{"id":67,"date":"2026-10-05T14:39:01","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T14:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/athought.blog\/?p=67"},"modified":"2026-10-05T14:45:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T14:45:19","slug":"cruelty-a-blessing-the-art-the-decision-the-execution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/athought.blog\/index.php\/cruelty-a-blessing-the-art-the-decision-the-execution\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruelty: A blessing! The art, the decision – the execution."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Business can be a shadowy world – only the most ruthless strategy secures victory, leaving survivors to navigate the treacherous, horrendous aftermath.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The haunted cogs of your machine<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You’ve spent enough dollars from your pocket on building your product, then marketing it.. and even though it’s reaching the right audience, they are barely interested.. You’re spiralling in your own mind.. Am I nuts? It’s the right fit, then why doesn’t it click?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You hear them.. right? The silent whispers of your analysis. When you sitting alone thinking, analyzing, figuring out what your product needs and a thought pops up.. It’s a major change.. *shrieks*, what you have isn’t really working.. then you hear the pushback, the creepy.. seductive.. whisper.. “Too far you’ve come, too much invested.. too much everything, to.. change..”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The comforting lie to stop with that change is enough to ruin your product, or maybe even take you one step closer to killing it altogether. These are the dark thoughts taking you down the road of the “Sunken cost fallacy”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ve seen these cycles again and again, fueled by coverups, denials and ego.. oh the egos!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A government investing another billion to an unfruitful project because the first five billion are already buried in concrete.. by the time the realization kicks in another 5 have been spent on it (or it could be corruption – who knows). A PhD candidate drags a dissertation into its seventh year not out of passion, but because abandoning a mountain of research feels like intellectual death (and very unimpressive to that 2nd semester cutie the candidate has the hots for). A captain that insists on a wrong direction till the ship’s lost.. because of course how can the captain be wrong..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fallacy is a well-documented cognitive trap. But in world of building product, it’s not a trap.. it’s a full fledged ambush! Wearing a lanyard and sitting in a meeting, using words like \u201citeration\u201d, \u201cpivot\u201d, and \u201clegacy investment.\u201d It’s convinced us that killing a feature is an “Oh my god!” corporate suicide.. salvaging a doomed project is the best that can be done, to make sure they are valued. Too chickened out to lose the investment…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But what if the only way out isn\u2019t a gentle pivot but a clean big bada boom? What if the most efficient path forward is to quit cold turkey, sever the limb minus the anesthetic, and right about now? There’s no easy way to do away with it. It has it’s own repercussions but it’s the right thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The myth of the gradual sunset<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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When you have about 12 loyal users, sunsetting gracefully is meaningless, it matters more when you have a bigger user base who actually use the product or feature you’re killing off to bring about something new and exciting (hopefully).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, this is often just procrastination dressed up as empathy. A \u201cgentle\u201d death for a product or feature that should never have lived. Just keeping up with it burdens one of your most important resource.. engineering focus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It feels cruel just to give something that shouldn’t exist in the first place extra focus, which you could spend elsewhere to build something better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s lie to your own intellect, an admission of mistake is not wrong, denial however will ruin you. While you’re in denial your competitor is building something better, which honestly so could you.. but no.. you’re stuck..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rip the band aid off.. let the fresh air hit your wound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cold turkey protocol:
A three-step detox<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Killing it cold turkey feels like vandalism, good.. it is.. but a necessary one, think of it like ritualistic purge. It’s a framework to overstep your bounds.. let the emotional brain be overtaken by ruthlessness.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

01: The Zero Re-Build<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Pretend you’re starting today… no code, no platform.. how would you solve a problem a user has today? Pull out the white board or a notion doc and get going.. The simplest answer is usually the correct one, then build on that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What you’ll see is not the bloated version you had before. It also wasn’t technical debt.. it is just.. the solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

02: The ledger method<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Ego and emotions are generally what drive you to keep investing in this venture you thought was fruitful but isn’t. You are down a big budget and that still holds true, but now is the time to cut losses and move forward. Now is the time to be the accountant and take some pros and cons.. pull out a sheet of paper or again that notion doc works too, add in two columns and get going:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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– Column A – The cost of keeping<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

