Don’t use lame excuses as a reason to avoid improving your business practices.

Small businesses — even one-person companies — need to learn and integrate the best practices of project management because in small companies project failure is more likely and other project risks are higher. A project that is behind or over budget in a large company is often cushioned by access to more resources in the form of more money and more or better people. Small businesses don’t have this safety net. A project that goes off the rails for a small company can mean the difference between keeping the doors open and returning to a “real job” in Dilbertland. But many of these agile, innovative groups of entrepreneurs are the most resistent to picking up and trying out many of the best project management tools.

Why?

Excuse No 1: Project management methodologies are too bureaucratic.

Bureacracies are a characteristic of organizational culture and always exist because someone benefits from slowing things down or bungling things up. It is highly likely that this same someone created the metholodology that is being used. In other words, project management methodologies only create bureacracy if the leadership or members of the project team have the intention of mucking up the project. (Or at least lack the motivation to fix it.) But if the company (your company!) has the intention of creating higher quality and cost effective projects, then project management methodologies will help not hurt you.

Excuse No 2: We’re so small we don’t need a metholodology.

Do you tie your shoe a different way every day? Would you ask your employees to do the same? Without having a methodology, this is what small companies are asking themselves and their employees to do — re-invent the wheel for every project. This way of doing things can be very tempting, especially if you’re creative, innovative or just a freaking cool person. However, this also makes you really annoying to work with, more expensive to hire and less likely to deliver the quality product your customers have asked for. There is absolutely room for creativity and innovation on every project, and by definition, this is what a project is. However, if you plan to do everything a different way every time, you will undoubtably do something worse or much worse than you did it last time. Having a methodology allows you to keep the good stuff from the last project and re-invent the bad stuff. Try it. You’ll like it.

Excuse No 3: (My favorite) Our customers are special, and they have unique needs. We can’t serve them using traditional project management practices.

Well, well, well. Now the truth comes out. You are so good that you are above exhibiting basic human behaviors and possibly the laws of the universe. Now close your eyes and picture one of your customers or a member of your team. Is this individual a person? (I know, sometimes it’s hard to tell.) Traditional project management practices are designed to help real people and real projects succeed. They are designed to help you ferret out places where things could go terrible wrong (making you look really stupid). They are designed to help you make important, universe-alterating decisions (chocolate sprinkles or no chocolate sprinkles). And they can even make you more popular. Using good project management processes makes you a more knowledgeable, consistent and organized leader. People on your team will like this, and your customers will love it. It might even make you younger and better looking, too.

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What If Project offers leadership and project management coaching and consulting for small and medium-sized technology companies. For more information visit What If Project or contact us for a free consultation.

Don’t dilute your opportunities by making your sales pitch too general.

I recently attended a EXPO for interactive designers sponsored by the AIGA in Denver. As a small social experiment, I went around to each of the exhibits, located the sponsor of that table and asked:

“What do you do?”

“We do everything,” said a young, hip designer from behind a folding table.

“So, you shoot film for product promotions,” I said, pointing to the large, image of a man in a compromising yoga pose on the screen behind him.

“Well no,” he said.

“So you integrated that slice of film into the overall piece,” I said.

“No,” he said.

At this point, I started giggling. The hipster boy started getting the drift of where the conversation was headed. He started smirking at me and happily answered “no” to each of my subsequent questions about what his company did.

I wish I could say that he was the only one making this lethal marketing mistake at this event, but he wasn’t. More than half the people I talked to “did everything” just like everyone else. And soon enough, “everything” to most ears actually starts to sound like “nothing.”

One of the most important and most free pieces of marketing material that you will ever have is your elevator speech. This is the two or three phrases that you use to describe what you do, what you’re good at and what you live for. A lot of this comes across in how you look and how you act, but at least give yourself a chance to send the best message you can about your talents and skills.

If my aforementioned designer guy had said “I crab walk to work” that at least would have been a more memorable answer than “we do everything.” There are a number of reasons that people either don’t have or don’t use an elevator speech and even more reasons why you should have a good one.

You’re afraid.

If you tell people specifically what you do it might not be exactly what they want to buy. But this is a good thing! If I want to pay you to write COBOL in my crawl space and you don’t love that kind of work then, you don’t want this job. And furthermore, if you do tell me what you do and it doesn’t match my exact needs, then you still have shot at learning that I have a friend or collegue that DOES need exactly what you do.

It’s not interesting enough.

The world is full of millions of people, and I can assure you that there are people, aside from your mother, that will be impressed by what you do. If you have already done your market research (and you have, right?!) then you know that there are customers out their who will need your services. You don’t need to have something radical and transformative. New technologies, for example, are interesting, but they’re hard to sell, because no one knows what they are. Don’t be afraid to offer something simple and be really good at it. If you’re still not convinced, consider the iPod. It just plays music. That’s it. Seriously.

You don’t know.

If you don’t know what you do, then you need to go back to the drawing board. You should not be at a networking event, and you certainly shouldn’t be giving a short speech in an elevator. You might not know what you do because you are just starting out, but you also might not know because the market for your services has changed so much that you’re suddenly left holding an outdated product or technology.

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What If Project LLC offers leadership and project management coaching and consulting for small and medium-sized technology companies. To learn more about how we can help you with your elevator speech, visit What If Project or contact us for a free consultation.