About the size of it by Andy Wansell, Boodle Hatfield
This blog post was also featured as an opinion piece in the July 2016 issue of Briefing. To read the issue in full, download Briefing.
Challenges faced by a boutique law firm often mirror those faced by the largest professional services organisations. The resources that Clifford Chance can deploy to understand and resolve inefficiencies are broad and deep, and when deploying these resources to the challenge of continuous improvement, the results are impressive.
But how does a business employing 150 people tackle similar challenges? The key is to turn your size into an advantage. But how?
Understand your bandwidth. A well-run small organisation is unlikely to have significant spare capacity, so if you’re staffed for business as usual you need to create room to deliver change. This may mean taking core members of the team ‘off the tools’ and backfilling with more junior members. If you need to bring in temporary resource, do so at the most junior level you can. It may also mean bringing in expertise the organisation doesn’t have. Identifying a team of trusted suppliers who can augment your project teams will increase the speed of delivery.
Get a trusted team in place. Whether from the organisation or contracted into your project, you need a team you can rely on to deliver the outcomes you’re looking for. There’s limited capacity to absorb under-delivery within the project team. But team leaders must also be careful not to ask for more than each team member can deliver.
Go hard and go fast. Delivering the perfect project is the nemesis of many organisations. In seeking perfection, project scope changes and timelines extend. If you’re going to be small, you need to be agile – and that means being prepared to accept imperfections and compromises in return for deploying quickly. It also means letting stakeholders know that experiencing (and sometimes solving) problems after deployment is acceptable.
Move sequentially, not simultaneously. This helps to avoid overstretching what will be a limited pool of talent. There’s a real danger that projects will founder when key personnel have overlapping responsibilities. Clashes between project responsibilities and key business processes, such as promotions, salary reviews or budgeting, will cause problems.
Sequence your projects in a way that makes sense. Too often we forget to ask “Why am I doing this now?” There will be many options for what to do, and when. Investing time in sequencing work over a 24-36-month period not only recognises that some projects will support the delivery of projects to follow, but also lets the organisation know where future projects fit in.
Remember, in a small firm the margin for error is fine. Taking some active steps to manage project delivery is critical in managing the risk of failure.
