We take the medicine. We go and see a doctor. We rest up for a while… whatever it takes, we sort out the problem and move on with life.

We don’t ignore the warnings.

We make sure that we take as good a care of our bodies and minds as we possibly can. We are in tune with ourselves instinctively.

Effective project management is the same. In order for the “whole” to work, we must understand each part of the projects make-up and how they interact with each other towards success.

If we use the human body as an example, the project manager is the brain. It is the project managers responsibility to be in tune with the rest of the team and to be aware of things that are possibly not going according to plan.  The rest of the body is the remaining elements of the project management process and the team engaged to make it happen.

It is vital that the project manager is conscious of every aspect of the project – budget, processes, input/outputs and the people that are going to make it happen.

Problems in projects start when the project manager loses touch with what is going on in a particular part of the delivery. Problems start when something doesn’t go according to plan; a person makes an error, a machine breaks down, a budgeted item is more expensive than previously thought, the scope is creeping because it wasn’t defined correctly in the first place….  The list goes on and on. The trick for the project manager is to make sure that the problem is identified early and action taken.

But how does the project manager do this?

Singularly the most important part of any project is the people engaged in its delivery. People notice (or make) problems and it is people who are going to fix those problems for the project manager. This means that the strongest aid to helping a project manager overcome a problem is an open communications structure where honesty on mistakes does not equal a witch-hunt!

Depending on the nature of the project, the team can be local or dispersed. Communication can be written or verbal – but there must be communication. To me, the strongest form of communication is verbal – pick up the phone, turn around in your chair, conduct those necessary meetings… whatever it takes, make sure that the verbal communication happens.

Once the channels of communication are open, the next step is to make sure that there is a “comfortable” environment in which to report problems. The project manager, while inevitably will feel/express frustration, must encourage problems to be brought to the fore as soon as possible. The longer they are left, the more expensive they are to fix.

Lastly, once the problems are out in the open, they should be addressed and not ignored. Talk to the project sponsor, re-negotiate with the client, inform the management team that there is a budget overrun… whatever the problem is, the project manager should engage with the right people to overcome the challenge at hand.

Are you in sync with your project body? Are you operating a clean communications path for problem discovery?

Photo: Brain_blogger

1. Face to face.
2. On the phone.
3. Over the web (mail, IM, social media sites etc).

The above is the order of priority I think it should be in.

Over recent months I have seen it reversed for all intents and purposes as we rely more and more on the convenience of the web.

Is it actually convenience that has us doing this or are we losing the ability to communicate face to face?

Are we hiding behind the technology?

When was the last time you had a face to face meeting that sorted out a problem that email was just prolonging?

Face to face will always be more effective – let’s not lose sight of that.

Change management does not have to be scary.

Communication, openness, planning and team engagement will help ensure it’s success.

Do you engage the rest of your business when implementing change?

Another great Dilbert cartoon to drive home the point that it is vital to understand what someone is looking for in a project i.e. the project scope.

I’ll be writing more about project scoping in a future post, but this has helped me frame my thoughts so I thought I’d share it with you now.

And this is right, if you can’t trust your business partner(s) 125%, then don’t go into business with them in the first place. This is the one of those times that it really is ok to listen to your gut instincts.

Eoin and I trust each other to completely. In fact we trust each other so much we put a business partnership agreement in place.

Er, if you trust each other so much, why would you bother?

Why Create A Business Partnership Agreement?

The creation of a business partnership or shareholders agreement is paramount to protecting both your interests and those of your business partner. Don’t worry, it doesn’t need to be a 250 page manual. Ours is two and half pages and covers off the fundamental questions such as;

1. What are respective roles and responsibilities are to the company.
2. What happens if one of us wants “out”?
3. What happens if one us becomes seriously ill?
4. How we will address issues if there is a dispute at any point.
5. The money side of things!
6. …..

Partnership agreements are not about an absence of trust, but are about an openness up front as to how the company will be operated from the owners perspectives.

They can and should be reviewed. There will be times when the agreement that was put in place may no longer be fair on one of the partners. There should be an open discussion and an edit of the clause(s) that are deemed unfair to the mutual benefit of all.

