One bus, forty minutes, and a whole lotta snow

Snowy morning in Oslo, and my bus was already twenty minutes late. Norway is a snowy country, so you would expect the buses to be ready for snow. Most of the time.

That morning they were not.

I had a choice.

Keep waiting, or walk ten minutes to the metro station and take the metro to work. I decided to wait, because I had waited twenty minutes already and the bus had to be around the corner.

Twenty minutes later I was still standing there. Forty minutes invested. The case for walking was now stronger than it had been at the start. I knew that. I decided to wait anyway.

Fifteen minutes after that, the bus came. It was full.

I could not get on.

So, in the end, I had to walk to the metro.

It's easy to laugh at it now. But it taught me an important lesson about sunk cost fallacy. It doesn't always arrive as a red bus struggling through snow. No, in a business setting it arrives properly dressed and reasoned: "we have been developing this for two years, let us give it one more chance."

Maybe it does deserve one more chance. Maybe it doesn't. What I do know is that if a chance is granted, then it must come with defined success criteria. Otherwise we have simply postponed a difficult conversation.

I once worked with a group of founders. Experienced people, real money behind them from corporate and private equity investors, a strong team, and an idea they were sure would conquer the market. Two years in, no traction and no meaningful revenue. They had clients, which made it harder rather than easier: clients who did not come back and did not pay enough. From the outside it was obvious that this had failed. From the inside it was not obvious at all.

We sat down and gave it three months. We wrote down the bare minimum that had to happen in those three months, and agreed that if it did not happen we would shake hands and walk away.

It did not happen.

We walked away.

That was easier to live with than closing it that same afternoon. People need an exit that respects the work.

Invested effort deserves respect. But it should not automatically earn next year's budget.