So what does this cost in the long run if it keeps running the way it is now, or with additions to it? Maintenance, reputation and opportunity costs all come into play. Be brutally honest with yourself, like your future depends on it.. and it does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– Column B – The cost of killing, cold turkey<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Let this help you focus on the repercussions of ending support for your feature, product etc now. Your support tickets, liability, refunds and the PR cost for this ruthlessness all should be taken into account.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Here’s the thing, once you’ve decided this as an investment into the future, it feels less like a trade off or failure, it feels like a foundation for tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Step 3: It’s a public execution, be polite<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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The hardest part sometimes is just communication, but you’ve just axed something you thought worked.. that took guts, setting aside your ego and a whole lot of cost gone down (you’re more wiser for it though). So this is the announcement. Settle in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Post that blog, send in the notification and brief your customer success team with transparency. You’re not sorry you killed this feature or product, but you are killing feature X or product X immediately, you’ve learned it wasn’t working and that just is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, here’s something we are doing.. we’ve heard and learned X, Y and Z from this failure. We’re now focused more on A and B, now that there are more resources available to do so. There are brilliant things coming up. Hurrah!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your users might be a bit disgruntled but they won’t hate you for it, people rarely hate decisive companies, they hate unpredictability, unnecessary surprises and a breakdown in communication and work or productivity. Stretching out your good bye wouldn’t have improved their experience of your product.. they would have seen a company panicked trying to fix something that couldn’t be, at least not the way it was being done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Withdrawal Symptoms (and Why They\u2019re Good)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Don\u2019t mistake the silence for peace. The moment you flip the kill switch, the withdrawal will hit. A vocal power user will threaten to churn. An executive who sponsored the original project will feel publicly humiliated. Your own brain will scream at 3:00 AM, \u201cWhat have I done? Oh Lord, oh good gracious, have mercy.., turn back the wheels of time….”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are withdrawal symptoms, not signs that you messed up. The one disgruntled user threatening to quit your product would probably drain your support resources, building their workflow around an anomaly. The embarrassed executive is experiencing the hurt, not of a bad product call, but bruised ego – personal problem really, not a product one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Your 3:00 AM panic is simply your neural pathways adjusting to a reality where your identity isn\u2019t tied to a failed feature. The cold turkey method forces these conflicts to a head, all at once, in a single, tough week, rather than spreading the misery over a year of passive-aggressive maintenance.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The Lightness of Being Wrong<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Since there was time, we’ve been all told that success comes from persistence, celebrating founders and innovators who held on, against all odds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We forget the others who walked the slow walk to oblivion.. Blackberry anyone?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accepting a mistake, learning from it and growing from it is professionally profound, infact it’s just profound in a personal setting too. You’re getting rid of the fat.. slimming down.. Toning things up. This is an opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So.. the product isn’t really a singular entity, it’s made possible by the team behind it, those are the real cogs of the machine, running everything smoothly. So if this team has the courage and gut to axe somethings for the benefit of something better, it’s not a sign of a ruthless inconsiderate team, but one that’s Alive and well. One that can reason and grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pull the plug, cancel that meeting & post the update. The withdrawal will pass, the future will continue to be here, are you in it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Business can be a shadowy world – only the most ruthless strategy secures victory, leaving survivors to navigate the treacherous, horrendous aftermath. The haunted cogs of your machine You’ve spent enough dollars from your pocket on building your product, then marketing it.. and even though it’s reaching the right audience, they are barely interested.. You’re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"athought_summary":"You hear it when you\u2019re alone with the numbers: too far, too much invested-don\u2019t change.\n\nWhat if the only way out isn\u2019t a gentle pivot, but a clean cut? Cold turkey. Pull the plug. See what lightens.\n\nAre you still in-or still sunk?","athought_og_description":"That whisper saying you\u2019ve come too far to change? It\u2019s not caution. It\u2019s the ambush. Ready for cold turkey?","_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[35,34,33,23,32],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-product","tag-grow","tag-learn","tag-new-life-cycle","tag-product","tag-sunset"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/athought.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Feature-v2.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/athought.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/athought.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/athought.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/athought.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/athought.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/athought.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135,"href":"https:\/\/athought.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions\/135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/athought.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/athought.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/athought.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/athought.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}