The danger of 'fast fashion’ projects

I read a couple of articles last week. One about fashion waste and one about a failed technology project that bankrupted a local council here in the UK and I noticed a link between the two.

The fashion industry produces around 100 billion garments a year. Most of them will be worn once, maybe twice, before they make their way to landfill or - if we're being generous - a charity shop somewhere.

We know this is absurd, however, the appeal is obvious. Something new. Something that signals progress. Something that makes you feel, at least for a moment, like a different kind of person. I’m writing this before a shopping trip to London, so I’m living it right now!

Now (and here comes the link), think about the last major project your organisation initiated.

How much did it cost? How long did it take? Who championed it? And how widely was it adopted?

If the answer is ‘not very widely’ or ‘we’re still not sure why we did it’, then it is no more than a ‘fast fashion’ project. The technology project failure story is a great example of this: the approach was very much about getting it on the shelf and worrying about the quality later.

I’ve seen many ‘fast fashion’ projects over the years and they have a very particular shape. They usually arrive with a fanfare. There's a steering committee and there are external sales people with excellent PowerPoint skills. There's a launch event too, sometimes with cakes and speeches.

However, they're designed not to solve a problem, but to signal that a problem is being addressed. This distinction matters enormously, and organisations rarely make it.

The other defining characteristic is that they are the brainchild of just one person. Not the organisation as a whole or the people who work there. One person, whose credibility is then attached to it, and whose departure will quietly end it! The project is a garment that they’re convinced will transform the way they look, yet they will only wear it for a season.

Meanwhile, the people doing the real work - the ones who were asked to own a workstream between their actual job - are left holding a half-finished deliverable and a vague sense that this will happen again.

In my experience, it will.

The organisations that resist this ‘fast fashion’ project tendency aren't the ones with better strategy. They're the ones that have learned to ask the right questions before they commission anything. What problem will this solution solve? What value does it add to the people doing the real work? How can we evolve the solution so that it continues to add value for years to come? How will we measure that it does?

If nobody can satisfactorily answer those questions, then it's not a project you should undertake.

It's something nice on a hangar that shouldn’t be touched.