Are entrepreneurs great project managers?

An entrepreneur is someone who starts a business from and idea in form of a start up or buys a running business and change it.

A project is something that has a start and end. While a business doesn’t end but it contains many projects within itself that are temporary and have start and end. Usually startups don’t have enough budget to hire project managers or other resources. So an entrepreneur is usually a multi talented person who is great at project management. You need to be able to set goals, do the planning, and execute, to deliver quality results that communicate with your target through the value it is offering.

These are what a good project manager does. So if you have started many things in life and you gave it up on the early stages without knowing why, one of the reasons might be because you didn’t have project management skills.

It is amazing to be born as a project manager and have all the skills in your DNA but not everything in life comes to us that easy. It is a good news to know that you don’t need to be gifted in project management in order to start your business and follow your passion, you can learn to manage projects.

Project management can be the solution for the problems you face while starting a new idea. It actually helps a lot to learn about managing a project while experimenting. It gives you the knowledge and experience at the same time.

As an entrepreneur you  need to know how to set goals, how to set time and budget and do all the plannings. You also need to know how to efficiently test your idea. This prevent you from spending so much time and budget on something that would not bring any value. While testing, you can always measure and make changes in the process of shaping your business.

Even if you are not an entrepreneur and you don’t want to have your own business but would like to pursue your career in the field of project management I highly recommend starting something that would not require any monetary investment.

This gives you a great experience on how business owners, stakeholders, users and team members feel in a project that you are managing. Books and schools can give you knowledge of how you should think and process but only experience and being in the position of stakeholders can teach you how they feel and how they form their expectations.

A successful project manager not only understands the nuts and bolts of the field they are working in, she also understands the feelings, psychology, and thought process of people involved.

Starting your own business teaches you how to be a stakeholder, a developer, a project manager, and a user. And it also helps you appreciate the hard work it takes to have a successful business. This makes you appreciate things that stakeholders have done in the past and show them you know the value in their work and you care as much as they care.

So I would say entrepreneurs should be great at project management and should learn the science involved in it to be able to run small projects in their business to have a healthy running business.

And project managers should  all have entrepreneurship experience to learn about the Art of project management. Learn about all the soft skills required to run a successful project that cares more than having a project done within a time, budget and scope; by bringing value to both stakeholders and end users.

Here is a book I highly recommend reading  if you are an entrepreneur and you need to run your own projects:

The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management by Eric Verzuh

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How to do almost anything with ADKAR

ADKAR - project management

The hardest things to achieve are tasks that require us to change. The only reason we are not doing those tasks is because it is hard to change. We might try for a week to adopt the new habits but then again next week we are where we have been before.

 

Change is hard and it is hard for everyone. You are not alone. Change can be on a personal level, or in an organization.

 

If we learn the secret that can help us make the change permanent, then we can easily do things that require the change.

 

There are some achievements that require us to repeat certain things on a daily basis. If you are an Artist you know that in order to be able to draw well you have to draw every day. Muscle memory shapes when you repeat things over and over. And in order to improve we need to do things over and over again to the point that you don’t think any more and you just do it.

 

Have you ever decided to lose weight? Well, I have. When I started losing weight I had no idea there is a technique we can use to change and make the change permanent. There was a great passion in me that pushed me every day. And that passion showed me the way. And now that I look at the ADKAR technique I see that I did the same things that is suggested in this technique.

 

Passion and willingness is the number one thing you can have in anything you do to guide and help you move in the right direction and learn from your mistakes. I highly recommend if you want to do something find the reason you want to achieve it and then make that your passion.

 

What is ADKAR?

 

ADKAR is created by Prosci founder Jeff Hiatt. It is a goal-oriented change management model to guide individual and organizational change.

 

The acronym is the five essential steps that we must take to make a successful change in our habits. These five steps are: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement

 

Awareness: Awareness is about your goal. Why you want to make that change? What is your goal/outcome of the change? Answering this question helps you a lot in staying motivated throughout the process. There will come times that you just want to give up and go back to what you used to do. But repeating your goal gives you the motivation to go forward with the new changes.

 

For me, I had pictured myself in the clothes I have always wanted to wear. I pictured myself in the body I wanted to have and reminded myself of my goal almost every day.

 

If the change you want to make is in a company and for employees, you definitely need to let every employee know the goal and the reason you want to make the changes. It is very important to have a clear reason behind every change.

