When your employees start a project, you need to let them finish it. One of the most demoralizing things you can do is pull someone off a long project just before it comes to fruition. It can also set up your project to fail. For both reasons, you need to let the people who have been DOING the work FINISH the work.

We spoke recently with an event planner who is experiencing this now. After spending months putting something together, the big event is just a couple weeks away. And now, at this point, he is learning that while the travel requests have been approved for three other people (only one of whom has any real reason for going), his own travel plans are in question because of budget shortfalls.

What does this mean for him? Well, it is definitely a letdown. You work hard for months, putting in nights and weekends because the project is international and you have to work with people across time zones, all with the expectation that you are going to be part of something great at the end…and then you’re not. Seriously disappointing. And there is a long term effect: if you suggest to your employees that they are not really important to the process, then in the future they may put in less effort because you have already let them know just how unimportant their effort is. Creative work is driven to a large degree by internal motivation, so you play with that motivation at your peril.

The event itself could be in trouble as well. If something goes wrong, don’t you want the person responsible for arranging it to be there? The person who knows all the players, who knows why things were done the way they were? Someone who really understands the vision behind the project and who has a passion for it? One of his co-workers who is scheduled to go told him “hey, if you don’t go, then you have to teach me everything.” Wouldn’t it be simpler to just have the person there who already DOES know everything?

You need to be very, very careful about having your employees do a lot of work, and then yanking the rug out from under them right at the end. Killing somebody’s buzz after they have done all the work is horribly demoralizing. Beyond the potential long-term impact on your employees, though, is the more immediate impact on the product or service you are providing. You want knowledgeable, enthusiastic people there at the end, not a bunch of “wannabes” who do not really know what needs to be done. If you have got people spending a long time on a project, let them see it through to the end.