Business partnership agreements are the building blocks for how you will operate your business, supported by the fundamental foundation of trust. Have you one in place for your business?

Photo: schmollmolch

This question needs a bit of thought. When you are ready is the right answer, but what on earth does that actually mean?

Are those who shout their intentions from the roof-tops and let the world know that they are coming before they actually do correct?

Or is it more appropriate to stay quiet working away diligently in a “black box” only targeting a selected audience to achieve your purpose.

Marketing and Sales : Start early to raise awareness?

Conscious of the fact that marketing and sales are different functions, for the purpose of this article, I am going to discuss the two under the umbrella of “awareness”. For the experts in either – I apologise in advance for any misrepresentation.

I had an interesting chat with a colleague today about his previous life in a major start-up in the late 1980′s/early 1990′s. When they started out, the company had thirty people working for it all of whom were told to say absolutely nothing to anyone about what they are doing.

There was no marketing. Sales meetings with potential targeted clients were undertaken without fuss. This tactic was continued until the company floated in the stock exchange 10 years later and they are now making revenues of about $500million/quarter.

Essentially they operated black box and managed to grow without shouting their names from the roof tops when they were in start-up mode. They built a strong business by creating a very definite set of rules on their approach and sticking to their guns.

This contrasts strongly with the shout it from the roof-tops (e.g.  social media marketing) approach. This tactic is about raising the product/service awareness to as wide an audience as possible. Many newer businesses, ourselves included, have raised awareness even before commercial launch as a way of generating interest that will (hopefully) be converted into sales post launch.

So which is the right way to go?

For us, the decision to start our marketing and sales in advance was made for two reasons;

Firstly, to start generating an engagement with possible clients so that we were not starting blind at commercial launch.  Secondly because we are an open company and are happy to share our experiences as we progress with people who might be interested in such things. Openness is good currency in my view.

This does not necessarily make the decision we made the “right one” though. We are open for criticisms, potentially showing our hand to competitors etc. We are happy we made the right call for ourselves, but this does not make it right for you and your business.

What are your thoughts on when the right time to start marketing and sales is?

Photo : Suneko

What was actually being suggested was ensuring that you have goals and plans set for your business blog rather than the full scale monster business plan that we are all familiar with.  This made complete sense to me.

Unless your blog is a hobby and you are literally writing purely to share your ideas/views with the world, then the chances are you are hoping that your blog will bring customer traffic to your site. If this is the case, then the message that you need to put on it should be relevant and compelling to the person reading it – especially if you are going to convert them into a paying customer.

So what should I put in this blog plan?

When you consider this, having a business plan or set of goals for your blog is critical to your success. It needs to answer the following questions at a minimum;

What exactly am I trying to achieve?

Increase in sales, brand awareness, product awareness, customer information portal… Once you have determined this, then the next question you should try and answer is;

What message am I going to put out there?

Demonstrating subject expertise is the number one reason for blogging in business. Show what you know, help people out and let them find you if they want more of your help (product or service).  Make it relevant to your product and/or service without doing a sales pitch.

Some examples; Jim and Danny are a couple of experts at doing this. They don’t ram their services down your throat, they let you know what they know about and give you the opportunity to find them if you are interested in working with them.

How do I construct a decent blog post?

The first thing that I would say is “be yourself”. Use your own language and phrasing and don’t be forced. If you are, it comes through over time and people will stop reading you.

If you’d like to read a seriously detailed and relevant (I thought) “how to” on writing a blog, check out this post from Lisa Barone who knows a thing or two on the subject!

How am I going to measure its success?

There are two matrices that are relevant from my perspective;

1. Increased readership.

2. Click through to the place on your site where they spend money directly or that will lead them to spending money!

Build into your plan how you are going to measure these things and what actions you will take to ensure that both things are happening. Remember, it’s a slow process and things may go wrong.

Don’t worry, it will pay off in the end if you stick to your plan.

It’s my annual “sort out the woodwork in the garden” time of year. You know, that list of stuff that never seems to get done – the panel fence, the garden shed, the fascia on the house (for those of us without uPVC…).

