The essence of project management is to plan, organise, and execute tasks in an efficient manner. To an entrepreneur, it usually involves playing many different roles, managing resources, and delivering results under pressure. Although such challenges are a core part of being an entrepreneur, a structured approach on how to do all this, derived from project management, makes a huge difference in the odds of success.
Core Principles of Project Management for Entrepreneurs
Among the most important lessons acquired from project management is delivery. Reputation is everything in business. No matter how tough things get, every opportunity you get to come out and deliver just goes on to build trust and credibility. It entails self-discipline, effective communication, and a relentless focus towards the goals. Equally important is learning how to trust the process. Every entrepreneur faces setbacks and uncertainties. Project management teaches the discipline needed to stay focused on a clearly defined plan but to be flexible. It’s about knowing that sometimes your progress is going to be really crooked and that persistence is everything.
Flexibility is a huge cornerstone for a project manager. The business world is a changing world; on many occasions, it is dancing to the piper’s tune. The project manager learns to balance the rigidity of a plan against the need to be agile in times of change. Finally, a project lays on the basis of effective communication— through openness and honesty with stakeholders, the team, and customers— this builds up good relationships, manages expectation levels, and prevents misunderstandings.
A Real-World Example
I remember one of the most challenging projects back when I was a young entrepreneur. At that time, we were developing a new software product when the software market was quite competitive. It was serious time pressure with very short deadlines, limited resources, and an extremely high level of stress. Without any clear project plan, we were like a ship without a rudder. We even spent a lot of time fire-fighting instead of proactively managing the crisis.This is when I decided to implement a project management methodology. It enabled us to control every step of the way by breaking the project into stages. Team meetings and progress discussions updated and brought everyone on the same page. Challenges had been ongoing, but the structured approach helped us ride through the storm and deliver a successful product at last.The experience really showed me firsthand about the power of project management. It is not about ticking off boxes, but more a framework to create. It gives a structured approach, therefore creates mental space to think creatively about whatever an entrepreneur wants to apply their mind toward, solving problems, and creating value. In conclusion, project management goes way beyond tools and techniques; it is a mind-setting approach that will empower entrepreneurs to sail through complexity enroute to better choices, eventually leading to winning their game. Entrepreneurs can fruitfully bring their ideas to reality if they can understand and fully apply these principles.
Christopher Anand Sargunam is an entrepreneur, investor, and startup coach with a background in project management. Along with being a co-founder of DriveX, he is currently focused on building the House of Vallaham, a social enterprise.
