Every now and then a client at a first meeting asks me a direct question: "Do You guarantee this will pay off?" I always answer the same way: no. And I watch the face of the person opposite change. He was expecting a different answer. Perhaps the day before he spoke to another company where he was told confidently, "yes, of course, all our projects are successful". My answer sounds worse. But it is the only honest one.
This article is about an inconvenient truth that contractors, business book authors and conference speakers rarely say out loud: there are no guarantees of a project's success. Nobody has them. And the sooner You stop looking for them, the better your real chances.
Where the illusion comes from
Bookshelves are groaning under success stories. A founder, a garage, sleepless nights, a brilliant idea, take-off. Every such story is built in hindsight: the author knows the ending and selects the events that lead to it. Accidents turn into strategy, luck into foresight, and the thousands of similar garages that produced nothing never make it into the story at all. The reader comes away with the impression that success is a recipe: do it this way and it will work.
It is like a weather forecast compiled by looking at yesterday. Flawlessly accurate and completely useless. The market is not a mechanism with known gears; it is more like weather: a complex system in which competitors, the economy, fashion, technology, laws, people's moods and pure chance all act at once. In such a system You can talk about probabilities, but not guarantees.
Who lies to You and why
The word "lie" in the headline sounds harsh, and I do not mean that everyone around is malicious. More often it is not a lie but self-deception or professional deformation. A salesperson needs to close the deal, and a promise of success helps. A consultant needs to look like an expert, and in the public's eyes an expert must know the answer. An author needs sales, and sales come from confidence, not doubt.
But the consequences of this self-deception are very real. If a contractor promises You success, he takes on something he cannot control. Which means he either does not understand what he is getting into or is counting on someone else being blamed if it fails: the market, You, the exchange rate, Mercury in retrograde. Neither option makes him a good partner.
Whoever guarantees You success guarantees only one thing: if it fails, he will not be the one to blame.
What can be guaranteed
That said, the world is not made of uncertainty alone. There are things that can and should be guaranteed. The important thing is not to confuse two different concepts: project success and product success.
Project success means the work was done in the agreed scope, on time, within budget and at the required quality. That is the contractor's area of responsibility, and guarantees are appropriate here: a transparent process, stages, acceptance criteria, code quality, documentation, honest reports. Like a farmer who guarantees he will plough the field, sow good seed at the right time and tend the crops.
Product success means that what was built makes money, people like it and it beats the competition. That is the market's area, and nobody can guarantee anything there. A farmer cannot guarantee the harvest: there may be drought, hail, a drop in grain prices. A good farmer does not promise a harvest; he does everything to make a harvest as likely as possible and has a plan for when the weather lets him down.
How to live without guarantees
If there are no guarantees, the right question is not "how do I guarantee success" but "how do I make sure failure does not kill me and teaches me something". It is a completely different way of framing the problem, and it leads to completely different decisions.
- Small bets instead of one big one. Instead of putting everything into one version of the product, run several cheap tests and invest more in what is confirmed.
- Stop criteria in advance. Before starting, agree with yourself on the numbers at which the project is shut down. Later, in the middle of it, You will feel too sorry for what You have invested to decide soberly.
- Fast cycles. The shorter the path from decision to market reaction, the less money burns on each mistake.
- A safety margin. Money, time and team energy to survive the failure of the first version and build a second.
- A portfolio. If You are an entrepreneur, do not keep all your hopes in one project. Even investors who make money on risk professionally expect most of their investments not to take off.
Honesty as a competitive advantage
Back to that question at the first meeting. After my "no" I usually explain what I can guarantee: that we will say honestly where we see risks; that You will see results every two weeks; that the code will be yours and fit for further development; that if the hypothesis is not confirmed, You will find out early and cheaply, not a year later and expensively. Surprisingly, many clients start trusting us more after such a conversation, not less. People are tired of being lied to, and they can feel it.
What to do tomorrow
Look at your current main project and answer two questions. First: if it fails, will You survive it? If not, You have bet too much on one card. Second: what numbers in three months would be your signal to stop or to pivot? Write them down now, while You can still look at the project soberly. This is not pessimism. It is a seat belt, which You fasten not because You plan to crash.
