Day Two

The most useful thing you can do when a project tips into chaos is find the one thing you actually own.

I started a new engagement last week. A cross-border startup program — multiple countries, multiple organizations, multiple stakeholder types, all involved from day one.

Day two, and I had a task list that could have belonged to four different people. Marketing strategy, partner logistics, stakeholder comms, pitch prep — all legitimate, all urgent according to someone. I sat with it for a while, trying to figure out which one to pick up first, and realized I was paralyzed because I was treating them as equally mine.

I opened a blank doc and wrote one sentence: what does success on this project actually get measured by? Not by me — by the people who'll decide at the end whether it worked.

The answer was obvious the moment I wrote it. The program. Whether founders got real value, whether the cohort ran well, whether the selection and the curriculum and the milestone reviews held together. That's the thing. The partner logistics matter because they enable the program. The stakeholder comms matter because they protect the program. But if the program is weak, none of the rest of it saves us.

Once I had that, the list stopped being paralyzing. Some things went on the calendar. Some went in a parking lot. Some I knew immediately weren't mine to own at all. The chaos didn't go away — but it had a shape now.

Here's what I'd suggest: at your next project kickoff, before the first task gets assigned, write down this question and answer it yourself — what does success on this project get measured by, and am I the person best positioned to own that thing? If yes, calendar that first and let everything else organize around it. If no, that's a more important conversation to have now than anything on the task list.

A project without an organizing principle isn't a project yet. It's a list of things that could go wrong.