3 Make-or-Break Project Management Principles That Hold True Whether or Not You Have a Team
After Managing Hundreds of Staff, My Initial Learnings from Exploring Solo Entrepreneurship
Last month I shared about the learnings from navigating the first decade of my career. One of my key take-aways came after transitioning away from two large teams I had built. With the support of several coaches and mentors, I determined that I would be better suited contributing as a leader in a smaller, early-stage business setting.
But during the first six months of launching my own start-up, I have come to appreciate that some operations and leadership lessons from having managed large teams also apply to leading oneself as a solo entrepreneur.
#1: Identify and Address Your Blind Spots When Entering New Opportunities
Lesson Learned: Any individual has gaps in their knowledge and perspective. This is also true for large companies and teams within organizations. Its crucial at the out-start of a new initiative or investment that you identify gaps in expertise or exposure that may leave the project vulnerable. Once the biggest gaps are exposed, find resources to mitigate their risks from the beginning.
Team: In 2013, I was asked to run a 75-farmer trial to help determine product-market fit. I’d need to adapt the company’s trainings from Kenya and Rwanda in a way that was both compliant with Malawian agricultural standards and easy to train to farmers. I was confident in my ability to establish and manage operations. The only catch was that I had never studied agriculture. As I planned out my first 3 months on paper, I noticed this critical gap and decided to make sure my first several field staff hires would include graduates from the top national agriculture school (for agronomic technical skills) and liberal arts college (for farmer training and community engagement). Looking back, this insight ensured that our trainings were well received during our initial season, and eventually led to growing the business there to tens of thousands of farmers in that region.
Solo: Similarly, in the early days of my current start-up, I knew that not initially having a technical co-founder would be a significant shortcoming. Recognizing this, I spent more time seeking out a technical development firm that could fill the gap. The firm has provided a capable project manager to help me hire and manage a team of freelance developers from across the continent rather than doing it all myself for the first time. By now, having this extra support has caught me up so I can now ask the right technical and cost questions when pursuing new features for my platform.
#2: Pick Strategic Partners That Can Grow With Your Trajectory
Lesson Learned: Strategic vendors and service providers act as key building blocks to your business. They can make or break the quality of your product. In the same way as you would with your initial team hires, you should identify and “interview” the contact points within these service providers to screen for solid performance and good customer service. Otherwise your company’s progress and momentum will be hampered by time spent chasing information and troubleshooting issues that you had hired these partners to do in the first place.
Team: Last year I was tasked with overseeing the roll-out of an innovative crop insurance service for farmers purchasing a brand of maize seed across Malawi and Zambia. As part of this campaign, I needed to set up a 10-person call center in each country. In searching for a call center partner, I was able to easily find a telecom in Malawi that handled such Business Process Outsourcing and could provide the staffing and call volume flexibility we required. A quick meeting with their management and view of their facilities gave me the confidence to proceed in signing a service contract. Meanwhile in Zambia, unfortunately another telecom that offered a similar service wasn’t willing to take on a client our size (they only worked with larger clients that required 50+ call center agents for long-term basis). We were forced to select a new local firm who had little proof of their past performance in running custom call centers. While things seemed on track in the first month, after our call volume from farmers increased, they weren’t able to handle our speed and flexibility requirement, which resulted in significant system down-time. No surprise that ultimately our sales performance was lower in Zambia compared with Malawi.
Solo: In searching for a local management firm (a legal requirement for Global Business Licenses in Mauritius) to help administer my start-up, I made sure to search for a reliable firm that could grow with me from registration through scale up. I’d be relying on this firm for everything ranging from company registration, regulatory guidance and work permits. So I checked out a few options and chose one to have several calls with before committing. During my initial conversations, I made sure they understand my business model and threw some operational curveballs at them to see if they could quickly adjust and support. Each time they would promptly respond, and when needed, jumped on a call pulling in several of their relevant team members. I was convinced, and they have been helpful every step of the way so far, including securing my work permit as I wrote about here.
#3: Manage Communication Flow Like Your Life Depends On It
Lesson Learned: Good strategic alignment and buy-in keeps the right team members and partners informed and motivated throughout a project’s lifetime. Building appropriate communication channels among internal stakeholders is as important to success as the design of the actual end product. I’ve recently learned that managing the communication of constantly-evolving go-to-market strategies and the branding narrative of my new start-up is just as complex and time-consuming as when I had to curate communication channels across growing, multi-location teams.
Team: In building a social enterprise from 0 to 250+ staff over 5 years, I had to re-invent communication and decision-making structures more than once per year. In addition to coordination and all-hands-on-deck meetings, an advantage of having a handful of key deputies was that I could often have 1-on-1s or a small leadership team meeting with them to discuss strategy and hear upward feedback themes. This often helped them take ownership of the message and sensitize their own teams with relevant and personalized versions of strategy updates. While it worked most of the time, often challenges arose with this approach because it took a lot of time from everyone’s schedules. Also, different versions occasionally didn’t fully interpret correctly causing confusion and thus requiring additional clarification. Plus, sometimes certain deputies became bottlenecks for upward feedback that didn’t get escalated sufficiently, causing larger staff morale challenges later on.
Solo: With my start-up, I still have service providers, prospective investors, advisory board members, and prospective beta users to all keep in the loop. The pace of change now is faster. I no longer have key deputies to help with the rapid customized dissemination. So I do spend more of my own time updating different stakeholders. A positive is that I control the narrative directly with each stakeholder and have the opportunity to hear feedback directly from each source.
