At some point during my education, I remember seeing a film in school about trained responses.

A psychologist trained monkeys to hit a lever and they would get a food pellet. It was a one-to-one action. Hit the lever once, get a pellet. Then they changed the response stimulus to require hitting the lever three, five, 10, or more times to get food.

I remember seeing monkeys just whacking those levers long past getting any pellets.

The experiment was based on B.F. Skinner’s work of Operant Conditioning, “conditioning occurs when a learner’s behavior is followed by a consequence or reinforcement”.

Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson, an incredibly stupid business book that has sold over 30 million copies since its debut in 1998, is a long parable or sermon based on the same concept. With some discussions about fear and motivation thrown in for good measure.

Four mice (hint: they are anthropomorphic) got their cheese from one place. The cheese all but disappeared. The smart mice went and found new cheese. The dumb pathetic mice sat around wondering why their lives were horrible and blamed others for their condition. (Mr. Spencer was rather judgmental and having none of your crap.)

Let’s throw in one more theory for good measure, Sunk Cost Fallacy. This is where you continue to do something because you have invested so much time, money, energy, and/or emotion (all unrecoverable) in the past.

A work project, restoring that ‘74 Triumph, your golf game, relationship, business—whatever it is—you keep doing a thing because there has to be some return for all the investment!

What do levers, cheese, and sinking all have in common?

In order to move forward, sometimes you have to take the loss.

This is far easier said than done.

We are all prone to keep doing something long past its expiration date of when it is healthy, helpful, or profitable. The question is, how do you know when it is time to walk away?

Here are five helpful things to consider:

• Have you clearly defined what failure as well as success would look like for the project, business, or other issues? Have you made it a moving target in order to keep from making a decision?
• Is the thing not doing well because of temporary setbacks, or is there a long-term structural issue going on? If it is a short-term or expected setback, you might want to ride it out. If it is structural, you need to ask what you actually have control of moving forward.
• Are you or your people sticking with a project because you/they don’t want to be punished or look bad? While we all want to save face, and that is critical in certain cultures, it can’t be the reason to throw good money after bad.
• Are you falling into confirmation bias? Are you over-emphasizing the positive and downplaying the negative? Ask others how they see it, or ask if you were on the outside, how would you see this with fresh eyes?
• Is your personal identity tied to the thing? This is bigger than saving face; this is a threat to how you see yourself. This happens in both work and non-work-related areas. What does it mean about you if you fail at “x”? If this is what is holding you back from ending something, you may want to get an executive coach or therapist to help you navigate those feelings so you can move forward.

What’s the best way to not be the monkey at the pellet machine or a starving mouse? Be honest with yourself.

This means taking time to reflect, getting input from mentors or people you trust to challenge your thinking, reading books and articles, listening to podcasts, or watching videos as another way to help your analysis of any given situation.

While this type of work isn’t easy, and it’s never easy to quit something, letting go of something could be the exact thing you need to help propel your forward.

Dealing with failure is a key part of being a Pathfinder. More accurately, Pathfinders perceive failure as an opportunity to learn and ‘fail forward’, rather than as something they can’t let go. We measure this perception of failure through the Pathfinder value, ‘Pragmatic’.

Want to understand how pragmatic you are? You can take our Pathfinder assessment here. It’s free and only takes 10-15 minutes.