Why Projects Really Get Done: A Practical Look at What Should Drive the Work

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

- Peter Drucker

Most organizations struggle with clarity. Projects are prioritized, launched, resourced, and delivered every day without a precise understanding of why they exist. And when the “why” is unclear, even well-executed work produces limited results.  

Over the years, I have heard the same rationale from leaders why they are doing a project: “we need to modernize”, “we need to improve our processes,” or “we need to innovate.” While all of these reasons are valid, they are imprecise and fail to get to the heart of the “why”. Ultimately, there are four reasons why projects get done: (1) value creation, (2) problem resolution, (3) risk mitigation, and (4) strategic positioning. 

Value Creation: Building capability is not the same as creating value

Value creation is often framed as innovation—new products, new markets, new capabilities.

In practice, the more effective versions are usually less visible.

They come from improving how the business uses what it already has: pricing differently, segmenting customers more effectively, or extracting more from existing assets. These are not always labeled as “strategic,” but they tend to produce the most consistent returns.

Where organizations get into trouble is assuming that building something new automatically creates value.

It doesn’t.

Value is only created when the output aligns with actual demand.

Quibi is a recent example. The company raised significant capital and executed well against its plan—short-form, mobile-first content designed for modern consumption habits. From a delivery standpoint, the project worked. The issue was that the underlying assumption about customer behavior didn’t hold.

The result was a technically successful effort that failed to create value.

Building capability is not the same as creating value. The distinction is determined by the market, not the organization.

Problem Resolution: Addressing performance gaps

Most project portfolios are dominated by problem resolution.

These initiatives are typically tied to cost reduction, operational improvement, or system replacement. They are necessary, and in many cases, overdue.

But they are also where misdiagnosis shows up most clearly.

Organizations tend to focus on what is visible—lagging metrics, inefficiencies, or system limitations—without fully understanding what is driving those issues.

The result is a pattern of solving for symptoms rather than causes. Leadership will often defer to technology solutions when the drivers of poor business performance are much deeper. 

Target’s expansion into Canada is a useful example. The organization encountered significant inventory and availability issues and responded with investments in supply chain systems. The systems themselves were not the problem. The underlying issues were broader—data quality, vendor coordination, and market readiness.

The project addressed what was measurable, not what was structural.

Fixing the wrong problem well is still a poor outcome.

This is where more disciplined problem definition creates disproportionate leverage.

Risk Mitigation: Protecting the current state

Risk mitigation projects are often easier to justify than they are to prioritize.

They include compliance efforts, cybersecurity investments, and infrastructure upgrades—areas where the downside of inaction is clear, even if the upside of action is not.

At a basic level, these projects reduce exposure.

At a more strategic level, they address a different kind of risk—one that develops gradually and is not immediately visible.

Organizations tend to assess risk based on current conditions: current customers, current competitors, and current performance. That works for operational risk. It is less effective for structural risk.

Blockbuster followed this pattern. The company continued to improve store operations and revenue per customer while a different model—subscription-based, digitally delivered content—began to take hold. The risk was not in the stores. It was in the model.

By the time the threat was fully understood, the organization had limited room to respond.

The most significant risks are often the ones that don’t appear urgent.

Risk mitigation, when done well, requires looking beyond what is currently measurable.

Strategic Positioning: Defining where the business is going

Strategic positioning is the least common and most frequently underdeveloped category.

These projects do not solve immediate problems.

They do not always produce near-term returns.

They exist to answer a different question: Where does the organization need to be in the future to remain relevant?

This is where strategy moves from concept to commitment.

It requires making decisions about where to invest, what capabilities to build, and what parts of the current model may no longer be worth preserving.

Kodak is one of the clearest examples of what happens when this is misread. The company had early access to digital imaging technology and understood its potential. The challenge was not awareness—it was positioning. Digital was treated as a threat to the existing business rather than the foundation of the next one.

The organization continued to optimize what it had, while the basis of competition shifted.

Strategic positioning is not about improving the current model. It is about deciding when to move beyond it.

These are the most difficult projects to justify internally, and over time, they tend to matter the most.

Projects are easy to see.

The reasons behind them are not.

But those reasons—whether tied to value, problems, risk, or positioning—are what ultimately determine whether the work matters.

It is not enough to execute well.

The real advantage comes from being precise about why the work exists in the first place.

Because when the “why” is clear, priorities sharpen, trade-offs become easier, and execution starts to compound instead of fragment.

References

Kodak’s Downfall Wasn’t About Technology - Harvard Business Review

Quibi: The Failure of Hollywood's "Next Big Thing" - Harvard Business Review

Lessons Learned from the Target Canada Supply Chain Failure - Panorama Consulting Group

Blockbuster Becomes a Casualty of Big Bang Disruption - Harvard Business Review