Small Signals, Big Failures

The first warning signs that a project will run into trouble rarely arrive in plain sight. They hide in the details: in a proposal riddled with sloppy errors, in a careless introductory email from a new vendor, or in a contract that still carries last year’s dates. None of these small things will sink a business on their own, but they reliably reveal how much attention and professionalism the other side brings to the work itself.

The big failures (like missed deadlines, blown budgets) rarely come out of nowhere. They’re usually just the logical consequence of having overlooked the small warning signs at the start. (As happened to us recently with one vendor, ending in a one-month slip.)

Sometimes all it takes is a few small checkpoints in place, and they don’t have to be necessarily brown M&M’s like Van Halen had. 🙂

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