Startups are a swirl of excitement, energy, and ideas. But they are also often chaotic and chaos lowers staff performance, and leads to missed goals. Even startups that eventually experience great success go through a phase of chaos as they figure themselves out. So, what determines whether startups will mobilize all that energy and enthusiasm, or whether they will spin their wheels, wasting talent and resources?
The most important factor is whether they can establish the right kind of management systems. Management systems determine whether ten brilliant people will spend all their time fighting over whose idea is the most brilliant or whether they will contribute ten useful parts to a dramatically effective whole. And management systems are where we can be of tremendous service as consultants.
In particular, project management systems are crucial for startups. Project management turns ideas (which startups have in spades) into output (which can be hard to come by early on). Project management also greatly facilitates staff management; without effective work processes it can be unclear if poor performance is due to a failing of an employee, of their manager, or of the organization itself. So what is project management?
People often think of project management as the process of setting deadlines and assigning tasks to team members. While that is in fact part of the process, this characterization misses the point. The fundamental goal of project management is to help people understand how to work together. You can set a deadline, but if your team is not well coordinated they will fail to meet it. You can assign tasks to team members, but if you don’t have their buy-in or they don’t have clarity, they will not do the task to your standard of quality, within the timeline you need, or sometimes– not do them at all.
Instead, project management starts by building shared understanding. At its core, this means getting everyone involved in a project on the same page about:
A) The goals of the project
B) The definition of success
C) The three fundamental constraints:
- Scope of the project
- Resources available (especially human resources)
- Time available to complete the project
With shared understanding around these critical factors, timelines and task assignments can be made based on the reality of what’s possible, rather than on unrealistic hopes. When unexpected problems arise (as they will), and changes to the plan have to be made, these changes can be made based on understanding of the tradeoffs they imply.
As consultants, we can help a startup go from a twinkle in the founder’s eye to a highly functional team. The success of this evolution hinges on thoughtful project management.
–SK