Zombie projects end when their resources move on

An initiative gets a kickoff when it starts. Its end often does not even get a date on the calendar.

When you stop projects, you free up people and budget. The decision makes a difference when both are put to work elsewhere.

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What companies that reallocate quickly do differently

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In April 2026 Mc Kinsey conducted a global survey of 1,205 executives and managers. Some respondents described their companies as first movers, meaning organizations that act ahead of the competition. According to the study, these companies were more than three times as likely as laggards to reallocate at least one-fifth of their resources each year.

The authors identify a surprising bottleneck. Most organizations do not lack ideas. They lack the ability to stop funding initiatives that were yesterday’s priorities.

According to the study, companies that reallocated quickly had better access to current performance data and were less influenced by internal politics. They adjusted resource allocations more frequently to reflect how their initiatives were performing. The authors therefore recommend setting review points for every initiative to reassess its performance, monthly for some and every six months for others.

To illustrate the risk, the authors draw on a geological analogy. A series of small earthquakes causes less damage than pressure that builds up over time and is released all at once. Organizations that put off difficult decisions often face a major transformation later, with fewer options and less time.

Initiatives that continue even after their rationale no longer holds are known in management circles as zombie projects. What we like about the study is that it shifts the focus from these projects to what happens after they end.

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Why resources stay tied to old initiatives

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As a business unit leader, you are responsible for a long list of ongoing initiatives. You often do not see where an individual initiative stands until the next quarterly business review. Until then, everything on the list keeps running.

This is a classic environment for zombie projects. We call the condition it creates “the past in the present.”

Where would your people go if two projects ended tomorrow?

What strikes us most about this situation is how stable it is. A business unit’s people and budget have already been allocated, and that allocation dates back to the last budget review.

Reallocating people and budget means taking both away from an initiative backed by a colleague or another business unit. That step starts a negotiation.

Without a shared foundation of current, relevant data, that negotiation pits one judgment against another. And which side wins? Often, it is the initiative already underway, because continuing it requires no justification.

The longer an initiative runs, the more time has passed since it was originally justified.The people working on it today often know what they have been asked to do. The assumption behind that assignment has evaporated over the years.

The decision then gets pushed into the next cycle, and with each cycle, the pressure continues to build. Eventually, it is released in a major program that cancels many initiatives at once.

Even adecision to stop an initiative often delivers less than it promises. People getabsorbed into day-to-day tasks, the budget returns to the annual planningprocess, and the new priority is still waiting for the people it needs.

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Five details to specify when you stop projects

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Stopping an initiative makes a difference when the decision also spells out how its resources will be reallocated. These five details should therefore be part of every decision to end an initiative:

• The rationale documents which assumption no longer holds, along with the data available when that become clear.
• The people being freed up are identified by name and available capacityand the budget is quantified.
• The initiative receiving the resources is named, along with the date the people will start working on it.
• The receiving initiative has its own review point, when its performance will be reassessed.
• One person is accountable for the reallocation and reports at the next review point on which resources have been transferred.

These five details come into play once the decision to end an initiative has been made. Whether an initiative should end is determined at its own review point. Without these details, stopping it leaves the job only half done.

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Reallocating in small steps

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We recommend reallocating more frequently and in smaller steps. The goal is a shorter path from action to feedback to adjustment.

We see these five details as a way to put that recommendation into practice. Every project stopped becomes a small reallocation, and decisions about people and budget are made when a review point calls for them.

At each review point, you can see which people are tied to initiatives whose rationale no longer holds. You can identify which other initiative you could advance with those same people. And you decide what ends, what continues, and what takes priority.

Two initiatives end, and on the same day, their people move to a third. That is the moment an ending becomes forward movement.

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