Celebrate the Wrong Path

We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to find the right answer.

Especially when a project is over budget.

The team needs to save millions of dollars. Everyone looks at the design and asks:

What's the right way to get back on budget?

That's a hard question.

There might be dozens of possible paths.

Change the structure.
Change the materials.
Change the program.
Change how it's built.
Change the design entirely.

But exploring the wrong path can feel like a waste.

Why spend days developing an option just to throw it away?

Because throwing it away might be progress!

We explored it. We learned why it didn't work. We eliminated it.

And now we're one path closer to something that does work.

Experienced teams understand this.

They don't wait until they're certain they're on the right path. They keep moving, even when they don't yet know where a path will lead.

Sketch it. Test it. Price it. Kill it.

Then do it again. And again.

The question becomes:

How quickly can your team close that loop?

The objective isn't to avoid wrong paths.

It might almost be the opposite:

How many wrong paths can we explore in the least amount of time?

Because every path teaches us something.

Too expensive.
Too complicated.
Too slow.
Doesn't fit.
Doesn't create enough value.

Cross it off and keep moving.

And with every option eliminated, the problem gets a little clearer.

The danger isn't taking the wrong path.

It's staying on one too long. Or, even worse, doing nothing because we're afraid of choosing the wrong one.

So when an option gets eliminated, maybe we should celebrate it.

We didn't waste our time.

We learned something we didn't know before.

And that knowledge moves the project forward.

You don't have to know the right path before you start.

You just have to keep moving forward.