One definition of “flail” is, to move vigorously or erratically; thrash about. The title of this note could also be “Flounder Leads to Failure.” The point here is that loss of focus and inability to keep on track are two key causes of project and even company failures. While change is constant, no project or company that continually changes direction is likely to succeed.
Software developers understand there is a significant price to context switching … changing tasks too often. For the software developer, or for any profession where having a full grasp of the environment and influences on it, each context switch requires parking one task in a recoverable state, and then re-familiarizing with the state of the next task. This type of task hopping can lead to both tremendous inefficiencies and to significant errors. The inefficiencies arise from the acts of parking and recovering the state of the work. Errors arise from the loss of continuity, and the incomplete or incorrect parking or recovering of the state of the work. Anyone who has ever written code will be familiar with the question, “why did I write this function this way?” Often, the documentation accompanying a parked activity is not fully adequate. And even when it is, there is time required to review and reacquaint with the task.
Clearly, the type of work done by a software developer is not completely analogous to a company’s efforts to remain focused and true to a strategic direction. The lessons from context switching are, however, applicable, especially for smaller companies with resource constraints. Limited resources that are fully (or often more than fully) committed to tasks must perform a version of triage when asked to change tasks, add tasks, or otherwise modify the tasks currently in work. This can lead to flailing or floundering.
Tasks and projects can be spread out further in terms of target completion dates. However, with less focus time per project … attention is spread over more work. Not only will there be delays relative to original plans, but context switching, as noted above, can result in errors. Thus there is the risk … some would argue the likelihood of delay and lower quality. An alternative outcome is that some of the tasks can be parked and left incomplete. This may be acceptable in terms of a change in strategy or marketing conditions. That is, some work becomes obviated before it is completed and it is fine to shut down that project. However, all too often, the “flail syndrome” results in work that should be seen through to completion getting parked. This leads to wasted effort, lowered morale, and loss of company resources.
As a company changes directions without completing projects, time is lost, money is wasted, and progress towards success is not made. The reasons for floundering can be many. These include an incomplete understanding of the target market, inadequate resources to complete an objective within the window of opportunity, or the shiny object syndrome just to name a few.
In the extreme, FLAIL can lead to FAIL.