How to make the toughest start-up transition: from projects to processes
April 7, 2014 Leave a comment
How to make the toughest start-up transition: from projects to processes
Published 24 March 2014 11:41, Updated 24 March 2014 13:08
Derek Lidow
“Why would I change my leadership style when it’s helped us establish a real beachhead in our market?”
These are the famous last words of many entrepreneurs. Failing to realise that critical transition points in the growth of an enterprise require leaders to shift emphasis, they blindly stick with what has worked so far. Ultimately this failure to understand the demands of change can lead to the failure of the company itself.
One such transition – from project to process mode – occurs when a company launches its initial sales efforts and begins to service its first customers. A project is a one-at-a-time exercise performed by a team assembled specifically for that task.
Most entrepreneurs understand that they need to be flexible and agile in order to figure out how and what potential customers will buy from them. But flexibility and agility must make way for reliability and efficiency if the company is to deliver the kind of consistent product or service required to maintain happy customers and win new ones. This requires that work be performed in a process mode, where tasks are accomplished repetitively in a prescribed fashion.
Most entrepreneurs instinctively resist switching from the project to the process mode. But startups face many dangers if they stay in project mode too long. Projects, no matter how well led, will produce inconsistent results, and customers won’t forgive poor products or services just because they were experiments.
Staying in project mode also opens up opportunities for competitors. How many entrepreneurs have seen their great ideas copied by a more cost-effective competitor?
Finally, an excessive focus on projects makes the enterprise dependent on the founder. No organisation can be self-sustaining if its founder’s skills haven’t been replicated in an effective process.
The first step leaders should take when transitioning from projects to processes is to explain why the shift is critical to the enterprise’s well-being. A compelling explanation ensures that the team is comfortable with the need to develop reliable and efficient processes – and it pre-empts cries of “bureaucracy.”
Although work in a maturing enterprise is progressively dominated by processes, projects never go away entirely. That’s why leaders who understand the differences between projects and processes will keep their project-loving people assigned to project work and their process-loving people focused on making the enterprise more efficient.
About bambooinnovator
Bamboo Innovator 