give up" quite often in the real life. A discussion on when to "give up" and how to "give up" will actually help many managers to be better and actually will help them to strike a balance between performance and caring.

Before going any further, let me tell you the line of thoughts brought me to this question? One fine day a few weeks back, me and one of our senior coaches walking from a training session back to the office. Our coach was having a serious discussion with one of the Senior Managers on our way back, I asked what that conversation was all about. He replied, “Manager was asking what to do about a subordinate who is stubborn and not focus on their responsibilities”. So with the curiosity, I asked what was your advice. He said, “As long as he is progressing, the manager should work with him to make him improve”.

Let’s get back to the conversation again. His answer kept me thinking. Can we tolerate a person or an effort because it’s progressing? Or do we have to be more critical about it? So I started searching for it and following are some facts I came across with.

• Nokia CEO in his famous speech at the acquisition of Nokia by Microsoft said, “we didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost”
• I hear many people who got a break in their life and became successful saying “I should have stopped what I was doing and start this way earlier than this”

I had numerous encounters with people who regret the way they lived the life, where they think they could have done something better, though they don’t have a clue what that other thing could be

So let me ask the question again, should we continue doing something continuously because there is progress? If not, when should we decide to give up?

I think you need to give up when you realize that your best efforts wouldn’t allow you to progress beyond the rate which the environment of that particular context is progressing.

Let me simplify what I mentioned above. Assume you are playing a video game. In a normal video game, there are a fixed number of stages to complete if you want to finish the game. It means the game is not changing or progressing. But let’s say, in our think experiment game, every time a player completes all the levels of the current game, the gaming company introduces a new level.

Ex / Game has 10 levels now, but the moment a player completes the 10th level, the company will introduce a new level increasing the number of levels to 11.

Assume any player who played the game and not in the final stage when a new level is created, has to pay a penalty fee.

Ex/ If I take the previous scenario, every player playing from level 1 to level 9 has to pay a penalty fee when the gaming company creates that 11th level.

How long will you play the game? When will you decide to give up?

My answer is, I will give up the moment I realize, whatever I do, I can’t complete a level before the gaming company creates a new level.

Ex/ Assume it takes me roughly 5 minutes to complete a level and the game creates a new level every 2 minutes because someone has completed the highest level. When I complete two level spending 10minutes, the game has already created 5 more new levels. This means I never will be able to reach the top level, thus will continue to lose money forever. I will give up playing the game, the moment I understand that, even though I’m progressing by completing levels.

Now let’s apply this to different business related scenarios.

• Assume there is a company engaged in a business where they take at least a year to master the existing technology. But the industry is moving forward every six months due to one of the competitors introducing a newer technology. Unless the company can phase up to the progression to six months or less, they will be lagging behind and margins will increase forever. In that case, it will be better to “give up” than continuing though you are progressing.
• Assume you have a subordinate, which you need pain staking four months to coach a new skill. They do not learn by themselves or their self-learning rate is much worse than four months. But in your industry, the new trend comes every two months. So, unless you do something to speed the learning process up to less than 2 months, this effort will be a never recovering waste, though the subordinate is learning a new skill.

This indicates to me that, it is time to give up when you have no idea what to do next to improve the rate of progression while your current progression is below the progression rate of the environment. No point in continuing, expecting the others to slow down or miracles to happen.

Does “Giving Up” means you are a “failure”?

Absolutely not. This is the common myth we all are exposed to. You are “Not good” at something means your strengths are not aligned with the demands of that task. But it no way says that you don’t have “Strengths”. You will be a fool not to give up (stop) using your strengths to do something which they are not good at doing. Assume a “Shark” trying to come on land and do what humans do, because humans are great. What a waste it would be. Instead of trying that, “Give up” that, go back to the sea and dominate the sea with their strengths. Even mighty humans will think twice before entering their territory.