«Burn it down, gentlemen. Burn it down, and salt the Earth.»
Government Executive in Buffy – The Vampire Slayer: «Primeval»
There is a really dirty tactic in terrorism and warfare: Bomb an area. Then wait until the first responders and repair crews are on site. Then bomb it again. In the first bombing, you take out a few people, but those are not that important. The prize is the second one, when you hit the ones who are best-suited to deal with these events. Not only a devastating hit on those who can help, but also a way to demoralize people who could help in the future. (BTW, not my idea, that one goes to the Star Trek DS9 episode «Once More Unto The Breach»).
I was reminded of that tactic when reading about failed tech initiatives. A company tries to introduce a product, e.g., a digital service. But — in part due to status quo bias — employees might be reluctant to use the new service. Sure, force can be used, but that might only lead to people developing parallel systems. So the company does a kick-off. And these can be impressive. And usually you find people who see the value in the new service and are willing to promote it. They become the promoters, the apostles for the new service. They try to convince people to use it, perhaps even despite the problems, the bugs and annoyances of the new software.
But what if the software fails? What if there is a change in leadership and everything the predecessor has done was «wrong» and is removed? What if the solution does not work out as planned, perhaps because it was badly implemented or the idea backfired?
What happens to the promoters then?
Personally, I would be pretty pissed if I had promoted something that is then cancelled. Especially if the cancelling is done without a good explanation. And that would have to be good, for example, «the promoters did an incredible job, but unfortunately, we could not get the service to run without problems and it is unlikely that we ever will». Perhaps combined with a week or so paid vacation for the ones who were not involved in the development but did their best to make it work. And even then I think it’s open whether the promoters will ever do this work again. After all, they did invest a lot of social capital in promoting something that failed.
In this way a bad introduction of technology, esp. buggy software, followed by a bad cancellation can lead to a similar effect as the dirty terrorism/warfare tactic in the beginning. It kills off those who respond, who want to help, and prevents people from responding in the future.
In this sense, careful when introducing new products. It might not only fail, it might burn your early adopters and salt the earth.