The trouble with a first year is that the only metric everyone understands is the one that cannot work yet. So the question gets answered by atmosphere: the meetings were good, the partner is enthusiastic, the trip went well. Atmosphere is not nothing — a project with a hostile counterpart is in trouble — but it moves with the last conversation, and a review built on it will say whatever the last conversation said.
What a first year can actually produce
A first year produces knowledge and position, not results. Knowledge: what your product costs landed, who the real buyers are, what they object to, which of your assumptions were wrong. Position: a registered trademark, a qualified supplier, an approved sample, a named contact inside a distributor, a compliance file that exists. Both are measurable, both accumulate, and both are what a second year is built on. A project that produced a little revenue and no knowledge is in a worse place than one that produced the reverse.
Real progress, and what only resembles it
| Area | Real progress | Reassuring, and not progress |
|---|---|---|
| Demand | A named buyer has asked a specific question about price, volume or lead time, in writing | A large number of contacts collected, a stand that was busy, a mailing list that grew |
| The partner | They have spent their own money or their own people's time on your product | A signed memorandum of understanding, a warm meeting, a forecast they produced without being asked for one |
| The product | A sample approved against a written specification, with the objections that were raised and what was changed | Samples sent and praised. Praise is free and it is the polite answer |
| Compliance and rights | A filing made, a test passed, a registration granted — each one is a date and a document | A consultant's assurance that there is no obstacle, with nothing filed |
| Your own organisation | One named person owns the project and can answer a question without consulting anyone | Everyone is involved and interested, and every decision waits for a meeting |
The pattern in the right-hand column is that each item is something the other party produced to be agreeable, or something you counted because it was countable. The pattern in the middle column is that each item cost someone something — money, time, a document, an irreversible act. That is the whole test, and it is worth applying to any signal before building a review on it.
The rhythm of reviews
- A short monthly note, written not spoken. What happened, what did not, what is waiting on whom. It takes an hour and it is the only record that will exist in a year.
- A quarterly review against the assumptions, not the plan. List the things you believed at the start and mark each one confirmed, contradicted or still unknown. A plan that survives a contradicted assumption is a plan nobody is reading.
- A spend review on the same page as the budget. Line by line, actual against estimate. The gaps tell you which part of the project you understood badly, which is more useful than the total.
- One long conversation at the half-year, with the awkward question on the agenda. Not a progress meeting: an hour in which someone is asked to argue that this should stop.
- A decision date written in advance. Set at the beginning, before anyone is invested, with what will be known by then. A review with no decision attached becomes a habit.
What a slow, healthy project looks like
It looks disappointing, which is why so many are stopped. The distinguishing feature is not speed, it is direction: each month something becomes settled that was open before, and nothing that was settled reopens. The specification stops changing. The supplier stops being a choice. The compliance questions reduce from many to a named few. The same contact answers faster than they did. Revenue is still absent, but the list of unknowns is visibly shorter than it was at the last review — and someone can say which items left the list and why.
The project that is genuinely in trouble has the opposite signature, and it is recognisable long before the money runs out. Decisions are revisited; the specification moves after being frozen; the contact who used to answer has become a different contact; each review discusses the same obstacle in different words. Slowness is ordinary in China and not a symptom. Repetition is the symptom.
Continue, adjust, or stop
Three answers, and the third one deserves its place. Continue when the unknowns are reducing and the next stage has a defined cost. Adjust when the knowledge you gained contradicts the premise rather than the plan — the wrong market segment, the wrong channel, the wrong product version — which is the most common outcome of a honest first year and is not a failure. Stop when the same obstacle has survived three reviews, when the position you hold would not be worth buying from someone else, or when the recurring cost has quietly become larger than the opportunity. Say which of the three you are doing, in writing, at the date you set in advance. A project that is neither continued nor stopped is the expensive one.
Write down, at the start, the two or three things that would make you stop. Not thresholds — you have no figures yet — but situations: « if we still cannot name a buyer who asked a price question », « if the trademark is still not registered ». A stopping condition written before you are invested is the only one you will still be able to read when you are.