The small project
Today you (and I) will be confronted by a handful of “small projects”. Things that you could nail down within a couple of weeks. Small things that will make your business work better. Perhaps you could:
- Free up some space on the servers to make them run more efficiently.
- Draw up a weekly report for a key customer.
- Improve the layout of your dispatch area.
- Write a quick decision tree to help your staff send work to the right supplier.
Small things that won’t require a huge amount of time but don’t give a huge return.
The problem with small things
Is that you work in a big business. And because you work in a big business the big managers aren’t interested in small things. They are not strategic. And if your career is to flourish the last thing you need to be labelled as is “not strategic”.
So instead of wasting your time on small opportunities you spend your time working on the big “strategic levers”. The multimillion pound investments that you can build a career on.
All that glisters isn’t gold
There are a handful of problems with big strategic moves though:
- They are big, which in turn means that they are expensive and complicated.
- You can’t “just do them” they suck up man years of PowerPoint before they are approved.
- They go wrong, there is no way you can think through every possible issue.
- They always overspend or under deliver.
So whilst the promise of the “strategic project” is great the reality is less than pretty.
Small is beautiful
By contrast small projects are:
- Small — which means that they are cheap and easy.
- Cheap — nobody gets too excited about them and you can get on with them.
- Easy — you can get your mind around them and they are unlikely to go wrong.
- Predictable — they tend to deliver.
And lets be honest, if a small project goes wrong they are disposable, you can chalk it up to experience.
So 20 or 30 small projects are worth an awful lot more to your bottom line than 1 big project. That is the argument in favour of continuous improvement. No doubt you have heard it before.
The bridge effect
That is all fine and dandy but it misses out one big upside in favour of the small stuff…
Every time you make an improvement it opens up the opportunity to make others. It creates a bridge to opportunities you don’t know about and can’t currently exploit.
- Perhaps the decision tree idea could be spun out to the finance department.
- Perhaps that free server space could be used to develop a new algorithm.
- Perhaps that weekly customer report will open their eyes to other things they could ask for.
- Perhaps the space in the dispatch area could be used to support another customer.
So the real upside from the small project isn’t the small benefit, it is the bridge it builds.
Where are you more likely to find the strategic lever?
Exploring what lies at the end of those bridges, or plugging away on your big project?
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Image by Paul McCarthy
Love it James. Simple and so very effective and the trick is to help those ‘Strategic types’ see the bridge and to test it and feel that those bridges will hold the weight of continual delivery and they also lead to so many other opportunities.
Spot on James – I’ve been advocating this approach for ages. Now I can give it a name! Thanks for sharing.
My pleasure Sean, thanks for reading
Reminds me of a project i was involved with some time back…it needed the planets to align before any benefit could be realised. You may recall it James?
I do, rather too well
Great article James. The skill is being able to position/sell the benefits of the small projects with the bigger picture in mind.
I guess you are right Phil