Painting techniques, isn’t that a little over the top as a description?

Perhaps approach would be a better word. I have to think about how I’m going to approach each piece of woodwork that needs to be sorted out.  I could paint with a lazy technique i.e. no preparation and just slap a coat over the one that’s there. Or I could approach the job properly and do the necessary work to get the gate ready for its uplift.

The painting technique, or approach if you prefer, that I take will fundamentally effect the success of the job in hand though. Sure, I could go for the slapdash approach and it would look ok for a little while.. but it will need to be done again within a year.  This is a total waste of time and expense.

So I won’t do this, I’ll go for a properly planned approach using the right tools, with the right level of preparation and taking the right amount of time. Though it might take a little longer, the result will be far more effective and durable.

It’s like this in business. We can jump in with both feet to fix a problem, create a new product or service and hope that it works. Or we can take our time, consider our approach and devise the right strategy for creating a strong foundation that will allow our businesses to survive.

Which approach do you take towards preparing your business foundations?

Photo : Smabs Sputzer

Crisis management aside, the idea that a room with people stuffed in it (even if it is comfortable) with the specific instruction to come up with something new is almost inevitably doomed to failure.

“Ok, think of a great idea, something original… oh and we have less than an hour”.

Hmm, perhaps not.

For me, inspiration for a product or service concept comes during the most unlikely times. Sure, they pop into my head when I’m frustrated because I can’t find a product that I’m looking for or feel that it could be done better. But the most creative time for me is usually when my mind is calmer and I am out of the work context.

Sean Quinn uses his walking time with his dogs to come up with his great ideas. Ignoring his recent problems of implementation, the ideas themselves were genius that he has then made a reality.

My most creative moments have come from similar stress-free activities.. walking, watching my children play sport, listening to the radio on a Sunday afternoon.. basically any time that my brain is allowed to relax. Some of the ideas are mad and are quickly buried. Some need to be researched further and many of those are then buried also. But some, just the odd time are well… brilliant!

This does not just relate to the business world, it works in all aspects of life.

Once we have our idea, then this is the time to sit in a room and bash it through – yourself or with others. The idea was unforced, bidden forth by the creativity of an open mind unbounded by the constraints of time and demand.

Where do you find your inspiration?

We elected to go for it and opened up the product so anyone could sign up to and have a look around. We felt the benefits of open and honest feedback far outweighed the risk of exposing ourselves to potential criticisms.

We pushed the product for exactly one week directly to companies and via the usual social media channels. We decided to ease off once we had about 125 users signing up. We had a target of 20% of those people to actually go beyond the look around and actually get themselves setup and using the product in anger.

We hit our target in less than a fortnight – delighted. We got our sign-ups and our 20% of active users – a mix of businesses from single person consultancies to our largest, a company with 30+ employees. A good cross-section we felt.

We received some great feedback from people as well, both via email and also directly where users allowed us to sit with them and observe their interaction with the product. The open beta has given us the ability to see where people were going in the product, whether there were any stumbling points, how users were getting on setting themselves up, pretty much everything we needed to see.

We have benefited enormously and aspects that we have shared, such as the “shop” site needing to be clearer, are currently being re-worked prior to commercial launch.

Why are we doing the re-work before launch? Why not just go with what we have and tweak?

Well we could have done. However, negative experience is very difficult to overcome. If potential customers don’t want to move beyond the “shop” or are not happy with a user experience at a key point in the set-up process and leave us, they won’t be back.

It takes time to attract people to the site. We don’t want to waste that effort by putting them off after they arrive. We want to ensure that when potential customers arrive that we convert as many as we can. This is why, after we got our numbers for testing, we stopped pushing for sign-ups.

I am not sure there is a correct answer as to when the best time to show your wares to potential customers is. We have done it three times now; when we were defining the concept (market research), during a closed testing phase with selected customers and now the open beta. This has worked for us, but it may not be right for your business.

The one thing I would say is that you have to show your hand at some stage – putting it off because of nerves or concerns of negative criticism is most definitely not the right approach. If you do put it off, you may never open you shop door!

What experience have you had of proving your products and services to the market?

Photo : tasteful_tn