In the training today, we touched on the last part of project management whereby sometimes a project needs to be stopped when it no longer delivers the benefits that it promised and actually gotten out of hand and do more harm than good to the business. However, stopping a project half-way through is actually tougher than continuing it, because so much effort, manpower and money have been put into it, and no one really dares to make the call to stop it and declare it a failure, even though it must be done to prevent more resources and money being drained further. Sometimes the project team members are so into running the project that they actually do not want it to be stopped despite knowing that it isn't working anymore, and it is as if the project starts to have a life of its own! So, it takes a person great courage and judgement to make the decision and to take the steps in ending it.
Well, it's the same in a failed marriage, isn't it?
When the marriage is not working anymore, or not "delivering what it promised", and there is no way to make it right again, then it's actually better to end it than to continue on blindly. Of course, one can argue that marriage is not a project, but then i could also say that there are similarities in the two.
Marriage actually has to be managed (and maintained and monitored) just like a project, a life-long project in fact. Continuous attention, review, feedback, communication, teamwork, commitment, dedication, having common goals, identification of problems and resolving them... all these elements of project management are crucial too in a marriage.
Yet, sometimes if one of the project team members is no cooperating, or there is simply personality or attitude problems in the team memeber, it will be detrimental to the success of the project and there is no way to change it no matter how hard you are managing it, besides changing that particular member altogether.
So, my marriage has failed terribly. When i looked back, i know that i hadn't really been maintaining it in the best way possible, even though it wasn't really that bad either and just require some improvements had the team members communicated properly and worked towards a common goal.
However, the crucial team member (i.e. the husband) had actually lost sight of the "project". The majority of the problems also lied in the team member himself, in that he was no longer committed and dedicated to the "project" anymore; his heart was no longer in that "project" anymore. He was out doing other stuff with another person who is not part of the team, and even thinking of having another "project" with the other person. He totally forgot and ignored the importance of the "project" he had on-hand and his accountability and responsibility to the other team member(s).
In the end, i had to be the one to call a stop to this failing "project". Yet, something different from a normal business project is that the "cost" does not really stop after ending it. There may still be a cost to my mental and physical health for a long time to come.
Labels: love