 

Desire: Desire is what makes you want to make the change. It is very important to have desire for the change. You should be motivated; awareness without motivation would not make you successful on this path.

 

Everyone knows it is healthy to do exercises on a daily basis. But how many are motivated enough to devote some time of their day going to the gym?

 

If you are thinking on a company level, you have to make employees part of the change and make them motivated to participate in the change. Awareness can help them become motivated.

 

Knowledge: you definitely need training and coaching. For me and my weight loss, it was reading books and articles in this regard. I read as much as I could. Learning about the process and how things work helps you be motivated along the way. You don’t get disappointed when you don’t see results. You know it is part of the process. It also helps you to only do things that would actually work instead of wasting your time and energy on trial and errors.

 

In a company, employees must be educated and learn as much as possible. They need to be trained so they would feel more comfortable and confident in making the change.

 

Ability: Now that you have learned and gained the required knowledge, can you actually do it? Having the knowledge about something and actually doing it are two different things. You might need to make some adjustment to your daily tasks and commitments to be able to do the new habits.

 

I had to make time for gym. I had to sleep early at nights so I could go to the gym in the morning. I didn’t stay long in parties so I could go home and sleep early. I crossed over all fast foods and had to put time for cooking at home.

 

In a company level, you have to give employees some time and help them to make sure they can actually do what they have learned to do.

 

Reinforcement: You constantly need to monitor and make sure you don’t give up. I had to imagine myself reaching my goal to make myself motivated to do hard exercises every day. I was going on instagram and checked girls who were in the same process as me to get motivated and continue. I also thought of giving myself a reward after completing 16 weeks of workout without cheating.

 

In a company level, you need to monitor employees to make sure they are implementing the new changes. Knowing the reason behind the change, being involved in the process, having the right knowledge and training, and ability to do the new tasks are all great to make someone motivated enough to repeat the change until they become comfortable doing it every day. But until they become comfortable they need monitoring, help, and encouragement (rewards).

 

ADKAR model is an effective way to give you a guideline on how you can make a change in either your personal life or in an organizational level. Going through the steps you can make all the changes necessary to achieve your goals.

 

ADKAR => Awareness – Desire – Knowledge – Ability – Reinforcement

 

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Is a wrong decision, often better than no decision at all?

decision making

According to the HBR magazine yes it is. “High-Preforming CEOs understand that a wrong decision is often better than no decision at all. ” Study of executives show that 6% received low score because they made wrong decisions. And 94% received low scores because they made too little or too late decisions.

Jerry Bowe, CEO of the private-label manufacturer Vi-Jo is an example of a decisive CEO who doesn’t wait for a perfect time to make his decisions. According to the article in HBR he makes his decisions when he has 65% certainty about the answer. When making decisions he asks these two questions from himself: “What is the impact if I get it wrong? And, how much will it hold other things up if I don’t move on this?”

This is a great approach for everyone who is involved in decision making in some sorts. You can also use this approach for making decisions in your life and finally start on tasks that are waiting so long to be done just because you are waiting for a perfect time to make the decision about them.

Of course waiting to receive information that can make your decision making more precise is valuable as well. But you need to know how much you can wait or how harmful making or not making a decision can be according to your situation. But Learning from decisive CEOs once you have some certainty, it is much better to make a decision to make things move on rather than keep everything wait.

There are definitely many decisions in my in my life that I have to make and I am not 100% certain about the answers.  Now that I am thinking, there are decisions that are 5 or 7 years old and I didn’t do anything about them just because I wasn’t 100% sure about what would happen after. I think it is time to move and make the decisions and act like a decisive CEO who prefers to move, make things go, learn from mistakes, and make things happen.

Here are 4 behaviors of successful leaders according t the HBR:

1) Deciding with Speed and Conviction

The highest IQ executives sometimes struggle the most with decisiveness. “While the quality of their decisions is often good, because of their pursuit of the perfect answer, they can make too long to make choices or set clear priorities – and their teams pay a high price. These smart but slow decision makers become bottlenecks”

2) Engage for impact

Successful CEOs know that they should address stakeholders need. They know how to engage people and get team and stakeholders to buy-in.

3) Adopting Proactively

CEOs are consistently facing different situations. They have to excel at adopting. In fact those that adopt are 6.7 times more likely to succeed.

4) Delivering Reliably

Successful CEOs consistently follow through on their commitments. “A key practice here is setting realistic expectations up front.”

 

 

 

 

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