Entrepreneurs are committed, energetic, can-do people. Does that sound familiar, project manager? And launching a startup business is a project. I’ve done it a few times, so I know. I cashed out of the biggest startup I built when it stopped being a project and started being a business. And there are seven project management secrets that have served me well in my own business life, which I want to share with you.
I see two big differences between a natural entrepreneur and a skilled Project Manager.
- The first is that entrepreneurs are in it to build a business – it’s the endpoint, and the value that creates that motivates them. I’ll come back to that point later.
- And the second difference is that few entrepreneurs have training in project management. So, managing the project that is launching a new start-up can be a little haphazard!
Seven Project Management Secrets for Startups
In this article, I want to offer seven secrets from my own project management experience that are directly relevant to you, as an entrepreneur, and launching your next startup.
- For What Purpose?
- Who are You Building it for?
- Your Best Friends
- De-risk Your Business
- Incrementalism Rules
- But Don’t Put Agility over Control
- Oxygen Mask
To begin at the beginning….
1. For What Purpose?
[The ‘Why’ of Your Startup]
If you know me and you think I’m going to start by telling you that you need to start by defining what your start-up project is, with precision…
You’re spot on!
But I’m going to go further
It’s not just about having a clear goal and objectives. Take what you already have and ask yourself,
‘For what purpose am I doing this?’
Take the answer you get, and repeat the question.
At each stage, spend time also asking the question,
‘How else could I meet that purpose?’
And don’t just settle for the first answer you get. Keep asking, ‘How else?’ until you are completely out of ideas. The answers you get will give you a list of new ideas for potential alternative projects that could deliver on the same purpose.
Finding the best approach
Before you sink your energy, passion, and possibly capital into your new start-up, assess whether any idea on that list is a better way to meet your purpose. Whichever project you pursue, this exercise will give you marketing gold dust. Apply that purpose to your prospective customers’ needs and you have the second half of your all-important marketing strap line:
‘so that you can…’
Learn More
To help you with your creative thinking:
I also recommend our introductory video on Design Thinking.
And, from our partner YouTube channel, Management Courses, we also have:
- How to Foster Innovation & Creativity at Work
- The Disney Creativity Strategy: The NLP Way to Test Ideas
2. Who are You Building it for?
[The Stakeholders for Your Startup]
There’s a big part of me that wants to preach here. I’d like to advise you to build your new business for your customers, and not for your investors. But that’s presumptuous. It’s not for me to dictate that. And you may want to build it for yourself, or for a legacy…
But what you must do is know who you are building your business for.
Build it for yourself, or your staff, or your customer, or your VC… But don’t try to build it for all of them. The competing needs and wants of different stakeholders will stretch you in too many directions. And, if you don’t snap, your fledgling business surely will.
You can please all of your stakeholders some of the time.
And you can please some of your stakeholders all of the time.
But you will not be able to please all of your stakeholders all of the time.
Learn More
We have lots of videos about engaging with your stakeholders. But, a great place to start is with our compilation, Project Stakeholder Engagement Domain. Briefing. However, one of the videos in this compilation stands out as relevant here:
3. Your Best Friends
[Starting to Plan Your Startup]
One of the sayings I could easily be accused of overusing is this:
‘Milestones are your best friends.’
A milestone is an event that happens at a single point in time. It has either passed, or it has not. There are no shades of gray, or ‘sort-of/maybes’ about a milestone. Like your other best friends, a milestone will never lie to you.
So, they are a great way to manage any project in an entrepreneurial business, where you need instant, easy, accurate information about the status. They work well for product launches, performance tracking, and marketing campaigns.
Motivation by Milestone
But there’s another reason why I think they are especially useful for entrepreneurs to manage their business: they are highly motivating.
Each milestone is a measure of progress. And research by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer[1] shows clearly that when we can see our progress conspicuously, we feel more enriched by the work we are doing. This is a powerful antidote to the common feelings that your start-up has stalled and there’s no point in carrying on.
Learn more
Read about the work of Amabile & Kramer:
- Harvard Business Review, January 2010: ‘What Really Motivates Workers’
- Harvard Business Review May 2011, ‘The Power of Small Wins’, and ‘
- ‘The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, engagement, and Creativity at Work’
4. De-risk Your Business
[Simplifying Your Startup]
Any Project Manager will remind you about the importance of a mature and active approach to evaluating and managing your business risks. So, take that as read.
What I want to focus on is one specific source of risk: complexity.
Complexity
If you double the number of components to your project, you more than double the complexity. And therefore, the effort and also the risk. One easy way to reduce the risk in your entrepreneurial project is to modularize it into a number of small chunks. Managing the interfaces between these, but to a degree isolating each, will make your star-up simpler and less risky.
Learn More
There are two primary models we use to evaluate the complexity of a project:
5. Incrementalism Rules
[Building Your Startup a Step at a Time]
The challenge of complexity is, of course, a strong argument for incrementalism. And, one of the biggest drivers for the growth of Agile Project Management in the last 20 years has been its (right and proper) use in tech start-ups.
But, despite what some young agilists may think, this is not new. When I met UK projects expert, Tony Quigley, at the start of the 2000s, he had been in the game for many years and was already in retirement. Yet he was long famed for many wise and witty sayings, one of which is:
‘The alternative to incremental development is excremental development.’
Grow your business in chunks, meeting new demands as they emerge. And, as the familiar phrase says, ‘don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good’.
Learn More
- Agile Project Management Briefing (Video Compilation)
- What do Iterative, Incremental, and Adaptive Mean?
6. But Don’t Put Agility over Control
[The One Thing a Project Manager – and a Business Owner – Craves, above all else, is Control]
So, it sounds like I am, finally, a cheerleader for Agile Project Management. But I’m not and never will be a cheerleader for one method over any other. Agile has a lot to offer us, and so does traditional, planned project management.
What I will cheer for is a balanced approach that draws the best ideas, processes and tools from all sources, and finds the best combination for each circumstance.
And you should never sacrifice the control that assertive project management can give you, over a dogmatic focus on Agile methods. If you are not in full control of your spending, decision-making, schedules, resource allocation, and a host of other things… Well, then you aren’t in control of your new business.
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7. Oxygen Mask
[Beware of the Impact of Stress on Your Startup]
Starting a business is fun. And it’s also hard work, mentally challenging, and at times, stressful. And, as soon as you start hiring people, you acquire a new source of stress: your duty of care to look after your employees.
Yes, of course it is tempting to put pressure on them when times get tough. But it is also an inevitable consequence of human perception, that the stresses you feel will communicate themselves to your team. The nature of empathy means that, if the leader we look to has a distinct emotional state (angry, joyous, or stressed), we easily find ourselves taking on those emotions too.
And stress over a long period is harmful. It harms your emotional, mental, and physical health. You need to deal with it in your staff before you see a catastrophe.
Your First
But you must be mindful of the injunction we hear in the airline safety briefings at the start of each flight. ‘When the oxygen masks drop, fit your own mask before you try to help others.’
You understand the logic of that. So, by the same logic, you must also make sure you take care of your own physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Be sure to get plenty of sleep, to eat well, to maintain a sensible exercise régime, and to stay plugged in to the emotional support of your network of friends and family.
Learn More
In Closing
Starting a business is a brave step. But it is also a huge, exciting buzz. And no one skill set is going to be any more valuable than good project management. I hope these seven tips will lead you in the right direction.
Please Do Share Your Experiences, Advice, or Concerns
As always, I look forward to responding to every comment.
