When Success Becomes Your Biggest Downfall#
Previously, on TROY…
Hera distracted Zeus with a little quality time with the missus.
Zeus woke up.
ZEUS WAS PISSED.
🤣
And now the Greeks are in trouble again.
Hector is pushing towards their ships.
People are dying.
And Achilles?
Still sitting out because he’s furious with Agamemnon.
BRO. YOUR TEAM IS ON FIRE.
LITERALLY.
😂
So Patroclus comes up with a plan.
He’ll wear Achilles’ armour, lead his troops into battle, and hopefully scare the Trojans into retreating.
Achilles agrees.
But there’s one condition.
SAVE THE SHIPS. THEN COME BACK.
Simple.
Clear scope.
Reasonable boundaries.
What could possibly go wrong?
🤣
Well…
IT WORKS.
The Trojans retreat.
The ships are saved.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
Time to go home.
Except…
PATROCLUS HAS DISCOVERED SUCCESS.
And apparently, it’s addictive.
😂
We’ve got momentum!
The enemy’s retreating!
WHY STOP NOW?!
WHILE WE’RE HERE, WE MIGHT AS WELL TAKE TROY!
🤣
And just like that, the rescue mission has become a full-scale invasion.
Nobody approved the variation.
Nobody updated the risk assessment.
And Apollo is about to conduct the world’s most aggressive compliance inspection.
Unfortunately, this is where the comedy ends.
Patroclus is killed.
That’s pretty serious scope creep, bro.
And this is where I think the story gets interesting.
We’ve got two completely different approaches to the same crisis.
Achilles refuses to get involved, even though his team desperately needs him.
Patroclus volunteers, succeeds, and then keeps going long after he’s achieved the objective.
ONE WON’T GET INVOLVED. THE OTHER DOESN’T KNOW WHEN TO STOP.
And somewhere between those two extremes was probably a perfectly reasonable project delivery strategy.
Unfortunately, nobody appears to have written it down.
😂
But here’s the uncomfortable bit.
I understand Patroclus.
Possibly a little too well.
Because when something works, my immediate reaction is rarely:
Wonderful. That’s enough.
It’s more like:
OH! THAT WORKED! LET’S DO FIVE MORE!
🤣
Which might explain why my little experiment in learning about AI has somehow turned into three AI agents, a couple of websites, approximately five GitHub repositories, and an increasingly complicated collection of systems I’m now trying to manage.
I started with one idea.
It worked.
So naturally, I had another idea.
And another.
And another.
And now I’m essentially running a small technology department that nobody asked me to establish.
😂
I’m not suggesting that enthusiasm and ambition are bad things.
Sometimes following the momentum is exactly how you discover something brilliant.
But there’s a difference between recognising an opportunity and forgetting why you established boundaries in the first place.
And that’s what I find interesting about Patroclus.
SUCCESS TELLS YOU SOMETHING WORKED. IT DOESN’T NECESSARILY TELL YOU THAT MORE OF IT IS A GOOD IDEA.
Which leaves me with a slightly uncomfortable question.
Have you ever had something work so well that you kept going long after you should have stopped?
Because apparently, I have.
And unlike Patroclus, I haven’t even got Apollo to blame.
🤣
Originally published on LinkedIn.