darth vader, small business, growth, strategy, Toby Elwin, blog

When a small business should fear growth

Your small business does not have the culture to succeed as a big business.

Initial ad hoc procedures may prove to drive those early revenues and perhaps the same procedures can manage a firm’s expansion to 30 employees, 75 employees, or 100 employees.

As the growth of a firm increases the amount of interactions and the dynamics of each interaction become more important. Repeatability, scalability, and human capital strategies are vital to have in place before growth.

With a Competing Values Framework your current culture and future culture present present your roadmap for intentional growth.

Hulk, impact assessment, template, project management, Toby Elwin, blog

Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success; impact analysis template

An impact analysis is an early-phase assessment to identify all stakeholders, their needs, their awareness, and their insight into the project – these people are not only sponsors and customers, but the people you want to invite people into the change. Involvement impacts success.

Just like a pebble tossed into a pond, projects cause ripples that carry beyond the initial splash. Projects sponsors who fail to link the change a project has to people, process, and technology risk project success and project adoption.

butterfly effect, Toby Elwin, blog

Organization sabotage and the butterfly effect

To run a team, manage a group, or lead an organization means you line people up yell, “ready, steady, go” and we folk hum along without need, guidance, motivation, communication, or care for anyone but the organization.

The reason a professional might call for an organization intervention comes from the feeling of organization sabotage.

Something is wrong.

Someones needs help.

We need to intervene.

how to, manage projects, organization success, Toby Elwin, blog

Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success, part 1

To deliver what someone expects, when someone expects, and the price someone agrees to requires an ability to define scope.

When a project fails, resources are lost and organization pressure increases. The more projects that fail the more resistant people are to associate with, work on, or fund new projects.

This is a first in a series of scope and project management blogs and templates to improve project delivery with a set of tools and principles to understand and manage project scope, from impact assessment through stakeholder communication.